Chapter 15
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
MILES
The morning sun wakes me with an intense glare streaming in through the windows. The sound of morning alarms irks me too much to use them, so I usually let the sun dictate the start of my days.
I squint against the sunlight until I roll over, tightening my jaw as I prepare to face either a house guest or an empty bed.
I’m not surprised to find the right side of my bed empty, but there is a flash of disappointment that tightens my rib cage. Despite last night’s peak stupidity, we did share one hell of a kiss. I didn’t expect her to kiss me back. I didn’t really think in general when I decided to lay one on her.
“Fuck!” I bite out as I scrub my hands over my face.
Blue slept on my side of the bed all night last night. I didn’t have the heart to make her move after she made herself comfortable in my spot. Something caveman and outdated took satisfaction in watching her bury her face against the pillow where my head normally lies.
This woman has me all twisted up. Why the hell did I bring her home with me in the first place?
A knock at the door echoes through the apartment, making me groan. There are very few people who are comfortable enough to show up at my door unannounced. I drag myself out of bed and throw a pair of sweatpants on.
“I’m coming!” I shout when the knocking starts up again, an insistent banging that is probably already pissing off my quiet old lady neighbor across the hall. I tear the door open when I reach it and snap, “What?”
Brynne recoils.
The irritating blonde is dressed in a short corduroy skirt that I assume she thinks makes her look smarter than she is. Her top has a plunging neckline, showing off the fake tits my father’s alimony paid for. I’m confident the wire-rimmed glasses she’s wearing are fake. She looks over the top of them with practiced doe eyes.
“Aren’t you happy to see me?” She steps forward, her arm already outstretched as if to reach for me.
I capture her wrist in my hand before she gets the chance. “Absolutely not at all. What the fuck do you want?”
My father’s last trophy wife hasn’t come around in months. I figured she finally got tired of me rejecting her and moved on to easier marks. She’s looking for her next meal ticket and has mistakenly convinced herself I’m an option. My former stepmother seems to think that being close in age to me means she can make the jump from my father’s bed to mine.
“I miss you, Miles.” She’s so soft-spoken and innocent-looking when she wants to be. I’m already sick of this act and she’s only been in front of me for two minutes tops.
“I don’t get my trust fund until I’m twenty-five,” I remind her. “I’m a college student, not a sugar daddy.”
She tosses her head with a huff. “I don’t need your money, Miles.”
Not until the money from my father runs out, maybe. But it will eventually. He gave her enough to go away quietly but their marriage was short-lived enough not to lose half his fortune again. That’s a mistake he hasn’t seemed to learn from yet.
“And I don’t need you , Brynne. So what the hell are you doing here? You’re not welcome; I think I made it perfectly clear the last time you showed up here.” When she showed up wearing only a trench coat and wound up with the door slammed in her face.
Brynne puts on the pout that won my dad over a few years ago. Her lips are even fuller from fillers now and even less attractive to me than the first time I met her.
The unwelcome image of Blue’s naturally full and heart-shaped mouth flits through my mind.
“My friend downstairs said a woman stayed here last night.” Brynne crosses her arms over her chest. I’m sure that move is practiced too, considering how high her tits rise over her arms, so much on display that I bet her nipples are in danger of popping out of her shirt. “I figured maybe that means you’re finally ready to give up the desperate introvert charade and put yourself on the market.”
I laugh right in her face. “Fuck off,” I tell her succinctly before slamming the door shut in her face.
The door doesn’t stop her from continuing to make desperate pleas to me about giving her a chance. So long as she thinks there might be an opening, she’s going to keep showing up here. I can’t believe she has a friend in the building spy on me thoroughly enough for them to catch the one time I have an overnight guest stay.
I don’t bother listening to whatever ramblings Brynne continues with. She can talk to the damn door for hours and get just as far as she’s ever going to get with me.
Somehow, I need to find a way to look less available. One thing the woman can’t stand is competition. She’s not interesting enough to ever win when there’s actual competition that she has to face. That’s how she lost my dad to his newest wife.
While I brainstorm how to look less available, I also have another problem I need to deal with. I head back to my bedroom to get dressed for the day.
If I want to make sure my next semester is paid for, I need to be back in Uncle Luca’s good graces. Tucking my tail between my legs and going back to the tutoring center is out of the question, so I need an alternate arrangement to propose.
Uncle Luca wants me involved somewhere on campus; I need to find an extracurricular or campus job that I can stomach.
My best bet is to talk to Professor MacNamara. I took a 500-level English course with her over the summer after sweet-talking my way into her class without the necessary prerequisites. I’m confident she allowed me into the class thinking failure would knock me down a peg, but I held my own. She’s already signed off for me to take one of the creative writing courses she’s teaching next semester, too.
