Nick’s not sure what to make of that. If she’s joking around with him, or if she genuinely doesn’t know. “I don’t usually find my students verbally accosting each other on the first day of class.”
The weight of her full attention directed back at him is enough to fry his neuroreceptors.
His words from class echo in his brain.
Ms.Wilder.
In his seven years of teaching, he has never called a student by their last name. But somehowRamonafelt as though it mightconvey too much intimacy, too soon, the way some people talk about their favorite celebrities like they’re close friends.
Or maybe he was afraid of the way her name would taste in his mouth.
“First-day nerves,” Ramona says, brushing this off with a flip of her glossy hair over one shoulder. “Anxiety makes people do strange things.”
He still can’t shake the feeling that they’re both skirting the real issue. Before he started class today, he thought he might take her aside afterward, but observing that clash with Trevor solidified that he needed to. To borrow a phrase from his ex-wife’s favorite reality shows, the ones he inwardly rolled his eyes at before getting just as invested as she was: he wants to make sure she’s here for the right reasons.
Ramona Wilder has enough money to buy a few campus buildings and name them after herself, so why is she slumming it in Behavior and the Brain? Did she just close her eyes and drag a finger down the list of course offerings?
He lays his arms on top of his desk, clasps his hands together. “Look. Can I level with you?”
“Please.”
“This class, this subject—they mean a lot to me. This was the first course I designed as a professor a few years back,” he says. “I’m worried you might be distracting to the other students. The ones who’ve spent their entire high school careers focused on getting into a good school, the ones on scholarship who need to make certain grades, the ones working multiple jobs to afford tuition. The ones who’ve been taking it seriously since before they even got here.”
“And you don’t think I’m taking it seriously.”
That’s precisely what he thinks. Even before her glib PhD comment. “Well, whyareyou here?”
She just blinks at him. “To get an education? I thought that was the whole point.”
“It doesn’t seem like you need a degree to sing your songs.”
The way Ramona winces at this makes him immediately regret his words. He didn’t mean to sound condescending. Audrey adores her music, and that’s enough for him to see the value in it.
He wants to believe she’s being genuine, but then again, how many times has Daniel Day-Lewis retired? The level of fame she has—she can’t just enroll at UCLA and expect not to cause a commotion.
“I guess I wondered,” he continues, “if this could all be inspiration for your next album. A publicity stunt.”
“Then I’d better call off the reporters waiting outside your office.” A muscle twitches in her jaw. All the softness is gone from her face now, her features sharp. “What do you want me to say, that I woke up one day, realized I was fucking stupid, and that I needed to remedy that immediately?”
No, she’s not fucking stupid. That much is clear.
“Obviously not—”
She springs to her feet, the swift motion cutting him off. As though she’s the one in command of this conversation, even in his office in his building at the university he’s been teaching at for seven years. “I retired from music six months ago,” she continues, her breaths coming faster. “I never had the chance to go to school, and I’m sure to most people that would seem like a gift, but I used to beg my parents to let me take classes. The answer was always no—they didn’t fit into my schedule, even though I would have happily rearranged it. I never really had a choice, and then whenI was finally old enough to make those choices, it felt like it was too late.”
Her eyes are flint as she leans in, splaying her hands on his desk. That gaze pins him in place. Makes it impossible to look away, and truthfully he might be a little scared to. From this vantage point, she’s towering over him, giving herself the upper hand. She’s so close, he can smell what must be her perfume, something dark and sweet. A delicate frustration of a scent that suits her perfectly.
Unsure what kind of unspoken game they’re playing, Nick stands too, as though to remind her that he’s in charge. Or maybe to remind himself. She’s tall but he’s taller, at six one, and right now he’s grateful for those extra inches.
“I’m trying to have one shred of a normal human experience,” she says, speaking slower now, as though to calm the rapid rise and fall of her chest. “I picked this class because people confuse the hell out of me. I’m curious about behavior. I’m curious about the brain. And hey, what do you know, your class combined them both.”
And if that isn’t why he chose Psych 101 as a freshman all those years ago—to satisfy a curiosity, not expecting to fall irreversibly in love with it.
I never really had a choice.
That’s not how he would have imagined her career playing out, but he supposes the wheels were set in motion back when she was still a minor. Child stardom has always struck him as borderline abusive, but he’s obviously not about to mention that to her.
He grasps around for the right words, pinching the space between his brows and jostling his glasses. He hadn’t expected she’d be this…combative. Then again, wasn’t that the way sheperformed? Like every song was a battle—with her guitar, with her hair, with the stage beneath her feet. And she always won.
