Chapter 4 A Minor Setback #2
Plus, I wouldn’t last five minutes at a party. It’s true what those coming-of-age movies say: the socially inept have no place amongst the popularly inclined. A class division exists for a reason.
Professor Hardwin, as usual, ignores my recurring hand. “Mr. Mulligan, care to answer for the class? You do look oh-so entertained by the topic at hand,” he sneers, sarcasm leaking into his hoity-toity tone.
I have no idea who this “Mulligan” classmate of mine is. The seat he’s in right now is a few rows ahead of me, and it’s normally unoccupied. From the back, he’s got a decent head of brown hair, but the slouch in his posture couldn’t be more indicative of his hatred for this class.
“No, thanks,” he says, his gravelly voice deep, nearly inaudible. It unfurls over my brain like a ribbon of velvet, lighting up a roadmap of my synapses and screaming, MAYDAY, MAYDAY. POTENTIAL HOT GUY ALERT.
I lower my arm and suppress a snort. It’s not every day that Mr. Hardwin faces outward resistance.
“Might I remind you that participation is twenty percent of your grade?”
“Might I remind you that if a student isn’t raising their hand, they don’t know the answer?”
“You never raise your hand, so that’s hardly a surprise,” Hardwin scoffs, turning up his aquiline nose in disgust.
Yikes. This is awkward.
Mulligan’s spine straightens, a growl emitting from his chest. “Maybe you’d have a higher participation rate if your students understood anything you’re teaching.”
There’s a collective ooh from the crowd, stoking a mob mentality that’s probably dead set on burning this lecture hall to the ground. Mr. Hardwin’s list of victims could wrap around the entirety of MU. Hell, even I’m not on the guy’s side, and I’m his favorite.
Hardwin glowers like he’s hell-bent on turning his pesky disputant into stone. “Perhaps assistance from Ms. Renault would do you some good, Mr. Mulligan. Or at the very least, she could teach you some manners,” he snaps.
Haha, yeah, that’s—wait, me? I don’t want anything to do with this dick-swinging contest.
Suddenly, every head turns toward me expectantly, and the answer that I had locked—memorized, even—beneath my mental trapdoor has escaped confinement.
The last person to look at me is this Mulligan guy himself, and I kid you not, the next domino effect of events happens in slow motion.
Because, lo and behold, the self-proclaimed martyr of Intro to Literature is none other than the Lamborghini-driving douche who almost punted me into the afterlife.
No fucking way.
Our eyes gridlock for a fleeting second, but this isn’t a look of love, people. No, it’s a silent call for revenge.
I can’t believe he has the audacity to be in the same seven hundred square feet as me.
Purebred loathing sizzles in my bloodstream, washing my vision in red, and I’m as tightly wound as a coil spring fighting inertia. My killer instincts rev full throttle. I’d rather fuck myself with a two-pronged carving fork than offer any sort of aid to this lowlife leech.
Yet, for some unknown reason, even when my gaze sets him ablaze with the force of a thousand fiery suns, he never looks away.
“It’s simple,” I answer patronizingly, reveling in the fact that I’m now the one mortifying him.
“Nick Carraway is the embodiment of irony—which is yet another literary device Fitzgerald uses to comment on the lack of morality in a wealthy and glamorized society. Seediness under an otherwise perfect surface. Our narrator claims that he isn’t judgmental, however, his biases are evident through his internal dialogue and recollection of certain events.
Fitzgerald’s intended usage of this type of narration pushes us, as the readers, to question how we interpret different scenes.
We’re ideally just as lost to the illusion of the American Dream as Gatsby is. ”
How does it feel, dickwad? To have everyone stare at you like you’re some freakshow?
Professor Hardwin puffs his chest out in pride. “Thank you, Ms. Renault. I’m glad someone seems to be paying attention in my class.”
The curtain quickly falls on my one-woman show, and everybody goes back to minding their own business, trying to keep up with the speed at which Hardwin jots extensive notes on the chalkboard.
Even so—after my adrenaline tapers off into nothing but an ignorable buzz—Mulligan is still accosting me with his annoyingly good looks, maintaining eye contact like he’s been sucked into my orbit and has no intention of breaking free anytime soon.
After eight consecutive pages of notetaking, the session ends on a rather dismal note, and I take my time packing up my things since my next class isn’t for another hour.
I tried regulating my breathing and practicing some coping skills after my unsavory eye-fuck with Satan himself, but the hatred and shock from Mulligan’s mere presence kept me on edge the entire time.
He was just…sitting there. Acting natural.
And everybody knows that he turned my body into a putrefied peach.
He’s gonna get off so easily, and…and maybe I hate myself more for letting him. Paying for my hospital bill was subterfuge, not an act of generosity. If we weren’t already halfway through the semester, I’d drop Hardwin’s class.
The bustling of my peers devolves into white noise, and my awareness has seemingly slipped to the backburner.
When I turn around, I end up running into the six-foot-something giant loitering by my seat.
I don’t need to scan his face to confirm his identity—the voice that I so foolishly took to like an old dog to a new bone ambushes me without warning.
“Hey, um. Can we talk?” Mulligan asks, glancing down at me from his intimidating height, the backpack hanging off his shoulder looking disproportionately small against the backdrop of his insane muscle definition.
