She reads, lips moving. “Oh my god, he wants to see you? Like, just you? Tomorrow?” She looks up, eyes fully alert now. “Simone, this is either really good or really, really bad.”
I flop backward on the bed, covering my face with both hands. “It’s just about my grade. He probably wants to tell me in person that I’m academically defective and I should quit while I’m ahead.”
Andie shoves my shoulder. “It could also be a sign. Like, maybe he thinks you’re worth saving? Or maybe he just wants to…you know…” She mimes a suggestive eyebrow waggle.
“Don’t,” I say, peeking at her from under my arm. “Don’t make this dirty.”
She grins, unrepentant. “Simone. Everything is dirty. It’s college.”
I try to hold onto my sarcasm, but the words of the email glow behind my eyelids, neon and inescapable.
See me. Office hours. Your progress.
Every phrase is a double entendre if you’re desperate enough.
“Are you gonna go?” Andie asks, like it’s even a question.
“Of course I’m gonna go. If I don’t, he’ll fail me for sure. And then I’ll have to find a job, which is probably either flipping burgers or pumping gas.”
“Dramatic,” she says, but she doesn’t disagree.
I stare at the laptop, at the clock ticking up and up, and imagine tomorrow in a hundred different ways. Maybe Liam’s angry. Maybe he wants to tell me to drop the act, stop showing up late, stop flirting with disaster. Maybe this is his way of issuing a warning, or an invitation. Maybe he’s going to report me to the Academic Counsel, and recommend immediate expulsion. Thethought makes my stomach twist in a way that’s not entirely unpleasant.
Andie pulls her knees to her chest and rocks, eyes dreamy. “You know, this could be huge. Maybe he’s gonna give you secret extra credit. Or recommend you for something. Or, like, introduce you to his publisher.”
I roll my eyes. “More like he’s going to fail me, Andie.”
She flops back, already losing interest. “You’ll be fine. You’re basically a genius compared to the rest of us.”
I almost believe her. Almost.
But when I close my laptop, the room feels warmer, like the air itself has thickened. Outside, the storm has gone slack, the only sound the wet hiss of tires on distant pavement. I wonder if Thomas is awake, reading my paper and plotting my execution. Or maybe he’s lying in a king-sized bed with whiskey and a boner, already regretting the moment he hit send.
I wish I knew which version of him was real.
I stare at the ceiling, listening to Andie’s breathing slow and soften, and let the possibilities run wild and mean and raw. I imagine his office, the way the books will smell, the way his voice will wrap around me, smoke and velvet. I imagine his hands, the roughness of his palm as he gestures for me to sit, the certainty in his movements.
I imagine him wanting me.
And then I imagine the other thing—the moment he tells me I’m nothing, that I never belonged here, that even wanting was too much to ask. The moment he tells me that I’ve failed.
I turn over and punch the pillow flat, as if that will keep the thoughts at bay.
It doesn’t.
Tomorrow is already clawing its way into my head, bright and sharp and impossible.
When I finally fall asleep, I dream I’m sitting in the back of a lecture hall, naked except for my ruined GPA, and Professor Thomas is at the podium, reciting poetry in a language only I understand.
He never looks away.
3
ARE OFFICE HOURS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN?
LIAM
The office smells of dust and oiled wood, the kind of funk that never quite leaves old college buildings. I’m meant to be grading, but the student paper on my desk has become an accidental screen saver—a pale blue rectangle obscured by a stack of unread essays and my own filth. Sunlight slices through the half-closed blinds, smearing the room with afternoon honey and making the air look viscous, like it could trap a man if he moved too slow.
