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“So, how do I go about changing to a remote position?”
“Changing your…” Loretta’s chuckle became a laugh. “Those were details you’d need to negotiate upfront. Promethean Technologies advertised the job you were hired for as an on-site position.”
“I know, but—”
“I don’t negotiate contracts, Alex. I assist with relocation. Again, we’re expecting you on May fifteenth, unless you’d like to terminate the contract. However, that would require—”
“Damn it.” Slamming the coffee machine controls elicited another mechanical beep. Alex shook his fist, contemplating smashing his metal adversary to stop its judgmental humming.
“Excuse me?” Loretta asked. “I didn’t quite catch that.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I was just…”
“Why don’t I email the list of tasks I need you to complete? Give you some time to read them over and consider your next steps?”
The coffee maker’s glossy interface blurred before Alex with the array of options, notifications, and confusingly jumbled words—all becoming more difficult to make sense of as his dyslexia kicked in.
“Thank you. I appreciate that,” he said before disconnecting.
Shaking out his hands to dispel the anxious energy coursing through him, Alex paced the kitchen. Its warmth seemed to recede and fill with the cold sterility of reality. His breathing grew faster and more irregular as the weight of consequences crushed his fleeting optimism. The job he’d committed himself to had become a steel trap closing around him.
It can’t end like this.There had to be a way out of the rigid timeline. If he just pushed hard enough. Asked the right questions.
The phone buzzed again, but this time, Ethan’s goofy face lit up the screen. Alex’s finger wavered over the reject button before realizing Ethan always texted and never called.
“What’s up, Eth? I’m about the head into the library and grab some books.”
“Shut the fuck up, roomie. I know you spent the night with the Hottie Professor. When did you get a death wish?”
Alex felt his face flush. “Guess you caught me.”
“Listen, I just overheard some weird shit you should know about.”
“Can it wait, Eth? I really—”
“It’s about you, dude.”
Alex stopped pacing to find a chair. “Okay.”
“This morning, outside one of the computer labs, I overheard Travis Spencer running his mouth.”
Nothing good ever came from Travis’s mouth.
“He was going on about how you embarrassed yourself at Book Club. Said you were a bumbling, stuttering mess.”
“He’s not too far off.” Alex winced at the reminder of his contribution to last night’s discussion and the resulting aftermath. “Travis talks trash about everyone. No one takes him seriously.”
“Yeah, well, there’s more,” Ethan said. “One of the kiss-assess he was blabbing to asked if Everett had agreed to be Travis’s thesis adviser. Travis said the good professor was ‘playing hard to get,’ but that he had ‘leverage’ guaranteeing his participation.”
“Leverage?” Alex asked. How had he managed to further complicate an already complicated situation?
Ethan continued, “After Travis said that last part, he turned around and flashed this creepy-ass grin. He knew I was there the whole time.” Ethan sighed. “Look, just be careful, okay? I don’t want to get into this, but you are weeks away from graduating. The last thing you need is Travis sabotaging you over some schoolboy jealousy.”
“Travis isn’t going to mess with my graduation.” Alex forced a laugh, but it came out as more of a strained choke as the nausea in his gut intensified.
“Put yourself in Everett’s shoes. If people found out about you two, it’d look like he took advantage of a student. That’s a serious ethics violation.”
With his free hand, Alex gripped the chair’s cushion. He’d been so self-absorbed that he’d given little thought to the optics or potential fallout. Now Travis’s looming threat had turned his love for Julian into a liability. “That’s ridiculous, and I’d say as much.”