Breathe, girl. Remember what that one Buzzfeed article said: anger is just misunderstanding with nowhere to go.
I choose to respond calmly. I choose to respond calmly. I choose to respond calmly.
Eye twitching, I bite down on my tongue until I taste iron, resentment congealing in my stomach. “Can’t. Busy.”
I haul my backpack onto my back and attempt to make a beeline for the exit, but I don’t get very far thanks to his freakishly fast reflexes.
His hand shoots out to stall me—making unwanted contact with my wrist—and I full-on growl at him like some rabid animal.
Great. Now I have to wash my arm with bleach.
He does the wise thing and recoils. “Sorry, I—I just want a minute of your time. Please. I know I’m not your favorite person right now, but I could really use your help.”
HAH. He seriously thinks he’s in a position to ask something of me?
Wow. This guy is stupider than I thought.
Though, as much as I despise the idea of entertaining whatever he has to say, there’s an ice-cold smugness thawing inside me, reawakened by his intoxicating desperation.
The ache in my gums foreshadows a hunger that won’t be satiated by half-assed apologies.
I contemplate him. He’s perfected this sad puppy dog look that would tug at any normal, unguarded heart, but I’ve learned from my past mistakes. This bitch isn’t getting into my soft and squishy center without a battering ram.
I cross my arms over my chest. “One minute. Go.”
He turns as white as a sheet, eyes disc wide.
“Uh, fuck. Okay. I’m Knox. We haven’t formally met—well, we did, but it wasn’t really formal?
Anyways, I’m so sorry about hitting you with my car.
Then following you to the hospital. I’m sorry for all of it.
I know there’s nothing I can say to make any of this better, but I’m in a pickle right now.
I’m struggling in this class, like, head-barely-above-water struggling.
If I don’t get my grades up, I won’t be able to play in my next hockey game.
And I need to play. If you tutor me, I’ll pay you whatever you want. ”
Knox pauses to catch his breath, waiting for me to curse his entire bloodline or spit in his face, but surprisingly, I don’t do either. Well, I do, but only in my head.
“How do you even know I tutor?” I ask.
“You’re, um, listed as an employee at the learning center on the school’s website.”
He wants me to tutor him. Does he hear how absurd that sounds? First off, I’m not a miracle worker. Considering this guy thought texting and driving was a smart idea, teaching him advanced curriculum is going to be nearly impossible. Second off, I hate his guts.
Staten, you could use the money. This could be a perfect opportunity for you. That Lamborghini he was driving wasn’t cheap. I bet he’s loaded.
I can barely stand to be in the same room as him. How am I supposed to survive hours of close proximity without strangling him?
Get over yourself. This is a job. It’s not personal. He’s practically begging you to use him, and you have every right. This is a guilt-free pass.
No. I’m not stooping to his level. I can find plenty of other wealthy clients at this school—MU is the most prestigious college in all of Minnesota. He deserves to rot with guilt for what he did.
I think almost dying has given me some twisted desire for chaos, because instead of immediately shutting him down, I play with him like a barn cat with a field mouse, wrapping his puny tail around the curve of my claw.
“Whatever I want?” I purr, looking up at him through my lashes, dredging up the dormant succubus in me that hasn’t seen the light of day since, well, ever. I didn’t even know she existed until that time I was three drinks in and poorly lip-syncing Kesha on a Friday night.
His throat works with a swallow. “Name your price. I can afford it,” he insists.
I don’t doubt that he has enough money. What I doubt is that he can be in the same room as me and remain chivalrous. Hockey players don’t exactly scream “gentleman.”
I bridge the gap between us ever so slightly, tiptoeing my index and middle fingers up the length of his bicep—which turns out to be a bad idea on my end, because his arms are humongous. Jesus. Does this guy live off protein powder?
“Why me?” I ask coyly, licking over my bottom lip. Something warm buds between my thighs when his hungry gaze tracks the motion.
“You—I—you’re the smartest girl in the class,” he stammers, completely drained of any and all machismo. The muscles in his arms tense—writhing underneath my innocent little touch—and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’s negative five seconds away from manhandling me like a ragdoll.
I preen under the praise. I am the smartest girl in the class.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. By a mile.”
Oh, I want him to hurt. So badly.
This time, I rise onto my tiptoes to level the playing field—to which he accommodates me with a bend of his broad frame—and bring my forehead close enough to touch his, the mintiness of my breath pluming over his mouth.
He smells like fresh linen and citrus-tinted dryer sheets.
A scent that I should be impervious to, but is, instead, incomprehensibly irresistible.
Stand your ground, Staten.
There’s a foreign pressure at the crux of my thighs, and I don’t like it one bit.
This is just…a physical reaction. Yeah, the lust in my stomach doesn’t mean shit.
If I touch a conventionally attractive guy, my sexually inexperienced body will rejoice in lieu of breaking my indeliberate abstinence. Sad, I know.
But I’ve gone most of my life DJing the VJ by myself, NPN. No penis necessary. I don’t need some meathead hockey player to overtake yet another aspect of my life.
Stamping out my lecherous thoughts, I drag my thumb down the middle of his bottom lip, delivering the final death blow with all the grace in the goddamn world. “Then I guess it’s a bad thing that I literally give zero fucks about what happens to you.”