Chapter 1 #2
Her knee starts to bounce, the heel of her tall black patent leather pump hitting the rung of her barstool once before it hooks around the metal. She downs the last of her drink, she lets out a shaky breath, her mind reeling back a few hours ago . . .
The heel of her simple nude pump is muffled by the industrial patterned carpet square that lines the hallway. She folds her hands in her lap and shifts against the hard plastic seat of the chair just outside the office door.
One way or the other, her life is about to change forever and it’s all in the hands of the people who sat in judgment of her for the last hour as she answered question after question, batting away their attempts to find a weakness in her defense.
And now all she can do is wait.
She knows she did her best and if there’s any kind of justice in the world, they’ll rule in her favor.
But there’s still that niggling doubt in her gut, the doubt that has her practically drilling a hole in the carpet beneath her feet.
The door opens, any potential squeak dulled by the several decades of ecru-colored paint that always seems to line the walls of any academic institution.
She stands and smooths the fabric of her skirt suit down, fighting against the roiling in her stomach, praying it holds off at least until she can get somewhere private.
The older woman that emerges sends her a tight smile, one she can’t interpret despite how long they’ve known each other.
Dr Miranda Wilkins, PhD in Information Science, her doctoral advisor and one of academia’s most highly renowned experts on media literacy.
They met at the start of her program and Bianca was immediately intimidated as all hell and absolutely in awe of the woman who’d published the only research she respected in their mutual field of study.
It’s why she came to USC and why she never regretted that decision, no matter how hard Miranda pushed her.
“If you’ll step back inside, we just have one final question left for you, Dr Dimitriou,” Miranda trails off, a corner of her mouth lifting into a slight smirk.
Bianca focuses her attention on her advisor, trying to ignore the dread that’s in her chest after hearing they have another question.
She tries to conjure up the response to their final inquiry from a few minutes ago – a four-parter that truly helped her sum up the entirety of her research for the panel, about the philosophical shift necessary in information literacy and digital fluency instruction that will hopefully serve her future students for years to come, everything she spent the last five years developing, finally coalescing.
But then it clicks.
Miranda said . . . she said . . . Dr Dimitriou.
Doctor.
As in . . .
. . . she passed.
The smirk on Miranda’s face grows into a full-fledged smile as the woman who guided her through the last years of her education, who kindly tortured her and helped shape her research, and the voice of reason when stress would pile up and it all became too much, let her know that it’s over. She did it.
When she moves back into the room, the rest of the panel is all smiles as well.
“Our last question,” Miranda says, “is how will you be celebrating tonight?”
After four handshakes, one only slightly awkward hug with Miranda and a quick invite to the party she planned, she’s out the door, into the halls of the building she practically lived in for the last half of her twenties.
Done.
She’s done.
Dr Bianca Dimitriou, PhD.
She’s a doctor.
And now it’s time to celebrate.
She’s been running on adrenaline for weeks and she needs it to hold her upright for another few hours because now that the defense is over, exhaustion is starting to settle in.
She barely remembers the walk back to her apartment, winding her way through the streets through sheer force of habit.
It’s not student housing, but it’s on the fringes of that neighborhood, a sort of ring around campus that no one unaffiliated with the university would want to live in, with the swarms of undergrads flooding the streets every night for nine months out of the year.
It’s not the worst place she’s ever lived – that honor belongs to the barely 100-square-foot apartment she squeezed herself into back in New York while she did her master’s.
She can’t complain really. Her place is neat and clean and safe, even though it’s been way quieter in the last couple of weeks.
Her roommate, Julie, a musician, left for an opening-act gig on a national tour after years of struggling to make it.
While it’s been a little bit lonely, it did give her the silence needed to prep for her defense.
And Julie’ll be back soon, at least for a few days, when the tour swings through California.
Until then, she has Amelia, who is waiting for her at the door, rolled onto her back, soft white belly exposed, having clearly heard her coming down the hallway and wanting some immediate scratches to make up for her absence in the last few hours.
