Page 12 of Love Out Loud

Chapter 5

Lark

I shift restlessly in my office chair. It squeaks, and I catch Hannah’s lips tightening into a thin line, though her eyes stay trained on her computer screen. I refocus my energy on my own monitor to try to input the grades from the final I gave yesterday, but the letters aren’t registering. Can I just give everyone an A? Surely this would make all parties involved happy—I could be finished with grades, the students would get a bump in their GPA…

No. I can’t. For a million reasons, not least of which is because an adjunct professor in the math department was fired a few years ago for grade inflation. But also because once I eventually come to my senses, I’ll kick myself for allowing Cade Peyton—resident class clown and king of doing the least amount of work possible to eke out a C minus—to get a better grade than he deserves.

I skip down to the P’s on the roster and enter his grade while I’m thinking about it. His percentage comes out to a 69.7, which will round up. That little…

Hannah clears her throat loudly enough that it’s obvious she wants my attention. I slowly drag my eyes away from my screen to meet her brown ones, which are narrowed on me.

“What?” I ask after a few seconds of silent staring.

“What is wrong with you today?” she finally asks exasperatedly.

My chair squeaks again as I rear back in it. “Nothing. Why?”

“You haven’t stopped fidgeting and grumbling to yourself since you came in here. You are an absolute cacophony of noises over there, and not in a good way.”

Running through the past hour in my head, I have to admit she’s probably right. I have been fidgety today. I was up late last night trying to persuade myself to click Buy on the plane tickets to LA. It’s not that I don’t want to go; it’s just that I’m not sure it’s the best idea. What if staying with Lennon for two months is weird? We’ve never roomed together for longer than a weekend before. What if Jessica doesn’t like the audition I send? Not that I’ve recorded that yet, either. I can only hype myself up to do one thing at a time. What if Lennon wants to spend time at the beach? Of course he’ll want to spend time at the beach. It’s Los Angeles, for fuck’s sake. It’s basically the whole reason he went out there in the first place. And here I am without a single swimsuit to my name. What if…

“Am I attractive?” I blurt out without thinking.

Hannah barks out a harsh sound that I think is a laugh, but it’s hard to be sure. She slaps a hand over her mouth, then smacks her other hand over that one as if she can physically contain more of those sounds from escaping.

I frown deeply and find a pen to play with on my desk so I don’t have to look at her eyes, which are now undoubtedly full of mirth. “Damn. I mean, I know I’m older and have popped out a kid, but I didn’t think it was that bad.”

Hannah’s shoulders fall away from her ears as she removes her hands from her mouth and rests her elbows on her desk. “Shit, no. I’m sorry, Lark. I didn’t mean it like that. That was just maybe the world’s most unexpected question.”

“Not if you’re in my brain,” I grumble.

“Well, I’m not in your brain, so how about you walk me through how you got there?” she asks, her voice overly sympathetic as if she’s trying to make up for her outburst.

I take in a deep breath, hoping the extra oxygen will help organize my thoughts. It doesn’t.

“I might be narrating an audiobook this summer.”

Hannah blinks a few times, then stares at me blankly. When I don’t elaborate, she pinches her brows together. “You do know no one can actually see you narrate an audiobook, right?”

I let out a frustrated puff of air. “Of course I know that.”

She closes her eyes and draws in a slow breath through her nose as if she’s counting to ten and trying not to lose it. When she opens them again, her expression is carefully neutral. “Are you asking about whether or not your voice is attractive? Because when you’re saying things that make sense, I happen to think your voice is super hot—”

“No,” I interrupt, shaking my head. “No. Okay, let me back up. Lennon asked me to narrate this audiobook. Or rather, audition for it.”

One corner of her mouth ticks up as if she’s suddenly very interested in where this conversation is going. “High school Lennon?”

“How many Lennons do you know of?” I ask, my voice flat.

“Aside from John?”

Even though Lennon’s hippie parents did, in fact, name him after the famous singer, he hates the comparison. Unluckily for him, it’s the first thing anyone brings up whenever they meet him. Richard used to call him Johnny when we were in school, until I made it clear that we couldn’t date unless he stopped antagonizing him. Now he only uses the nickname when Lennon’s not around.

I raise an eyebrow, unimpressed. “I’m not dignifying that with a response.” Hannah chuckles to herself while I pin her with a glare. “From what I can gather, he’s the sound engineer for this project. The original female narrator has to get her tonsils out, and Lennon doesn’t want the project to die, so he asked if I could do it.”

“What’s the book?”

“Irrelevant to this conversation.” I don’t want to share that information if I can help it.