Page 22 of Lethal in Pink

The ghost of a smile on his face widens just enough to be infuriating. He leans back in his chair, one arm draping casually over the back of it like he owns the entire row.

“And what consequences can I expect if I don’t move, hmmm?”

Oh, this guy thinks he’s cute. I could literally chop off his fucking dick and shove it down his throat without even breaking a nail.

Around us, the lecture hall fills. Chairs scrape against linoleum. Backpacks hit the floor with dull, percussive thuds. Paper coffee cups crinkle. Someone’s laptop fan whirs to life with the strained whine of a machine that’s been asked to do too much with too little. A group of undergraduates clusters near the back, their conversation a blur of weekend plans and housing complaints.

None of it penetrates the four inches between his knee and my personal space.

My knuckles whiten around my pink pen. The plastic creaks. I’m holding it too tight. I know I’m holding it too tight. But relaxing my grip would feel like surrender, and surrender is not in my vocabulary except as a theoretical concept I studied once for a crim pro exam.

“The consequence,” I say, keeping my voice at a volume calibrated to reach exactly his ears and no one else’s, “is that you’ll spend the next fourteen weeks sitting next to someone who will correct your notes, question your arguments in front of the entire class, and generally make your life academically unpleasant in ways you can’t even begin to fathom.”

He goes back to scrolling through what looks like a manga on his phone. “You could sit somewhere else, if it’s really that deep for you.” he offers, not looking up.

“I could. I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“That’s not a very good reason.”

“It’s the only reason that matters.”

He glances at me again.

“You’re very committed to this desk,” he says.

“I’m very committed to not being pushed around by men who think spreading their legs is a personality trait.”

That gets a laugh.

“Fair,” he says. “But I’m still not moving.”

“And neither am I.”

“Then I guess we’re at an impasse.”

“I guess we are.”

The professor walks in at 8:02. Two minutes late, not that anyone but me is counting.

He’s small, thin, somewhere in his fifties, with wire-rimmed glasses and a tweed jacket that has seen better decades. He sets his leather briefcase on the lectern with a thud that echoes through the suddenly silent room.

“Good morning,” he says. “Welcome to Legal Environment of Business. I am Professor Chen. The syllabus is on the course portal. Attendance is mandatory. Questions are encouraged. Coffee is recommended.”

The room settles. Notebooks open. Laptops hum. Pens uncap. The collective sound of two hundred people pretending they’re awake enough for a lecture at eight in the fucking morning.

I sit with my spine perfectly straight, my shoulders are squared, and my chin is level, but still, I am acutely aware of every millimeter of space between my elbow and his.

I track it the way I track exits. The way I track sightlines. The way I count steps between a parking structure and a service door. It’s not conscious. It’s autonomic.

His elbow shifts. Not much. Maybe half an inch. A casual adjustment, the kind of movement that means nothing to normal people and everything to people like me.

My pen pauses for a moment.

Then resumes.