Degrees of Engagement

Chapter 1

Bianca Dimitriou doesn’t cry.

Not unless she’s really, really angry. She can’t even remember the last time something brought her to tears, but holy shit is she furious right now.

Furious and disappointed. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt this way before.

She’s pretty sure she hasn’t. Usually she can treat disappointment like an opportunity, something to chip away at and work through until she ultimately gets what she wants.

Oh. Right.

That’s why the tears are coming.

She’s disappointed and there’s nothing she can do about it. No problem to solve or question to dig into.

And even that’s annoying right now – that she’s this upset, this frustrated – and her mind refuses to shut off its logical thought process long enough to revel in her tears, to really feel the hurt and betrayal.

Because she’s not just Bianca Dimitriou anymore.

She’s Dr Bianca Dimitriou, PhD.

And her friends and family didn’t give enough of a shit to show up and celebrate with her.

Now that she knows that, it’s impossible to un-know it.

Bianca sniffs and shakes her head, trying to snap herself out of it, but all that does is make the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes blur her vision, catch against her eyelashes, and then fall to her cheeks.

“Fuck,” she mutters, wiping at them impatiently, knowing her makeup is probably a streaky mess.

“Whoa,” a deep male voice says from just over her shoulder and it takes everything in her not to groan in despair.

She knows that voice, knows the man it’s attached to and knows her night just went from bad to worse.

Crying in public was a low point.

Crying in front of Xavier Byrne is absolute rock bottom.

“Are you okay?” he asks, holding a cocktail napkin out toward her.

“I’m fine, it’s just been a long day,” she manages to say, even though she’s positive he can tell she’s lying. “What are you doing here?”

This bar isn’t really his scene. Not that she knows what his scene is.

She just knows that in the five years they’ve been toiling away at their degrees in the same program, she’s never once run into him at Lorraine’s.

Then again, he kind of fits in here. He’s handsome in a way that goes with the dive bar aesthetic, with his perpetual five o’clock shadow and a t-shirt that hugs his shoulders, broad and defined, leading to a trim waist in a ratio normally only seen in those superhero movies that she definitely needs to catch up on now that her thesis is finished.

His brows shoot up, green eyes wide with surprise. “I’m not sure whether or not I should be offended.”

Bianca shakes her head in confusion and a few more tears drop, so she takes the cocktail napkin he’s still offering and dabs under her eyes, only to come away with black smudges of her eyeliner.

Oh God, she probably looks like hell and of course it’s in front of him.

Not that it . . . not that it should matter what she looks like in front of him.

It’s not like they’re friends. Or at least they aren’t close, not anymore. But there’s more than a little professional respect there and maybe . . . more than a little bit of a lingering crush, at least on her part, that never quite burned out, despite it being a very, very bad idea.

Call it a generalization, but it’s not every day a super hot guy walks into your class when you’re doing a PhD in Information Science.

A male librarian who sometimes doubles as an Indiana Jones type, with his undergrad and master’s in Archaeology, except he’s all about returning the artifacts instead of stealing them.

Extremely fucking hot.

But it just never happened.

Not that she expected it to.

They are . . . were . . . classmates, colleagues, friends of a sort, friendly colleagues? Too busy working for anything besides a casual hookup.

And hooking up within your very tiny degree program where there’s no escape if things go bad?

Not smart.

And they’re both smart.

Very smart.

Maybe too smart sometimes.

So they never did and then a few months ago he pulled away, big time. Their weekly study sessions routinely cancelled until they were never scheduled in the first place, semi-regular coffee meetups becoming nonexistent. She can’t even remember the last time she saw him outside of class.

He was busy.

They both were.

And now, they’re done.

She defended her thesis today.

His defense is early next week.

And that’s that.

He’ll move on to whatever adventure awaits him in whatever country that needs his help getting their native artifacts back.

And as for her?

She interviewed for her dream job a few weeks ago and has a second interview in a couple of days. But even if it doesn’t work out, she knows what kind of career she wants, knows where her skills are most needed. She’s not sure if anyone is going to let her actually do it.

How do you convince an entire system, all of academia, that they need to change and change quickly or they’re going to lose another generation to misinformation?