Professor MacNamara is the darling of the English department. She’s a phenomenal professor and someone I deeply respect. If anyone can pinpoint the right fit for me, it’s going to be her.
Professor Parks is the last person I want to see when I step into the lobby of the English department. Most of the English and Writing professors have offices in this wing of the College of Arts and Sciences building.
“Morino.” His upper lip curls at the sight of me. “Has anyone explained to you that auditing a class you’ve already taken is bad form?”
I give the guy the respect I think he deserves by ignoring him outright.
Professor Parks is collecting his mail from the set of boxes behind the front desk. A student worker is at the desk, his face full of dread as his eyes ping-pong between Professor Parks and me. His hands are clenched together in fists on top of the desk.
Considering I just walked in and the tension in the air is mild between the professor and me, I can only assume something was going on between them when I walked in. I can’t pretend to be surprised. Funny how Professor Parks never seems to get along very well with his male students.
I’m surprised more rumors haven’t developed about him over the years.
“I guess my appointment is a no-show, Kip.” Professor MacNamara strolls out from her office, which is the closest to the front desk. She immediately brightens when she sees me, then takes stock of the mood in the office. “Miles! Are you here for me?”
“Yeah, if you have a minute.” I’m glad she’s smart enough to jump straight to the assumption that I wouldn’t bother visiting any of the other professors here.
“Sure, come on back!”
I take note of the careful way she avoids looking directly at Professor Parks. I noticed over the summer she didn’t seem to be his biggest fan either. When I mentioned I had taken his class, she asked me what I thought of the content but carefully navigated around any discussions about him as a teacher.
The guy strikes me as a true narcissist. I would venture to guess that Professor MacNamara senses that too. Every time I see him, the hairs on the back of my neck prickle with awareness. Even my arm hairs seem to be standing at attention as he glares at me while I step past the front desk to follow MacNamara to her office.
“Sorry for the frosty reception,” she murmurs as I pass her inside her office door. She closes the door behind me. “He’s not your biggest fan, I’ve gathered.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
“Never mind him anyway.” She waves off his bad energy as she walks around to the other side of her desk. I wait to take a seat until she sits first. “What brings you to my office? I haven’t seen you since the new semester got underway.”
“I should have come sooner. My new professors aren’t nearly as fun to argue with.”
She chuckles with good humor. “Ah, right. You wouldn’t be Miles Morino if you didn’t insist on finding a way to start arguments with all of us poor professors. As if us defending our dissertations during doctoral studies isn’t enough until we’ve also defended ourselves to you.”
“If the dissertations are strong, defending them against an undergrad student should be nothing.”
She shakes her head, laughing. “Fair enough,” she acquiesces to me.
I haven’t argued with any of my professors this semester about their doctoral work. I did do that with Professor MacNamara. She handled herself like a champ, though. I’m convinced now that I love modern retellings of the classics because of how she presented her research on the topic.
I read MacNamara’s dissertation before I ever applied to take her summer course. She’s a brilliant woman, and I feel lucky to learn under her.
“I came today hoping you might be able to help me with something.”
“Ah, interesting.” She leans forward and props her elbows on the desk so that she can rest her chin on top of her clasped hands. “Consider my curiosity piqued.”
“I need to get involved in something. A group or a job. Something I won’t hate and where I won’t be stuck babysitting my peers, preferably.” As much as I want to get away with not explaining further than that, MacNamara tilts her head and quirks her eyebrows, so I continue, “My uncle pays my tuition because my father doesn’t want to support a degree in the Arts, as he puts it. But a condition of my uncle’s generosity is that I find a way to be involved on campus.”
“Aren’t you part of the college newspaper?” MacNamara’s memory is more solid than I hoped.
“Not anymore.”
She nods thoughtfully, thankfully not asking me to expand on that change.
“Tutoring didn’t work out either,” I add so that we can get that out of the way.
“Well of course not.” She barks out a laugh that I’m sure everyone outside the office can hear. “You tutoring is preposterous. You have no patience for the kind of students who need tutoring.”
“ Thank you .” I’m glad someone understands why that would be so abhorrent to me.
“Well, we need another office assistant around here. What about working for the English department directly?” She yanks open one of her desk drawers and retrieves a file labeled English Department . She slips a single paper out of the folder and slides the page across the desk to me.
The page is a short description of the department assistant job. Most of the tasks seem to involve filing or uploading documents to cloud storage.
“Filing gets pretty boring but you can listen to audiobooks while you work. The turnover is high since you don’t make a lot of money and the work is pretty anti-social. You mostly file in the basement storage room where almost no one ever goes for more than a few minutes at a time.”
In other words, she’s offering me the perfect job. My uncle doesn’t have to know I’m spending my time in the basement alone listening to audiobooks. I can spin this as the perfect compromise for both of us.
A smile spreads over my face as something finally goes in my favor for the first time in weeks. “Where do I apply?”