13. Calliope
Calliope
By the sixth week, the humanities building has learned my habits well enough to stop pretending I’m leaving at a reasonable hour.
The motion lights in the east hall click off at seven-fifteen.
The radiator under my office window starts hissing at seven-thirty, even though the room never gets warmer.
The janitor with the silver braid comes through at eight and gives my open door a look that has slowly moved from curiosity to concern, and every night I tell her I’m almost done with the same tone I use on students who promise their drafts only need one more pass.
Tonight, almost done means a stack of midterm response papers, three student emails I’ve rewritten too many times, and a housing application open on my laptop with the cursor blinking in the emergency-contact field.
I should close it. I should go back to the hotel, eat the leftover soup in the mini fridge, and stop pretending I can outwork a form that only wants one name.
Instead, I sit with my scarf too tight around my throat and my shoulder aching under layers of wool, trying to decide whether a blank box can accuse a person of anything.
My phone sits facedown beside the keyboard, carrying the old thread I’ve stopped opening at night. I know the words are still there without checking. Sloane’s name, the bond-removal sentence, and the silence after it lived in my pocket whether I look or not.
The hotel gave me three extensions after the university block ended.
First, because the apartment I applied for needed another inspection.
Then because the inspection found something in the electrical panel.
Then because the landlord decided to “pause new leases for maintenance review,” which is a beautiful phrase if a person enjoys being evicted from a place she hasn’t moved into yet.
The front desk manager has been kind enough to act like my recurring panic at the counter is a scheduling inconvenience rather than a slow public breakdown, but kindness doesn’t make the rate cheaper, and it doesn’t make the room feel any more like mine.
I type Mara’s name into the emergency-contact field, stare at it, then delete it.
She transferred her campus email last week, and we’ve talked twice since then, both times too carefully, as if the legal silence from Briarwick can hear us through the phone.
She would let me use her name. She’d probably be furious if she knew I hadn’t.
That doesn’t make the decision easier. Putting someone down as the person to call when my body finally gives up feels like handing them a map to the wreckage.
The ache in my shoulder sharpens enough to steal my breath.
I press my palm over the bite through my sweater and hold still until the first hot pulse passes.
The medication bottle is in my bag now because keeping it in the desk drawer felt too much like admitting this office has become part shelter, part sickroom.
I take one dry before reaching for the water bottle beside my laptop, and the pill scrapes my throat on the way down.
A knock lands on the door frame, soft enough that my body should not react the way it does. My hands still jerk, one palm catching the edge of the laptop. The housing application shifts on-screen, and my breath goes thin before I look up.
Dash stands in the doorway with his coat over one arm and a leather folder tucked against his side.
He has stopped asking whether he's interrupting.
He knows I will say no even when the answer is yes, and I know he has started reading my office instead of trusting my mouth.
His gaze moves over the open housing application, the pill bottle half-hidden in my bag, the untouched soup container from lunch, and the stack of papers arranged too neatly for someone who is actually working.
“You’re here late again,” he says, stepping only as far as the threshold. He smells faintly of cold air, bergamot, and sandalwood, the scent muted by distance and the open hall. My body takes it in anyway, traitorous and relieved before my mind catches up.
“I’m almost done.” I close the housing tab too quickly, which is probably worse than leaving it open. “I lost track of time.”
“You’ve lost track of time four nights this week.” Dash’s voice stays quiet, but there is no softness in it that lets me wriggle away. “The hotel called the department office this afternoon. They said your campus rate ends Friday and asked whether we were approving another extension.”
My stomach drops in a slow, humiliating wave. I look at the papers on my desk as if one of them can provide a professional answer. “They weren’t supposed to call you. I told them I’d handle it.”
“They called the office number attached to the original placement. Bethany routed it to me because she didn’t know whether it was financial or housing.
” He comes into the office then, stopping on the other side of the desk with enough space between us that my lungs keep working.
“Calliope, do you have somewhere lined up?”
