Chapter 4
Nick gestures to the chair in front of his desk, the pop star—former pop star?
—tucking her dress beneath her as she takes a seat.
His office is just down the hall from the classroom, and he figured she’d appreciate the privacy.
Now he’s regretting it, along with a handful of other life choices he’s made recently.
Like the Get Psyched banner on his door, which might have made Ramona muffle a laugh.
Whether at him or with him, he’s not sure he wants to know.
“Am I already in trouble?” she asks, mouth lifting into a quarter smile.
He’s only ever seen her on TV or in the media, and that time with Audrey at the Hollywood Bowl, but they were so far away that he was mostly watching her on the jumbotron.
Because in person, Ramona Wilder is a wholly surreal experience.
In fact, he’s not sure any photo or video has ever done her justice.
She looks like a goth princess Rapunzel, dressed in black with all that long brunette hair tumbling down her shoulders, nearly to her waist. Is she wearing extensions?
he wonders, and then promptly dismisses the question for being both ridiculous and irrelevant.
Her huge doe eyes are only a shade lighter than her hair, the sun coming in from his small window streaking them with gold. Her own personal spotlight.
Every detail about her face is quietly captivating, from the lush angle of her cheekbones to the trio of freckles to the left of her mouth. And her posture—somehow she manages to look relaxed and imposing all at once.
Nick’s had plenty of celebrity sightings, which usually amount to someone he’s with gasping, saying, Don’t look, but Jeff Goldblum is sitting right over there. And he’ll look, because that’s the first thing you want to do when someone tells you not to. A shock of recognition. A shrug and moving on.
Here in his office, though?
He’s intimidated as hell.
“No, no,” he says as he takes the seat opposite her, wishing he’d been quick enough to answer her question right away. “Nothing like that. I just…wanted to take this chance to get to know each other.”
“Okay. I’m a Pisces sun, Libra moon, Leo rising.”
He doesn’t know what any of that means. He thought people only had one astrological sign. Is Ramona so famous that she has three?
“I think I’m a Gemini.”
“When’s your birthday?”
“June twelfth.”
She nods, as though deciding that Gemini fits him, despite having known him a grand total of fifty-five minutes.
Her eyes flick around his office, softening for a moment when they land on the picture of Audrey on his desk.
He’s really here talking astrology with his niece’s favorite singer, because life has ceased to make sense.
“So technically you’re Dr. Navarro,” Ramona says, gesturing to his framed diploma from UC Irvine. “And you really prefer people call you by your first name? If I had a PhD, I think I’d insist everyone call me doctor. Even my parents.”
“When I first graduated, I definitely abused the privilege,” he says.
“Signed all my emails ‘Dr. Navarro,’ even introduced myself to new people that way. I think everyone who has a PhD is legally required to go through that obnoxious stage. But now it feels too formal. Not the atmosphere I want to have in my classroom.” A lift of one eyebrow. “You thinking of going for a PhD?”
“Sure. Why not.”
There’s something about the dismissive way she says it that grates at him. She’s been softly smirking this whole time, like the whole concept of an educator wanting a few minutes alone with her is some kind of joke.
Nick collects himself again. Takes a deep breath that hopefully doesn’t look like he’s struggling for air.
Shoves the sleeves of his blue button-down up to his forearms. Exposing that extra skin isn’t enough to cool the rising heat in his chest, because evidently having another person in his office makes it hotter than one of Dante’s circles of hell.
Whichever one is meant for professors who can’t keep from blushing around their famous students.
He doesn’t get rattled like this. Serious is probably the last word his students would use to describe him, and he likes it that way. Even that scrape on his car didn’t draw more than a sigh and a quick call to his insurance company.
It’s rare for someone to get on his bad side this early. In fact, he’s not even sure he has a bad side, so maybe he’s approaching this all wrong.
During class, he was on. It seemed like such a bright group, all of them inquisitive and charming in their mix of self-confidence and uncertainty. A couple know-it-alls, like that kid Trevor, but he’ll work on that. He wishes he could bask in that first-day feeling a bit more.
Ramona is just a student. A little older than the others, but a student nonetheless.
