Chapter 3 #2
“He was practically salivating over Penelope,” Gwen grumbled as she drowned her waffle in syrup.
“If Professor Tight-Ass had his way, all of us women would spend our days like Penelope—chastely dying of boredom while entertaining a host of unwanted suitors, waiting for our recalcitrant husbands to come home. Fuck. That.” She stabbed a section of waffle and brandished it with her fork for emphasis.
“I mean, why do we have to study The Odyssey? Why can’t we read Sappho? ”
It was no secret that Gwen harbored a deep passion for the ancient sapphic poet.
When I realized she was waiting for me to reply, I nodded in fervent agreement. “Oh, I know. I mean, he’s horrible. I’ve often wondered… do you think he gets off on the fact that we’re all forced to listen his misogynistic drivel?”
Gwen shot me a dark, conspiratorial glance.
“Oh, he definitely gets off on it.” She popped a syrup-laden waffle into her mouth before continuing her fiery diatribe.
“For those two hours, all I could think about was how Penelope was left to deal with her shit-excuse for a son, all while hosting dozens of suitors and keeping the entire kingdom together—” she swallowed thickly.
“And what was Odysseus doing? Oh, that’s right, he was having a grand time on that island having endless sex with Calypso! ”
“And after Odysseus finally deigned to return home,” I continued her thread, “He had the audacity to doubt whether Penelope had remained faithful to him! He accused her of cheating with one of her suitors—when he didn’t even think to offer her the same fucking courtesy! How is that fair?”
“You know what?” Gwen said, her eyes alight with fury. “I’m going to say something next time. I’ve had it with him.”
“With who—Odysseus?” I quipped. In that case, I’d say you’re about a few thousand years too late.”
“No, I mean Skinner,” she said seriously.
“I don’t understand why the school still lets him teach here anyway.
Like we get it, he wants to subjugate women like it’s 700 B.C.E.
because he can’t find a single human female on the entire Isle of Lorn—or let’s face it, in the entire continental U.S. —that’ll have him?”
I laughed and nearly choked on my last bite of waffle.
But Gwen wasn’t finished. “If I have to suffer another moment of Skinner’s misguided vengeance against womankind…” Her threat disappeared into a grimace as she sipped from a cup of the Tusk’s poor excuse for coffee. “Even I can see the man has negative levels of sex appeal.”
Gwen, as it happened, exclusively liked women, and was (for the most part) safe from the hordes of first-born men at Ouverham who otherwise would’ve doggedly courted her.
The Riordan name demanded reverence in Maine’s most coveted social circles.
Yet despite hailing from one of the larger landowning families on the mainland, Gwen lacked the entitled demeanor displayed by many of her Gilded peers.
It wasn’t only her striking intelligence and rather wild appearance (see: pink hair).
Very few students at Ouverham were openly queer.
Gender roles were rigidly enforced, which was why I’d been so transfixed by Casimir’s earring.
Because even something as innocuous as an earring will get you looks on this campus.
Gwen’s sexuality marked her as other, and on the Isle of Lorn, if daughters made for undesirable heirs, one could only imagine how they treated queer ones.
I shuddered in disgust. “Gwen, please refrain from using the words sex appeal and Skinner in the same sentence! I’m trying to enjoy my breakfast.”
Gwen giggled into her saucer and then smacked her lips thoughtfully. “His lack of basic hygiene would send anyone running from that dour little office.”
I grinned at the image. “Even if—may the gods forbid—a human woman agreed to go out with him, I seriously doubt they’d enjoy hearing about Odysseus’s heroic journey for three or four hours.”
“But my dear Miss Farrow,” she mimicked Skinner’s unctuous drawl, “You are forgetting that I am a nationally accredited expert on Greek nymphs and goddesses.”
I snorted into my plate, earning a few scandalized looks from a group of girls several rows down.
Gwen reached out a clawed hand to caress my cheek, her features fixed into a dour expression.
I attempted to bat it away as I doubled over with giggles.
“I could draw Aphrodite’s tits with mathematical accuracy if you’d only allow me a pen and paper—”
Abruptly, Gwen’s smile slipped from her lips. “But I forgot. Your dad taught Ancient Greek Literature at Portland, right?”
At the mention of my father, I went still. “Yes,” I replied, somewhat reluctantly. “He taught the same subjects as Skinner. And Shakespeare too. He wasn’t… tenured,” I admitted with some embarrassment.
