Chapter 8
8
The test hadn’t been that hard. A couple of the questions were worded so cleverly that several answers presented as correct when there hadn’t been an instruction to select all that applied.
Leave it to Zach to pull a couple of trick questions to keep anyone from getting a perfect score. Still, she’d covertly watched the exchange between him and the young woman who had entered the room. A teaching assistant if the conversation was indicative of the exchange. He’d been encouraging and supportive.
The fact he’d been one of those things, let alone both, had come as a bit of a shock.
Not that he wasn’t capable, but he’d been so careful to keep his distance from students, she’d imagined his interactions with all of them would be more standoffish. Cold even. A bit of an automaton.
A knock on the door, made her shake her head. Did the man know when she thought of him? Did the act summon him like some scholastic demon?
Sure enough, when she answered the door, he waited there with the expression of a man who had come to depart hard truths and bad news.
“What have I done wrong now?”
Zach frowned. “What makes you think you did anything wrong?”
Tovah pointed at his face. “You’re frowning at me again.”
He stepped inside and bent down to pick up Trixie who had gravitated to him. “Hey, pretty girl.”
The cat purred and butted his chin with her head.
Tovah shut the door and headed back to the kitchen. She hadn’t made it far enough to put her snack together. “You want a bit of a nosh?”
“I could eat.” He looked up at her over Trixie’s ears. “What did you have in mind?”
Heat seared her insides at the loaded question paired with the smoldering blue of his eyes. “Probably nothing as interesting as you’re implying.”
A dark smile widened his mouth. “Everything with you has proven interesting.”
“Yes, well…I have that knack.” Flustered, but trying not to show it, Tovah turned to the fridge and started pulling out cheese, meats, apples, then she opened the cabinet and got some crackers. In a few short minutes she had a charcuterie board thrown together. Nothing fancy, but filling.
“What do you want to wash it down with?”
“Something wet.”
She poured him a glass of lemonade. “Are you trying to be provocative for some reason?”
Zach shook his head, giving her a teasing smile. “No reason.”
“I disagree. There’s a reason for everything.” She picked up a piece of cheese and a slice of pepperoni and rolled them together, then pointed at him with it. “You are a very deliberate person. Nothing you do is ever without fully realizing the practical and tactical sides of the situation.”
He blinked a few times. “How did you come by that assumption?”
“People assume my quietness means inattention. That’s their first mistake.” She pointed at her forehead. “I’m always taking it all in. I saw how you were with that TA tonight.”
A surprised laugh burst out of him. “How did you know she’s a TA? She might have been my latest girlfriend.”
True. She might be both. A TA was a different class of student.
“Educated guess.”
“I’ll allow it.” He popped a gherkin into his mouth and chewed. When he swallowed, he canted his head. “How was I with her that was different?”
“I didn’t mention anything about it being different. I said it was deliberate.”
“I’ll allow that as well.” He picked up a piece of cheese. “Victoria is going to be a hell of a professor herself one day. She just needs to build up her confidence in the classroom. I feel for Jim having a family emergency, but she needs this opportunity to shine. Not hide behind me. She’s perfectly capable of teaching a one-hundred level class.”
“You’re a good mentor. She’s lucky to have you.” The compliment was given with the utmost sincerity.
“I wouldn’t go that far, but I’m willing to do what I can to help.”
Tovah wrestled with a question she died to know the answer to. She had heard Eloisa during break tell her friends, she’d slipped a note to Zach when she’d turned in her test.
Zach’s hand on hers brought her head up. “What’s wrong?”
Tovah bit her lip. “I promised myself at the beginning of the semester, I wasn’t going to pry or tattle or whatever. That I was going to stay in my lane and keep my head down, but I want you to be aware of a situation that might be getting a little bit out of control.”
Zach’s brows went up. “Ah. You saw the note.”
Tovah shook her head. “No. I heard her tell her friends she’d given it to you. I will also say that she’s been coming up with plans every week to put herself directly in your line of sights.”
“It won’t do her any good.”
“Maybe not, but you need to let someone above you know that this harassment is happening. Get ahead of it.”
Zach shook his head. “This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten a love note and I doubt it will be the last. I usually destroy them. Burn them. I don’t remark or even act as if they are a thing. I’m not going to act on them, so what’s the point. It will only lead to retaliation.”
“What it might lead to is your word against hers.” Tovah spread her hands on the counter. Nervous tension coiled in her gut for him. “At least think about it.”
“Instead of talking about me, why don’t we discuss your date with Dirx.”
A warm smile filled her face. “He’s such a nice guy. We had a good time. Great conversation.”
Zach raised a brow as if she wasn’t telling him the entire truth. “Why did I see him in Gus’s on Sunday night nursing a couple shots with a face long enough to land in his drink?”
“Oh,” she said feeling a tad guilty. “I knew he seemed upset when we left the park, but I had hoped he felt better by the time he got home.”
“What did you say to him?”
“It wasn’t what I said to him, it was a natural progression of the conversation.” Tovah flapped a hand at him in annoyance. “Besides, I’m not going to discuss it with you. If he wanted you to know, he’d have told you. I am, if nothing else, a perfect confidante. I’m Vegas when it comes to holding onto other people’s secrets.”
“So, it’s a secret?”
“Not in so many words, but I take what he discussed was private.” Growing up, her confidante had been Rose. How was she to repay such a kindness but to conduct herself in the same manner, by holding onto secrets.
Zach’s face cleared and understanding dawned. “Damn.”
“Yes.”