A student who has multiple Grammys and a house probably worth more than the GDP of Belgium.
He tries to project the kind of sunniness he’s known for. Worries his smile feels more like a grimace. “I’m sure you know that your situation is unique.”
She’s been surveying his office again like she’s in some Museum of the Less Economically Gifted. The alphabetized shelves of psychology textbooks. A framed series of psychoanalysis-themed New Yorker cartoons next to a Clippers pennant. Maybe he needs to find a new team.
When she speaks, her voice is all innocence. An index finger taps against her full lower lip. “It is? Why?”
Nick’s not sure what to make of that. If she’s joking around with him, or if she genuinely doesn’t know. “I don’t usually find my students verbally accosting each other on the first day of class.”
The weight of her full attention directed back at him is enough to fry his neuroreceptors.
His words from class echo in his brain.
Ms. Wilder.
In his seven years of teaching, he has never called a student by their last name. But somehow Ramona felt as though it might convey too much intimacy, too soon, the way some people talk about their favorite celebrities like they’re close friends.
Or maybe he was afraid of the way her name would taste in his mouth.
“First-day nerves,” Ramona says, brushing this off with a flip of her glossy hair over one shoulder. “Anxiety makes people do strange things.”
He still can’t shake the feeling that they’re both skirting the real issue.
Before he started class today, he thought he might take her aside afterward, but observing that clash with Trevor solidified that he needed to.
To borrow a phrase from his ex-wife’s favorite reality shows, the ones he inwardly rolled his eyes at before getting just as invested as she was: he wants to make sure she’s here for the right reasons.
Ramona Wilder has enough money to buy a few campus buildings and name them after herself, so why is she slumming it in Behavior and the Brain? Did she just close her eyes and drag a finger down the list of course offerings?
He lays his arms on top of his desk, clasps his hands together. “Look. Can I level with you?”
“Please.”
“This class, this subject—they mean a lot to me. This was the first course I designed as a professor a few years back,” he says.
“I’m worried you might be distracting to the other students.
The ones who’ve spent their entire high school careers focused on getting into a good school, the ones on scholarship who need to make certain grades, the ones working multiple jobs to afford tuition.
The ones who’ve been taking it seriously since before they even got here. ”
“And you don’t think I’m taking it seriously.”
That’s precisely what he thinks. Even before her glib PhD comment. “Well, why are you here?”
She just blinks at him. “To get an education? I thought that was the whole point.”
“It doesn’t seem like you need a degree to sing your songs.”
The way Ramona winces at this makes him immediately regret his words. He didn’t mean to sound condescending. Audrey adores her music, and that’s enough for him to see the value in it.
He wants to believe she’s being genuine, but then again, how many times has Daniel Day-Lewis retired? The level of fame she has—she can’t just enroll at UCLA and expect not to cause a commotion.
“I guess I wondered,” he continues, “if this could all be inspiration for your next album. A publicity stunt.”
“Then I’d better call off the reporters waiting outside your office.” A muscle twitches in her jaw. All the softness is gone from her face now, her features sharp. “What do you want me to say, that I woke up one day, realized I was fucking stupid, and that I needed to remedy that immediately?”
No, she’s not fucking stupid. That much is clear.
“Obviously not—”
She springs to her feet, the swift motion cutting him off.
As though she’s the one in command of this conversation, even in his office in his building at the university he’s been teaching at for seven years.
“I retired from music six months ago,” she continues, her breaths coming faster.
“I never had the chance to go to school, and I’m sure to most people that would seem like a gift, but I used to beg my parents to let me take classes.
The answer was always no—they didn’t fit into my schedule, even though I would have happily rearranged it.
I never really had a choice, and then when I was finally old enough to make those choices, it felt like it was too late. ”
Her eyes are flint as she leans in, splaying her hands on his desk.
That gaze pins him in place. Makes it impossible to look away, and truthfully he might be a little scared to.
From this vantage point, she’s towering over him, giving herself the upper hand.
She’s so close, he can smell what must be her perfume, something dark and sweet.
A delicate frustration of a scent that suits her perfectly.