Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
HAPPILY EVER DURING
Arden
"Professor Sterling, your wife is here." The student aide's voice has that particular blend of collegiate enthusiasm and sleep deprivation that feels like looking into a time capsule. 'I know you,' I think.
She can't be much more than nineteen, all bright eyes and university sweatshirt and the kind of confidence that only comes before life has taught you the meaning of consequences. Poor thing.
Watching her scurry back to her desk clutching a coffee. I remember being her, clutching my own certainties like talismans. There might have been a time I'd do anything to go back to that blissful ignorance and bravery of collegiate negligence, but there's something about cresting that wave that makes the years that follow that much more rewarding. The way life takes your carefully plotted course and turns it into something entirely different, but somehow better than you could have planned. Perhaps because it wasn’t the plan at all.
The aide keeps stealing glances at me from behind her laptop, and I know that look. I've seen variations of it since Will started teaching here, the whispered conversations that stop when he walks by, the suspicious spike in attendance during his office hours, the way his Rate My Professor page has more heart emojis than actual reviews. Of course I check . I’ve even printed some of them out to stick on the fridge.
Will became an adjunct professor three years ago, after trading in that shiny name and all its weighted expectations. It wasn't a straight line from the museum hall to lecture hall, there were pivots and uncertainties, moments of doubt that turned into opportunities. Working with the museum's education program started as a side project, something he loved but didn't think could be a career. Until it was. Until teaching became professing, and suddenly he was exactly where he needed to be.
His classes are always waitlisted, something he attributes to his 'engaging curriculum' refusing to admit any of it has to do with the fact that they most definitely call him the hot-professor. I would— and sometimes do.
His office door is propped open with a bronze bust and I can hear him humming behind it. The space beyond is just him exploding into room form. The stack of papers to grade, because he prefers to print them out , isn't daunting to him at all. He says there's something meditative about marking papers by hand.
He always looks at me like something he hoped for but wasn’t expecting.
"You’re here just in time to dismantle one of my lectures if you want to join.” he says. Wouldn’t be the first time I ‘class-crashed’ as he called it. Turned into such a heated discussion on the intersection of commerce and Renaissance art that his students still talk about it, apparently.
"I'm sure there's someone else who can carry that torch," I reply, perching on the edge of his desk.
"None like you…though there is this one sophomore who reminds me of you, he keeps challenging my interpretations of Caravaggio's economic influences."
"Sounds like you need better interpretations."
"Sounds like I need to stop letting you lend my students business books."
I look around his office, at the life he's built here. The collection of student thank-you notes pinned to a cork board. Our wedding photo sits on his desk, right next to one from a karaoke night many chapters ago, both of us younger, slightly drunk, infinitely happy. So in love before we ever admitted it.
"I have news," I say, and watch his expression shift to attentive.
"Good news or champagne news?"
"Good. I think. Scary-good. " I take a deep breath, feeling the weight of the decision I've already made. It wont come as a huge surprise to him, given that we spent months talking and planning for it. But, now that it’s done, I came running to tell him.
"I quit my job today. Officially starting my own firm.” And he’s on his feet and I’m in his arms.
“You’re going to be amazing. Terrifying, incredible, but amazing.” His hands cradle my face, “I’m so proud of you. Tell me everything.”
“You’ve heard it!” And he has, of course he has, because there isn’t a step in this life that we don’t take together.
“I want to hear it again.” So I tell him everything, again . I can focus less on corporate ladder-climbing, and more on actual impact. I climbed the ladder I had been so desperate to, but eventually found that the accounts and people I liked working with most weren't the corporate behemoths, but the smaller ones actually pushing boundaries, not just profit margins.
My younger self would never believe this is where we'd end up. Walking away from the office and the titles I'd fought so hard to reach. But that version of me, the one who thought success only looked one way, didn't know what I know now. That up isn’t the only option for movement. Even the version of me from a few years ago, the one winning pitched battles in boardrooms and chasing promotions like they were oxygen, would be proud.
What's that song? Yo-ho, yo-ho, start-up life for me? Maybe that's just about pirates. Either way, there's something about walking away from the safe path, about choosing the uncertain adventure over the guaranteed success. Will has done it time and time again, each pivot bringing him closer to who he really is. Now it's my turn.
"I have a class in ten minutes. Want to stay and help me scandalize the students with tales of corporate influence on contemporary creative expression?"
“Tempting, but not this time.”
He kisses me quickly, aware of the open door and potentially lurking students, but as usual unbothered and unapologetic about how loudly he loves me.
"Go forth and conquer, darling."
It's funny to be back on campus, funnier still that this is the second time in our lives we've been here simultaneously. The first time, of course we were strangers. Now it's his career, and my re-established access to the libraries because of him.
I pass groups of students lounging on the lawn, their entire futures spread out before them. I remember being them, so certain of my path, never imagining I'd end up here, happier than any of my carefully planned futures could have made me.