Chapter 7 Rhys
Rhys
Jude is lying on his stomach in the nest, barefoot, scrolling his phone, wearing my flannel over boxers and nothing else.
The flannel is too big on him, the sleeves hanging past his wrists, the hem riding up to show a strip of golden-brown thigh.
He looks like a painting of something I don't deserve.
"You're staring," he says without looking up.
"You're in my shirt."
"Our shirt. I live here now. Everything in this apartment is communally owned." He rolls onto his back and grins at me upside down. "You look fancy. Is that a new button-down?"
"It's the same button-down I always wear to department things."
"You should unbutton it more. Show some chest. Let Albright know what she's working with."
"I'm not trying to seduce my department head, Jude."
"Why not? It would make faculty meetings more interesting." He stretches, arms above his head, and the flannel rides up past his stomach. He knows exactly what he's doing. He always knows exactly what he's doing.
I lean down and kiss him. He hums against my mouth, his fingers catching the collar of my shirt, and for a second I consider skipping the mixer entirely. Staying here. Crawling into the nest and burying my face in his neck and letting the department fend for itself.
"Go," he says, pushing me gently. "Be professional. Shake hands. Talk about carbon or whatever."
"Environmental policy."
"Same thing." He picks his phone back up. "I'll order food. You want pad thai?"
"Get whatever you want."
"I always get whatever I want. That's my whole personality."
I grab my jacket, my keys, my wallet. At the door I look back.
He's already burrowed into the pillows, his hair fanned across the one that smells most like me.
The nest has grown since he built it. New blankets, a throw pillow he stole from his apartment, a candle on the nightstand that he swears "sets the vibe.
" His stuff mixed with mine, layered and tangled, the whole room smelling like both of us so thoroughly that I can't tell where he ends and I begin.
This is what we've built. Quietly, carefully, in stolen hours between his classes and my sections.
I go to campus, I teach, I grade, I'm professional.
I come home and he's here, or he shows up later with food and opinions, and the door closes and we're just us.
No titles, no power dynamics. Just mates in a nest that smells right.
"Hurry back," he says, not looking up. "The nest gets cold without you."
I close the door behind me and drive to the department mixer already counting the minutes until I can come home. Which is a problem, because this is exactly the kind of thing I'm not supposed to feel about a student in my section.
The mixer is at Dr. Chester's house. Wine, cheese, the usual crowd of faculty pretending they don't have favorites among the grad students.
I end up near the kitchen island talking carbon policy journal submissions with two professors who keep interrupting each other.
Marcus from my cohort tells a joke I barely hear.
I nod at the right moment, take a sip of wine, and check my phone under the counter.
A photo from Jude: the Thai food spread across the coffee table, two green curries, a message that says got extra rice because I love you and also because I'm starving.
He's never said that before. The "I love you" buried in a text about rice, casual, like it's obvious, like it doesn't rearrange every molecule in my body.
I'm smiling at my phone like a fool when someone says my name.
"Calder."
Dr. Albright is standing next to me at the kitchen island.
She's holding a glass of red wine and she's got that look, the one that makes grad students confess to plagiarism they didn't commit.
She's mid-fifties, sharp, built the environmental policy program from the ground up.
I respect her enormously. She also terrifies me.
"Dr. Albright. Good to see you."
"Enjoying the evening?"
"Always nice to catch up with the department."
She nods. Takes a sip of wine. Her eyes flick down to my phone, which I've already locked, but the gesture feels deliberate. Everything about Albright feels deliberate.
"I've been meaning to check in with you," she says. "Your section evaluations are strong this semester. Students seem engaged."
"Thank you. I've been—"
"You seem very invested in your Gen Ed students' progress." She pauses. The pause is the weapon. "Particularly Mr. Park. I hear he's been coming to your office hours quite regularly."
My whole body goes still.
"He came once," I say. My voice is steady, which is a miracle. "He had questions about his response paper."
