Chapter 3 #2
The thing that brought me the most joy in the world was writing.
It was my escape, and I wrote in my diary religiously.
My entries started to morph into accounts of other people's lives rather than being that much about my own, and I loved recounting the stories I observed every day; it felt like walking around in someone else’s skin for a little while.
It made me start to pay attention to the world around me.
The written word held a special kind of beauty for me, and I had a real desire to enter a career that made a difference for the better in this world, which seemed to shove me towards journalism as a profession.
I had so many insecurities about my ability to succeed in such an unstable profession.
But the fire in my belly to step off the ledge and more or less fuck off the last three years and everyone’s expectations was getting stronger and stronger every month I came closer to graduating.
And I wanted to use this thesis as my test on what I could do.
My concept of an ‘Around the world analysis of political destruction by Western powers interpreted under Irish Law’ technically fell under the thesis guidelines for my course, but my angle of covering it was not the norm.
Any time the subject of our plans after graduation came up, I just followed along with the rest of them, saying “get a job so we aren’t poor anymore. ”
Sinéad was the only one who didn’t seem too keen to jump into adulthood, and she planned on taking a gap year after graduation to figure out what she wanted to do.
Lately, I’d taken to spending my evenings in the library, claiming the best spot beside the window to try and focus on my project without Sinéad constantly interrupting me with offers of tea.
As I stared out at the darkening campus from my favourite spot, tapping my pen against my lip, I struggled to focus on connecting the Libyan instability post-Gaddafi and the Russian anti-Putin protests with some common themes.
“You know you scrunch up your nose when you’re thinking?” A low gravelly voice breathed into my ear.
I leapt in my seat with a squeak, spinning around to find Ronan leaning over my shoulder, putting him about an inch from the side of my neck.
“What are you doing sneaking up on me, you psycho?” I snapped at him, holding my hand to my racing heart. He chuckled, turning to rest his arse against my table, half covering my notes.
“Do you mind? I’m trying to work on something, but it seems to have a professor perched on it.” I arched my brows at him.
So far, we’d still had the back-and-forth emoji reactions on Insta and a lot of loaded looks during my politics tutorial, but we hadn’t interacted much beyond that. And now he was sitting on my desk with his body crowding mine in the middle of the library.
“I can see that, I’ve been watching you for the past hour.” My cheeks heated as I blinked stupidly up at him with a thousand worrying thoughts crashing through me - why was he watching me, from where, and had I done anything embarrassing?
“Okay, and that doesn’t sound even a little bit creepy, Professor,” I quipped.
I’d been making a point of calling him professor in every tutorial over the past four weeks with a slightly sarcastic edge to it.
He obviously wasn’t a professor since he was still a PhD student himself, but I got a lot of entertainment when his eyes narrowed at my obscure insinuation that he was a pervert.
.. thoroughly enjoying getting a rise out of him.
“Still going with the oh so funny professor routine, Róisín?” He questioned lightly, like he was bored of my little barbs.
I cleared my throat and shrugged, “Maybe,” having nothing else to come back with, and the light in his eyes told me he knew he’d won that round of verbal sparring.
“Well, how would you feel knowing you can’t even use your little joke as of next week?” He asked casually as he flipped through my notes on the desk beside him.
“Why, did you get the sack for riding all your students?” I asked sweetly as he tilted his head towards me, and I kept my face blank and innocent as he leaned over me.
I had to lean back to look up from his broad chest and meet those beautiful emerald eyes.
I internally cursed myself as I swallowed audibly.My eyes drifted to the glimpse of chest hair I could see from the two open buttons of his shirt before dragging up his bronzed throat and razor-sharp jawline with a barely there shadow of blond stubble lining it, and eventually I landed on his eyes again.
He didn’t take his eyes off me for an instant, as if he was enjoying the show of me enjoying the show.
He raised his brows at me as he answered, “Not the sack. Professor Murphy is coming back, so I’ll just be another lowly student from next week. And if I WERE to get the sack for riding students... it wouldn’t be students plural. Maybe just one.”
There was no stopping the blush this time.
I felt like my ears were on fire, and I could feel the prickle spread across my chest from the embarrassment of what he was saying.
He was kind of skipping out on the game of innuendos and emojis we’d had going on, and taken it from a level three to a level eight in one sentence, which left me floundering.
I shifted in my seat and pushed my auburn waves behind my ear while scoffing something unintelligible; even I didn’t know what words I was trying to force from my mouth.
He chuckled and continued, “So I’ll pick you up at seven, next Wednesday. You’re living in Curragh Oaks, right?” He pushed himself off my desk, getting ready to walk away before I gathered my composure again.
“Excuse me, picking me up for what? I have plans next Wednesday and you don’t feature in them.”
He paused just past my chair and then crouched in front of my seat, so his eyes were level on mine.
“Well Róisín, it seems we’ve been having a lot of fun dancing around each other for the past month now, and since I’m officially finished subbing, I can finally take you out on a date.
I’m keen to see how cheeky you are when I don’t have to hold my tongue to your barbs.
And the only plans you have next Wednesday involve me, so I’ll pick you up at seven. ”
With that, he stood up, striding out of the library with his big fuck-me shoulders and the strut of a man who knew half the women in the library were watching him walk away.
Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the holy donkey.. I was not expecting that. I was on fire with the indignation of him bossing me around, but my stomach was doing somersaults at the gruff masculine edge he spoke to me with, and there was no denying it was seriously fucking hot.