Gwen nodded, and her expression betrayed no signs of judgment or surprise. “You never talk about him, Arden. You can, you know.”
I fought back a grimace. Gwen’s heart was always in the right place—to the point that I sometimes wished she was a touch more self-absorbed. “I know,” I mumbled. “It’s just… things were bad, those last few years. He was gone a lot.”
She nodded sympathetically. Gwen’s gaze drifted somewhere beyond my shoulder. Then her eyes went wide.
I swiveled around to see what—or who—had altered her expression.
It was August, standing by the tray-return, looking as strange and gray as he had last night. Our gazes collided across the room. Before I could do so much as blink, he turned and strode swiftly toward the exit.
Gwen’s eyes darted between the pair of us, noting the exchange warily. “Did something happen between you two?” she asked tentatively.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek. I didn’t want to lie to Gwen, but I also wasn’t in the right headspace to talk about the fallout of my disastrous relationship with August. Not yet anyway. Reluctantly, I glanced back at Gwen. “Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “August and I are just no longer… erm—”
“Hooking up?” Gwen offered with a tilt of her brow.
“Seeing each other,” I finished.
“And was it… mutual?”
I shot her a pointed glare. “I’d rather not talk about it, if it’s all the same to you.”
It was Gwen’s turn to sigh. “Oh, Arden. I would never say I told you so—” she began.
“Then don’t,” I growled.
“I just want what’s best for you.” There was a note of pleading in her voice.
I fought the urge to make a biting retort.
Later, as we returned our trays, Gwen wondered aloud, “Do you think you’ll get back together?”
“Maybe,” I said, ignoring the copper tang that flowed over my tongue at the lie.
Doubtful, I thought privately.
“Or maybe you’ll meet someone new!”
“Gwen, stop,” I rolled my eyes in exasperation. “I shouldn’t date anyone right now. I always seem to choose the worst guys.”
Gwen’s lips twisted into a devious smile. “Yeah, I know,” she said with a shrug. “That’s why I stick to women.”
I gave a snort but couldn’t stop myself from returning her ribbing with a grin. “My father taught Sappho, you know.”
Gwen gave a wistful sigh.
My boots crunched over the frosted grounds the next morning as I trudged toward the west side of campus, where the faculty offices and lounge were located.
Students weren’t strictly allowed access to the lounge, but it was early enough that I could sneak in and grab a coffee without fearing detection.
The door to the lounge creaked on its hinges as it swung open, revealing a richly decorated room with warm, walnut walls and built-in bookshelves that reminded me of my father’s office at Portland College.
It even smelled a bit like his office—like old parchment and pipe smoke.
I smiled in spite of myself. One of the professors had left an old folio sitting on the counter.
It was one of my father’s favorites, Henry IV Part I.
I felt the smile slip from my lips. Malcolm Flynch had moved through life with a hurricane-like intensity that was unstoppable and enthralling to behold.
His students were bewitched by his magnetic personality and booming voice, which he brandished like a weapon.
His passion for Shakespeare and the classics—the way he rendered characters like Falstaff and Hercules to life—was sorely lacking among the rest of the college’s dusty, dried-up faculty.
But when he was denied tenure, everything came to a halt.
The school board members had cited his “mercurial” temperament and “unreliability” in their committee report.
They had decided that my father’s eccentricity was more trouble than his popularity was worth.
Without his teaching and research to provide him structure, he unraveled at the seams. I shuddered at my last memory of him, gray-haired and languishing in his chaise longue, ashes strewn across the floor, on his desk, between the keys of his typewriter.
When I left home, he’d been living in his study following an explosive argument with my mother, who had finally had enough of his drinking and moping.
It pained me to imagine him sleeping on the sofa in that drafty office, surrounded by the scattered pages of his unpublished manuscript.
In the ensuing weeks, my father’s publisher had finally given up on him, too.
Abandoning the shelves, I moved toward the espresso machine and began my illicit use of it. I added coffee grounds to the tamper before placing my cup beneath the spout. Soon, the smell of brewing coffee filled the room, and I inhaled deeply before taking a sip.
“What are you doing?”
I jolted, and the cup fell from my hands and shattered on the floor. I looked up, expecting to see an irate professor. “Casimir!” I exclaimed as my stomach did a somersault. I clutched my chest, trying to still my hammering heart. “What the hell are you doing here?”
His lips curled into an infuriating smirk, and I bent to clean the mess left by the broken cup.