It’s too big a problem for any one person to solve, she knows that, but it doesn’t mean she isn’t going to try.

At least, she will once she stops these fucking tears from falling.

“Offended? What? Why?” she asks, to try and distract herself.

“You invited me.”

“I did? When?”

“At the beginning of the semester? You told me that you were scheduling a post-defense party because you were going to manifest passing your defense months in advance.”

She remembers now. She’d been a nervous wreck as they approached the final semester of her academic career and she had been doing everything she could think of to trick herself into calming the hell down.

“Oh, that’s right. Sorry, I . . .”

“Do you . . . do you want me to go?” he asks. “I know we haven’t seen a lot of each other in the past couple of months but, yeah, I’ll just – go.”

He’s letting out a huff of what’s probably self-deprecating laughter and already shifting around her and starting for the door.

“No, wait,” Bianca says, reaching out for him; just a tap of her fingers against his forearm is enough to stop his retreat. “I’m sorry. I’ve just been a mess and my brain is complete mush, but obviously I want you to stay.”

“Obviously?”

Bianca rolls her eyes, tears gone now, at least for the moment. “Yes, obviously.”

“So,” Xavier says with a smile, “are we just going to stand here or am I finally going to meet your friends?”

“My friends?”

Fuck.

Her friends.

Her friends who decided not to come.

“Yeah, those people that you’re always disappearing for, running off to who knows where for another wedding or bachelorette thing or whatever.”

“I’m not always running off,” she protests weakly, in a tone she loathes because she knows her voice only sounds like that, high-pitched and uneven, when he’s right and she’s wrong.

He scoffs. “You have been in more weddings in the last few years than people I actually know, let alone would go to their wedding and write them a check for money I can’t really afford to give them.”

“That’s not . . . It’s not that bad. It was only,” she counts in her head quickly, Lexi, Erik, Isobel and Frankie, “four weddings.”

“Plus all the other shit that goes with them,” he insists.

And he’s not right exactly, but he’s not entirely wrong either.

Because weddings aren’t just weddings anymore, an excuse to put on a nice dress and hit an open bar.

Weddings are a yearlong, sometimes more, countdown, with engagement celebrations and bridal showers and bachelorette weekends and bridesmaid fittings and it all always seems to add up to a couple of thousand dollars even while the bride insists she’s keeping things simple.

It’s what you do, though, for your friends. You celebrate their milestones and you’re there for them in the biggest moments of their lives. That’s the reality of being in your late twenties into your thirties – everyone is getting married, having babies, living life.

Except her.

Though, no. A doctorate isn’t not living.

It’s just focusing on her career. Doing exactly what she wanted since she was a little girl and first watched The Mummy with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz.

As soon as Evie declared herself as a librarian, Bianca knew her answer to that question adults always seemed to ask: what do you want to be when you grow up?

And maybe baby Bianca didn’t realize it would be more research and writing than adventuring through the desert and hooking up with a hot rogue with a heart of gold, but still , her dreams are finally coming true.

“It’s not my fault that people want me to be there on the most important day of their lives. People love me!”

Xavier opens his mouth to respond, but her phone buzzes in her bag, probably one more person in her life bailing on tonight. She darts her hand inside of it, grabs the damn thing and slams it onto the bar face down.

The tears are back.

Fuck.

“Shit, you’re not okay.”

“I am, I’m fine, I just need a drink.”

“Okay, we’ll get you a drink. What’s your poison?”

She snorts and it feels wet and snotty and so fucking unattractive, but again it doesn’t matter. She raises her nearly empty glass at him and tilts it back and forth. “Dirty Shirley.”

He raises a slightly judgmental eyebrow, but she glares at him.

“I like grenadine.”

“Then one Dirty Shirley for Dr Dimitriou coming up,” he says with a casual salute, two fingers to his forehead.

The judgment disappears when she smiles at him, and as shitty as she feels right now, hearing doctor in front of her name sounds so good, and even better when he says it. He matches her smile with one of his own and then turns away, raising a hand to get the bartender’s attention.

“And once we get you a drink, maybe you’ll tell me what’s going on?” he asks casually, so much so she knows it’s not casual at all. He’s . . . worried?

Fuck.

Panic, ice-cold and instant, climbs up her throat.