And again, I spend the night in his bed.
27
COLTON
JULY — THREE WEEKS TO WIN OVER THE FACULTY
I glareat the half dozen tomes laid across the desk. This article is due by the end of the summer, and with only a few weeks left, I can’t get past the hump. I’m supposed to get on a call with Richard soon to discuss it, hoping that will jog an idea.
My phone buzzes, breaking my standoff with my computer.
Quinn
I finished my meeting with the employers early. You around?
I smile at the screen. One text from her, and everything’s better. Not fixed, but better.
The past few weeks have been the best of my life. Lunch together at the local sandwich shop between classes. Dinner around our giant wooden table. And every night, she’s in my bed. If it weren’t for the threat of the summer’s end hanging over us, I’d think I’d died and gone to heaven.
We’ll still have our friendship when we get home, but this slice of paradise—the one where I spend every day devouring herstream of consciousness and she spends every night coming apart around me—has an expiry date that’s quickly approaching. How will I pretend her walking away doesn’t gut me?
I shoot back a response.
Me
Have a call with your dad to work out some issues in the article. Give me an hour?
QUINN
Lucky you.
Her sarcasm is laced with hurt, and it makes me ball my fists. She deserves so much better than she gets from him.
Less than ten minutes later, the FaceTime app on my computer lights up with an incoming call from Richard Riley.
“Colton. How are you doing, son?”
Great! Fucking your daughter every night and loving every second.
Probably not the best opener, so I go with something more neutral. “Could be worse. You heading to Venice soon?”
He grumbles something unintelligible. “I don’t see why we have to take these students to different parts of Italy. They’re adults.”
I personally had a great time—life-changing, really—on my university-led weekend trip. But, again, I’m not sharing that with her father.
“I’m sure they appreciate it,” I say instead.
“What a waste of the last two weeks in Rome,” he harrumphs.
The reminder that we are coming up on the end of the summer shoots through me. Our program goes a week past Richard’s, but that final day is looming, like the Grim Reaper waiting to drain the life out of me.
Richard sighs, snapping me out of my doom spiral. “Let’s hear this challenge you have for me.”
I run through the premise of the article and the limitations of my research. There’s a reason he’s so respected, even if he is aterrible father, and by the end of our call, relief washes over me. We sorted it out. I’ll get this published and add to the growing list of reasons I’ll eventually be granted tenure.
As we prepare to hang up, Richard clears his throat. “How’s Quinn?”
It’s like a shock from an electric fence hearing him say her name. Ten years, hundreds of calls, and dozens of dinners, and he’s never asked about her.
