AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I finally settle on a calf-length denim skirt and a puffy white peasant blouse that doesn’t show any cleavage, not that I have much. I brush my hair, and then I put on very minimal makeup. Mascara, light foundation, nude lipstick, a touch of blush. The no-makeup makeup look. Again, I don’t want to look half dead, but I don’t want to look like I’m trying too hard.
Geez. This is exhausting. When I get together with Paxton, I don’t even think about what impression I’m giving. I wear what is comfortable and makes me feel good. Seems to work for him. Definitely works for me.
My stomach is tying itself into balloon animal knots as I stalk down the hallway to his office, but I’m too mad to let this go.
Dump me? Fine, I can look back now and see that the professor did me a favor because it was a one-sided, manipulative relationship and I was better off out of it.
But steal my hard work? Not going to let that one just slide.
I fling open the door to his office. A slender, pretty girl with wavy blond hair—of course—is sitting on his desk, about a foot away from where he’s sitting, leaning forward towards him and giggling, and he’s leaning towards her.
She lets out a startled shriek and leaps off his desk, stumbling. He jerks back and rolls his chair several feet away so fast that he could qualify for an Olympic backwards chair racing event.
“Oh, did you forget to lock the door?” I say loudly.
As it so happens, the universe blesses me today. There are about half a dozen students behind me, walking by, and they all saw her sitting on his desk. And they all saw her and the professor’s guilty reactions.
That is not a good look for a professor.
“Excuse me. These are my office hours and you don’t have an appointment. Also, I’d appreciate it if you’d knock.” His voice is thick with anger.
“I bet you would.” I raise my voice even louder, and the students in the hall laugh aloud.
I know a couple of them, too, which could come in handy in case I ever do get to the point of filing a complaint. “Marie, she’s not staying; you don’t need to leave,” the professor calls out to her, but she’s grabbed her purse. Glaring at me, she scurries past me and stalks off, her face a furious red.
“Well, looks like an appointment just opened up,” I call out loudly, and I walk in the room, leaving the door wide open.
There is a stack of his book sitting on his desk—the book containing my poems. That little bastard.
He leans forward, his eyes sparking with anger. “I’m actually pretty busy right now.” He grabs a cup of coffee from his desk and makes a big show of taking a swig of it, then sets it back down.
I ignore him and sit down in the chair facing him. “Mind if I sit here? This is so much more comfortable than that desk,” I smile sweetly. “And heaven knows what I might catch if I sat there.”
He lets out a breath that’s a long hiss of exasperation. “If you want to speak to me, I am going to have to insist that you shut the door.”
Me alone in a room with this psycho? I shake my head at him. “Not a snowball’s chance in hell, pal.”
“Then I have nothing to say to you.” His gaze is steely. Once upon a time I would have let him intimidate me, but time has passed and our breakup didn’t break me, and now I feel much stronger. That, and somehow, even though I didn’t ask Paxton to come with me, something about knowing that Paxton has my back when it comes to the professor makes me feel stronger.
A burden shared is a burden halved.
“That’s fine, because frankly, I’m sick of listening to you. When your lips move, you’re lying. I’ve come to talk to you about the poetry you stole from me and published in your own name.”
He glances at the doorway to make sure nobody’s standing out there. Then he looks back at me, and his lips curl up in a slow smile.
“Prove it,” he says.
My stomach goes watery, but I just picture Paxton facing down an ice rink of huge brutes who want to take a stick to his head. If he can go out and do that day after day, I can face one vain, snarky, shallow little sociopath.
“Well, well, well. You didn’t bother trying to deny it, I see.”
“I didn’t admit it, either.” His smile is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.
“That is the weakest non-denial I’ve ever heard. And there’s that email that I sent you, with the poems, which should prove it nicely.”
He widens his eyes, leans back in his chair, and laces his fingers back behind his head. “What email?” His body language says, I don’t have a care in the world.
I want to lunge forward and wrap my fingers around his throat, but I also want to graduate.