“I had somewhere lined up.” The correction leaves me too quickly, defensive and useless. “The apartment fell through. Or got delayed. The phrasing keeps changing depending on who emails me. It’s fine for a few more days. I can find another place.”
Dash doesn't look convinced. He also doesn't look surprised, which somehow makes my throat tighten more. “Have you been staying late because you don’t want to go back to the hotel?”
I reach for the pen beside my keyboard and move it two inches to the left. It is a ridiculous thing to do, but it keeps my hand busy. “The hotel is nice.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
The sentence isn't sharp, and maybe that’s why it lands.
I press my lips together and look past him to the hall, where the lights have gone dim over the bulletin board full of flyers for lectures and student groups and a faculty book club I still haven’t been brave enough to attend.
“It’s temporary,” I say. “Everything there is temporary. The coffee cups, the towels, the people at the desk knowing my name because they have to look it up. I keep thinking if I don’t put anything away, leaving won’t feel like losing another place. ”
Dash sets the leather folder on the corner of my desk. He doesn’t open it. “I have somewhere you can stay.”
My first answer is no, even though I don’t say it. It moves through my body with enough force that I sit back in the chair, putting more space between us as if he has reached for me. Dash sees the movement. He steps back instead of forward, and the quiet correction makes my eyes burn.
“It’s a lockoff at my house,” he says. “Separate entrance, separate key, small kitchen, full bath. The internal door locks from your side. It used to be my sister’s place before she moved closer to her job, and it’s been empty for over a year.
You can stay there until you find something that works, and we can write up a rental agreement if that makes it easier. ”
“I can’t stay at your house.” I push to my feet because sitting makes the room feel smaller.
My chair rolls back and taps the wall behind me.
“You’re my department chair, and I’m already the person with the strange hiring file and the active-investigation shadow and the hotel problem.
I can’t add living in your lockoff to the list of things people can whisper about. ”
“Then we don’t give them much to whisper about.
” Dash keeps his hands visible at his sides, his voice steady.
“You pay rent. You have your own entrance. We document it with HR if you want it formal, or we keep it as a private short-term rental if legal says that’s cleaner.
I’ll ask Zora in faculty affairs which route protects you better. ”
“Dash, I’m sorry.” The words come out before I can stop them, fast and thin. “I’m sorry you even had to get the call. I should’ve had it handled. I know this is messy, and I’m trying not to be, but every time I get one thing settled, something else falls apart.”
His expression changes then, not dramatically. Just enough for the air to shift around him. “Stop apologizing for being in a hard place.”
The room goes too quiet around the sentence.
I can hear the radiator, the faint buzz of the hallway lights, the little click my phone makes when a notification arrives and I refuse to turn it over.
I look down at my desk, at the blank line where an emergency contact should be, and my hands are shaking again.
“I'm a mess,” I say, and the admission feels less like confession than evidence everyone can already see. “I don’t know how to make that less true.”
“You don’t have to make it less true before you accept help.
” Dash’s eyes move to my scarf, then away before the glance can become a question.
“You don’t have to decide tonight. But Friday is tomorrow, and you shouldn’t be spending another week negotiating with a hotel desk because you’re afraid a safe option might be too generous to trust.”
I want to argue with the word safe. I want to say safe is a story people tell right before they take something back.
I want to tell him about paperwork and police officers, about Sloane’s name on a rejection I still can't survive looking at directly, about Idris not calling, about Theo needing space from me, about how Alpha care can feel like warmth until the hand closes.
The words sit behind my teeth, crowded and useless.
Dash opens the leather folder and turns it toward me.
Inside is a printed page with a short lease drafted in plain language, a note about rent matching the hotel weekly rate divided into monthly terms, and a second page listing the lockoff details.
Separate entrance. Parking space. Utilities included.
Internal door remains locked from tenant side unless tenant chooses otherwise.
Thirty-day flexibility. No penalty for leaving earlier.