“Meals, I passed,” she squeals to the cat, who lets out a soft purr in return.
Sitting right there in the entry, her back against the door, she lets the cat curl up into her lap while she strokes gently against her fur, up under her chin and then back down again, over and over, a slow lulling motion.
Bianca’s head lolls back against the door and the moment catches up with her as she falls asleep.
When she wakes up, it’s all at once. A huge gasping breath and immediate freak-out.
Shit.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
The muted light coming in from the windows on the other side of her living room immediately tells her that she slept too long.
Against the fucking door.
God, she really was exhausted.
Her neck protests as she lifts her head, but she doesn’t have time to worry about that.
Her party starts soon.
Leaping to her feet and sending Amelia scampering off in the opposite direction with a protesting yowl, Bianca flies into her bedroom, kicking off the sensible nude kitten heels and chucking off the blazer and pencil skirt combination that she only ever wears when she needs to look professional, like on the first day of the semester, to scare the undergrads into thinking the librarian takes her job seriously and that they shouldn’t hook up in the stacks.
Not that it stops them for very long.
She’s lost count of the number of kids she’s walked in on in what they assume is a little used part of the collection, barely wearing any clothes.
Clothes . . . she needs clothes.
Jeans. Jeans are good. Jeans will be fine if she can pair them with the right top. She catches her reflection in the mirror. The one she’s wearing now works well enough, a silky red tank that ruched perfectly inside the neckline of her blazer. Now just heels . . . somewhere there are heels.
She falls to her knees in front of her closet and digs through the unmitigated mess at the bottom, feeling around until her hand emerges with one black patent leather pump with five-inch heels that she hasn’t had a chance to rock for a long-ass time.
Well, tonight’s the night.
If she can just find the shoe’s mate.
She takes a deep breath and reaches in again, hoping for a miracle.
She earned her fucking doctorate today. The fashion gods owe her a win.
When her hand emerges from the clutter again, her fingers wrapped around the shoe’s twin, something loosens in her chest.
She’s got shoes.
She’s got an outfit.
Her dark brown hair is decent, second-day curls that aren’t completely flat or frizzy or greasy, so just . . . makeup and she maybe won’t be late to her own damn party.
A few swipes of mascara, an attempt at winged eyeliner that quickly becomes a not-so-intentional smoky eye, plus some lipliner and a shiny gloss and yeah, okay, she looks good.
The heels, the jeans, the camisole, it all looks good.
“Not bad for thirty,” she mutters to herself, turning around in the mirror stuck to the back of her closet door. The bumps and curves that kind of haunted her through her teens and twenties now make her smile in satisfaction.
There’s something to be said for being comfortable in her own skin after all this time, even though despite the awesomeness of the day so far, the reality looming ahead of her is .
. . nope. No. She will not think about that tonight.
No job-hunt stress, no career is dead in the water before it even begins worries.
Tonight is for celebrating only.
Because everyone is going to be there.
One of the bonuses of coming back home to finish up school is that she’s been surrounded by family and friends for the five-year slog that was her degree program.
She’s been around for every major event in their lives and now that she’s finally done, she gets to have them all there with her tonight for her own big moment.
Her sister, her best friends from childhood and high school and summer camp and undergrad, all under one roof to toast that massively expensive piece of paper she just earned.
Making sure to fill Amelia’s bowls, and with one final glance into the mirror, she sets out into the night.
Lorraine’s is only a couple blocks away and, like her apartment, far enough away from campus that it doesn’t draw the undergrads with their fakes and inability to know their limits. Not that Lorraine would let them in anyway.
Bianca’s been coming here since she moved back to LA, to this dive bar that doesn’t pretend to be anything but what it is, owned by the sweetest-looking old lady you’ve ever seen, right down to the cropped silver bob and kind blue eyes, until she opens her mouth and pure fire comes out.
Lorraine promised her the back room tonight and the first round is on her – the least she could do, she said, after Bianca helped her grandkid with his college apps and tutored him all through his four years of undergrad at UCLA.