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“Christ.” I drop my bag to the bluestone path and start to root around. “Nope, nope—” I toss my wallet to the opposite side, then start simply piling my books next to me until there, blessedly, beneath tissues and a used-up hand sanitizer bottle, I find my key card. “Success!”

“How lovely to see you up so early, Lacie.”

I spin at the smoky voice and nearly topple onto my ass. Marcella, fully masc in a pin-striped pantsuit, the collar of her crisp white shirt open just so around a winking paper-clip necklace, smiles down at me. She’s a little foxlike, a laugh in her eyes.

My jaw drops, and I thank god she can’t read my thoughts. Oh god, did she hear me talking to myself as I rooted around for my shit? Fuck. God! I’m such a klutz. Fully moronic. No, no. Gagging at myself, I force out a breathy giggle.

“Oh—good morning.”

“We have to stop meeting like this,” she croons. “Need some help?”

“No—no. Thanks. But— Um, just give me a second.” I start to shovel my books and papers and water bottle back into my bag, haphazardly. And isn’t this a great showcase of how I am, lately? Haphazard and lost. Adrift in a vast sea, drowning in paperwork. Every time I think I have a hand on something solid, a foot on an ice floe, the current shifts and I start to sink again.

And here she is, holding out her hand. But her hand isn’t what I want. Is it?

Marcella tips her head to the side, a dark curl slipping over her shoulder. “You sure? You look flustered.” She taps her key card to the door and holds it open for me.

“I—I just lost track of my—” I huff. I sound insane. “Thank you.”

We walk into the Classics building, the door thudding closed behind us. Taking a breath and summoning what I think might be a smile, I turn to regard my colleague. And that’s what she is. Gorgeous and fucking everywhere I am, somehow, but my colleague.

“Are you getting a head start?”

“Yes, as much as I can. I don’t start assisting until next semester, and I’ve turned in my syllabus—” Of course she has, goddamn. “—but I need to leave a thank-you note for Dean Shea. Handwritten is always best.” She gives me a glimmering smile. “Though I’m glad I’ve run into you.”

“You are?” What am I, in high school again? I clear my throat of the stringy spit collecting there. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Well, I heard something at the Dean’s Dinner last night that troubled me, and I thought you might have some insight.”

Right, she got invited in the two seconds she’s been at Preston, and I’ve worked my ass off for more than a year and haven’t even gotten a nod. Cool. I pull my glasses off and clean them with the side of my shirt, sighing. “Alright, shoot, but I can’t promise I’ll be much help, since I’m not on the inside, as you know by now.”

Marcella steps closer to me, and god is she the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Her cheeks flush with the cold, her lips bare and still youthfully pink. She takes my glasses from me, our fingers brushing for an electric millisecond, before she pulls a monogrammed handkerchief from her breast pocket. She polishes my lenses thoughtfully as she says, “I met a fellow named Lyle, and a poor sweet thing named Therese. They mentioned Laurel isn’t the first instructor Classics has lost?” She hands my glasses back to me and I stare at the cleaned glass and wish a single one of her fingerprints had been somehow left behind. Stupid.

I push them up my nose and tilt my head up to look at her. We’re close together in the vestibule of the building, and the smell of pepper from her perfume surrounds me. I take a heady breath, counting my heartbeats. “You know, I have actually heard that, from—” From Laurel.

“Interesting,” Marcella replies, smoothing over my halted words. She brushes a hand forward, indicating I should keep walking. Lucky for me, the hall is just wide enough for us to advance shoulder to shoulder. Something about her, despite all her charm, still feels predatory, as if she’s sizing me up. I don’t want her to walk behind me where I can’t see her.

“Why? Classics is probably the most demanding department outside of engineering and the like.” I stop to check the boards—maybe Laurel left a flyer for next semester’s classes? But it’s all the same as last week. Swallowing against a dry throat, I start to scale the stairs, with Marcella keeping pace.

Marcella hums. “Therese seems to think that those professors didn’t just leave the program, but Preston entirely. Arjun didn’t seem worried.”

“Arjun’s a cad.” The words slip out of me and I fight the urge to slap a hand over my mouth.

Marcella’s laugh twinkles, and I find myself blushing, chuckling along with her: she thought I was funny?

When she answers, she’s flush with stifled laughter. “I agree with you. He took me to the Dean’s Dinner, and he was altogether too forward with me. Is that the general experience around here?”

We pass the second-floor landing and I stop to look at her. She leans carefully into the corner, crossing her arms and fixing me with a searching stare.

My voice drops to an urgent whisper. “Arjun gets to do whatever he likes. He’s favored by Dean Shea and already up for tenure next semester. And unlike everyone else, he seems to always be on the roster for conferences and research opps and the like. All of us have big dropout rates in our courses, too, everyone but him.”

“That’s odd. Any idea why?”

“No. Laurel, my friend, the one—” I stutter, wave a hand. “—she told me that she’d lost so many students that Dean Shea had called her in for a conversation about the viability of tenure. Said she didn’t seem up to the task, that Arjun was going to have to start sitting in on her lectures.”

And then my throat sticks. That was the last lengthy conversation we’d had, really, wasn’t it? End of last semester, before break. How she’d been concerned at the number of dropouts from her intro courses, and Dean Shea had agreed that her work was slipping. She’d been in a froth. Desperate to please him, to keep climbing.

They were supposed to meet. And then nothing.