"Of course." She smiles. It doesn't reach her eyes. "I only mention it because people notice these things, Calder. You have a promising career ahead of you. I'd hate to see anything complicate that."
She pats my arm, takes her wine, and walks over to chat with Dr. Chester. The whole exchange lasts maybe ninety seconds. It feels like being put through a shredder.
I leave twenty minutes later. I don't remember driving home. I don't remember parking, climbing the stairs, unlocking the door. I sit on the couch in my button-down and stare at the wall and replay those sentences on a loop.
People notice these things.
I'd hate to see anything complicate that.
The apartment smells like Jude. Like us.
His mug is in the dish rack. His phone charger is plugged in by the bed.
His shampoo is in my shower. And somewhere in this building, Dr. Albright's polite, surgical warning is still echoing in my skull, and I'm doing the math on how many things I'm about to lose.
My phone sits on the coffee table. I should call someone.
My brother, my parents, one of my grad school friends.
Someone who can think clearly, because right now my brain is stuck on Albright's smile and the phrase people notice and the very specific image of losing my position, my references, my program, everything I've spent three years building.
And then the lock turns. The front door opens. Jude walks in carrying the Thai food, wearing my flannel, and the sight of him makes my chest crack open and my stomach drop at the same time.
"Hey." He kicks off his shoes and sets the bags on the counter. "I got the green curry because the last time you ordered pad thai you ate half of mine anyway, so I just got two curries and—" He turns around. Sees my face. Stops. "What happened?"
I should ease into this. I should be careful and thoughtful and choose my words.
"Albright knows," I say.
The color leaves his face. "Knows what?"
"About us. Or she suspects. She cornered me at the mixer. She mentioned you specifically, by name. Said people notice."
He sets the food down slowly. "Okay. That's not— she didn't say she knows for sure. She could just be—"
"Jude, she cornered me at a party to say it to my face. That's not small talk. That's a warning."
He's quiet for a moment. I can see him working through it, figuring out how scared he should be. "So what do we do?"
"I submitted a transfer request today. To move you to another TA's section."
"You what?"
"Before the party. I was already worried, and then she— I just filed it. You'll be in Hartley's section starting next week."
His jaw tightens but he nods, once, short. "Okay. That's annoying but fine. That's a practical thing. What else?"
What else. Because he can see it on my face. He always can.
"I think we need to pull back," I say. "Until the semester ends.
We stop being visible together. You don't come to my office, I don't come to yours.
We don't walk together on campus. No texting during the day.
And maybe..." I swallow. "Maybe you don't stay here during the week.
Just weekends. Until the semester's over. "
The apartment goes very quiet.
"Six weeks," he says.
"Six weeks. Then the semester ends and I'm not your TA anymore and none of this applies."
"Six weeks of what, exactly? Pretending we don't know each other? Pretending this doesn't exist?" He touches the bite on his neck. The one I put there. The one that's healed into a permanent scar that marks him as mine. "How am I supposed to pretend this doesn't exist?"
"It's not about pretending. It's about being smart. If Albright reports this, I could lose my position. I could lose my references, my shot at the PhD program, everything."
"Right. Everything." He nods, slow and deliberate. "So when you say everything, you mean your career. Not me. Not the nest. Not the key you put in my hand and the thing you said about this being our home."
"That's not fair—"
"What's not fair is you making a decision about us without talking to me first. You filed a transfer. You decided we need to go dark. And you did all of that before I walked through that door. You weren't asking me, Rhys. You were informing me."
"So your solution is to hide me," he says.
"That's not what I'm—"
"That's exactly what you're doing." His voice has gone flat.
Not angry. Worse than angry. Flat and cold and measured, which on Jude sounds wrong in a way that makes my stomach lurch.
Jude is loud. Jude is bright and sharp and too much on purpose.
This quiet, controlled thing is something else.
This is the wall going up. "You're telling me to be invisible.
You're telling me not to come to our apartment.
The one you gave me a key to. The one where I built us a nest."
"Jude—"