“He’ll be out of commission for weeks.”
All right, so maybe Dirx had confided in Zach about that horrible long-ago love gone wrong. Still, Tovah wasn’t going to acknowledge it one way or the other.
“You need to fix this, Tovah.”
Hand to her chest she shook her head. “Not me. He needs to fix it himself. I’ll listen to him and be a shoulder to lean on and give advice if he asks, but I draw the line at fixing anyone—especially if there isn’t anything wrong to begin with.”
That small frown returned to Zach’s rugged face. “And me? Would you help fix me?”
Slowly, and with great feeling like a rock stuck in her gullet, she shook her head. “There’s nothing to fix, Zach.”
There’s nothing to fix.
Tovah’s quiet words haunted him into the night and for the next few days. How was she so confident that he was a solid and reliable individual? His scars ran so deep most people didn’t see them. Only himself.
Overcompensation. That’s what one of his women had told him before she split. Told him that his rigid attitude and wild side had been overcompensation for feelings of inadequacy. Sounded like a bunch of bullshit to him. Why would he want to work so hard to fool himself? At the end of the day, he still had to live in the same head.
His style was more about outrunning the past. Of beating it into submission and making it his bitch. That’s why he never dated anyone who didn’t understand that he was the good enough for now guy and not the permanent situation. No way in hell was he going to bring his disfunction into a long-term relationship.
A vision of Tovah filled his head, making him ache in places where he’d never felt anything before. Emotions he believed long since dead woke with the mere thought of her.
However, Tovah hadn’t seen the core of him. All the ugly and horrible things in his past. The ones he wanted to shake out like nuts from a tree.
A knock on his office door sounded and he looked up. Victoria stood there biting her lip and looking unsure.
“Hey.” He waved her in and cleared some periodicals and test papers from the chair by his desk. “What can I do for you?”
“Until Dr. Burns returns, if any of his students have questions, can I refer them to you?”
“Yes, of course. If they have questions on understanding the material the can come find me during office hours.”
Victoria blew out a breath. “Thank you. I just didn’t feel comfortable explaining anything that they might have wrong.”
“Why would you assume you don’t have the answers? You know the material.” The fact this bright young woman couldn’t see her worth bothered him. Confidence came with time and experience. At least that was his take on it. Then again, some people never overcame crippling low self-esteem.
Instead of a real answer she lifted a shoulder. “I don’t have that knack of talking to people.”
“You’re talking to me.”
“Yes, but I’ve known you for a few years. You’re cool and don’t judge me.”
“Of course, I don’t.”
She smiled as if that proved her point.
All right, he thought he understood what was happening here. “While you’re at the front of that class, you’re the professor. Okay? Don’t let people younger and less experienced in college life intimidate you because they might have been the in-crowd back in high school. That’s a bullshit game to play in your own head.”
She held her computer over her chest in a stranglehold. “You think that’s what I’m doing?”
“I don’t know. Is it?”
Victoria scrunched up her face and looked away as if considering it. “I might be. I’ll think about it.”
“While you’re doing that, consider this as well: you are there to relay information not to make friends. If the class likes you, fine. If they don’t, their loss. It’s really immaterial to their GPA.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’ve had professors I hated, and I dropped their class because I didn’t think I could hack it.”
“Huh.” Zach grunted and leaned back in his chair considering her point of view. It had never once crossed his mind to drop a class because he didn’t like the professor or the teaching style. If he didn’t get on with one, he’d worked extra hard to prove to both of them he was capable.
“You think that was bad?”
He shook his head. “Every individual has to decide what’s best for their education. Not everyone learns the same. If it helped you in the long run to drop, what difference does it make what I think?”
“Because I respect your opinion.”
“But that’s just it. It’s my opinion. My own outlook. What worked for me…” he lifted his hands. “Well, let’s just say my personality would take it as a personal affront to quit.”
Victoria rose. “You need to find a way to bottle and sell your confidence. You’d make millions.”
He laughed. “Maybe.”
She thanked him for seeing students for Dr. Burns then left his office.
Who was he to give anyone advice? He’d gone to do battle with Tovah about fucking with Dirx’s head and ended up getting his own fucked with. How was that exuding confidence? That was folding like a little bitch because some hot chick thought he was a good guy.
Damn, she didn’t even know him a little bit.
Like any person, he was the hero in his own story. No matter if others didn’t see him that way.
At least he had a few good qualities. Not because they’d been instilled in him from the cradle, but because if he hadn’t, he would have met the grave too soon.
He had made a conscious decision years ago to try to overcome his nature. The one he’d been born with and followed him like a reluctant shadow.
The destructive path of his youth had turned into an open highway that had brought him here. Struggle, hardship, determination. They had been his mentors.
They may have molded him, but he tried hard not to let them have any bearing on the present or future.
And yet…
Nope. Not going down that road. When he let his thoughts get muddled with the past, he often went into a downward spiral that took weeks to get over.
Instead of dwelling on the past, he shuffled the papers on his desk and found the tests he needed to grade. At least they were multiple choice. No essays on these that might take time and energy. Because he didn’t have it to give.
Tovah’s paper was about midway through the pile. He smiled at a few of the notes she wrote on the questions, challenging and admonishing him.
Poorly worded.
He used a red pen to make a smiley face and wrote you still got it right.
All the students passed, though some of them with a higher percentage than others. He wasn’t a hard instructor by any stretch, he was simply thorough.
Tovah made a perfect score.
Of course, she did.
He doubted she’d have settled for anything less.