CHAPTER 1
Mara
“But he’ssodreamy,” a student said. She tossed her hair behind her back. “I’ve heard he’s single too.”
I took a seat behind the group of students, trying hard not to listen, but being unable to avoid it. Undergraduates at the university were notoriously loud. I clutched the stack of books to my chest; Dad’s old shoulder-bag was already full, and I could only stuff so much into that thing before I risked ruining another strap. I glanced at my phone, reading the schedule information:Fear, Loathing, and Las Vegas Literature, General Education Credit: Humanities.The things you could take as an undergrad were a cakewalk compared to the courses you had to take as a doctoral student. You would think that a class on Las Vegas, in the exact city most of these students had grown up in, would lead to an empty lecture hall, but no—almost every seat was taken. Nearly one hundred and sixty of us.
Not that I was supposed to be there.
“Dreamy? How?” another asked.
“The older man sort of vibe. You know. Salt and pepper hair. Silver foxed daddy vibe. I want to jump his bones,” she said with an obvious wink in her tone.
“Does he have gray hair?”
“Well, no. A few here and there.”
“Then that’s not a silver fox.”
“Whatever. You didn’t check the department website?”
It was then that I realized why the lecture hall was full. Very few men were in the class. Most of the class was full of students. Female students.
Ugh. It was aggravating.
“He’s a billionaire. Billionaires have side babes. Don’t believe everything you hear,” a man sitting next to them said. “He isn’t single. Not in a million years.”
“Billionaire? But I thought professors were broke?”
“Stock market investments back in the early two-thousands. The professorial thing is more like a hobby.”
“Why the hell do you know so much about him?”
“Yeah. That’s kind of weird.”
“I don’t know,” the man shrugged. “He’s my life goal.”
I opened a book for a different class, pretending to read it, but it was hard to do anything when they were so damn loud. And I’ll admit it; I kind of wanted to listen. I was asking him for a favor once the class was over; knowing more information about him would help.
“Isn’t he an asshole? Judge My Prof says that he never gives an A. Like ever.”
“That doesn’t make him an asshole. That makes him a hard grader,” another woman down the aisle said.
At least someone had sense.
“I heard he’s always disprovinganythingandeverythinghis students say. To prove a point. That there is no right answer. Ever.”
“That’s because this is the arts. And arts are always subjective.”
“No, I mean, to the extreme. Not even to teach anything.”
“Graduate classes, maybe. Smaller. More room for discussion.”
“You mean argument.”
I found my earbuds, turning it to a rock playlist, loud enough to drown out their conversation. Now I could think straight. Dr. Evans was the only available professor left in our department for the Crossing Collaborations Contest, which meant that even though this was my first year in the doctoral program, and even though I had never spoken to this professor, if I wanted to win the contest and get my peers to take me seriously, I had to get him to agree to work with me.
One of the students turned around and tapped the back of her seat, looking at me. I pulled out the earbuds.
