Arlie doesn’t respond, but she does heart the message a few hours later. Probably in the middle of some glamorous after-party.
Ramona messes around in the portal, clicking on Resources as though it’ll somehow offer a solution to her current problem. Halfway down the page is a bolded heading for FACULTY FREERIDE, which seems to be a list of designated drivers students can call if they end up needing a ride home. And there’s Nick Navarro’s name.Figures.So painfully do-gooder of him.
It’s unsettling, being caught between two worlds like this. If Ramona even wanted to go back—she doesn’t—she can’t shake the sense that she’d feelbehind, somehow, like everyone else skipped a grade and she got held back. School is the world she needs to firmly plant herself in. Not music, not the VMAs, and certainly not whatever’s happening with Zander Parrish.
At least, until she walks into class on Monday and Professor Nick announces a pop quiz.
“I know, I know,” he says to a chorus of mostly good-natured groans. “How could he, it’s only the third week of school, worst teacher ever.” He starts handing them out to the first person ineach row to take and pass down. “If you’ve kept up with the reading, it should be a piece of cake.”
She swears Nick’s eyes linger on her when he passes her the quiz. He seemed to dislike her slightly less in those emails they sent Friday night and early Saturday morning, and maybe it’s not the glow of validation she got from directors and producers, but it’s something. Then again, he may feel differently once he reads her assignments.
He’s in chinos again, a cream shirt with the top button undone, a heather-gray sweater-vest. She’s noticed the way other students act around him, how some of the shyer girls and a few of the boys blush when he calls on them. And she can’t blame them—the man knows how to wear a sweater-vest.
She wonders if he was already in bed when he emailed her just before midnight.
The pop quiz feels like a personal attack. She drums the desk with her pen, wraps the end of her hair around it, mulling question one.What is Weber’s law?Fuck if she knows.Give an example of opponent process theory.The theory of processing…one’s…opponents?What is the primary function of the somatosensory cortex?Well, that one just sounds made-up.
When the other students start turning in their tests at the front of the room, Ramona panics. She doesn’t want to be the last one finished, for everyone to think she was this stumped by the very first quiz. So she leaves the last few answers blank and places hers on top of the pile.
“A pop quiz this early in the quarter? Brutal,” she says to Nick at the end of class, once the room has cleared out and he’s alone at his desk. She took her time putting her things away without fullyprocessing why. But maybe if she can just get ahead of those bad assignments and even worse quiz, he’ll go easier on her.
Nick pauses with the folder of quizzes halfway to his messenger bag. He seems to deflate the tiniest bit after class, as though performing in front of the room like that is a switch he can turn on and off. A softer mouth. Hazel eyes rimmed with gold. Up close, she can tell that the stubble scraped across his cheeks and chin is flecked with gray, drawing even more attention to the sharp cut of his jaw.
Irrelevant,she tells herself, even though she’s always been weak for a good jawline. If she ever tries dating apps, she wonders if there’s a way to filter for that.
“I’d say I’m sorry, but…” He trails off with a slight smile. “Not too hard, I hope?”
“Oh—it was fine. I just always get anxious waiting for results. Guess I like instant gratification.”
He splays the folder flat on his desk. “Well then. Let’s grade it right now.”
As he finds her test, he gives her a lift of his eyebrows that suggests this might actually be a bit of a thrill for him. Shit, he’s really going to make her watch while he fails her. What kind of a sadistic fuck is he?
Ramona refuses to let him see how much it affects her. Squared shoulders, straight spine, teeth ungritted. She’s wearing wide-legged jeans and an oversized black sweater today, the kind of outfit she can disappear into, one she would have avoided preretirement because it doesn’t emphasize any curves.
While he reads her answers, she tries not to wonder if the scent that’s hitting her is his cologne or shampoo or soap. Cedar,she thinks, with a tinge of peppermint. She focuses on the slight pilling along the collar of his sweater-vest. Thinks back to the photo of that girl in his office. His daughter, maybe? He doesn’t wear a ring, but that could mean any number of things.
Every slash of his red pen makes her wince—and there is alotof red.
“Did you have a good weekend?” Nick asks, extending this slim olive branch even as he eviscerates her.
“Not bad, I guess. I, uh…” She grasps for something she did this weekend. “Relaxed a lot.” Sure. Because her life is so stressful right now. “You?”
Another slash. Another wince, like he has his pen hooked right between her ribs. “Spent some time with family.” One corner of his mouth kicks upward. “Probably could have afforded to sleep in a little more.”
At this nod to their email exchange, Ramona fights a rush of heat to her face. She’s not sure why—there was nothing unprofessional about it, although maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned the undereye circles. Out of politeness.
He gestures to a multiple-choice question. “Spicy,” he says, giving the paper a tap, and for a moment she forgets what they’re talking about. That woodsy scent of him goes right to her brain. “Spicy is the only basic taste not detected by gustatory cells, not umami. Receptors in the mouth determine whether something is spicy or not.”
“Right. Would have been my second guess.”
The thing is, all of thisisinteresting to her. If she’d had the time—no, if she’d made the time—she would have enjoyed getting lost in the textbook, memorizing every detail about thesomatosensory cortex. She had the whole weekend to study, and now she’s going to confirm Navarro’s Fundamental Theory of Pop Stars: that she is a complete and total idiot.
When he finishes, he scribbles 4/25 at the top of her test. She’s gotten Pitchfork ratings better than this.
“Is it graded on a curve?” she asks, trying for a joke, but Nick doesn’t laugh.
“If you need help, or if you’re struggling to understand anything, you can let me know,” he says. “I know a lot of people take psychology assuming it’ll be some quirky survey of psychiatric disorders, without realizing the level of science involved. If this class is too much, we could see about switching you into something else. Maybe you’d be better off with fewer credits to start with.”
