Chapter 27
Dakota
I felt my face was a little extra flushed as I walked into my Unit Ops class, taking my seat in the back corner as usual, keeping to myself. When Dr. Killshaw entered, all my horrible memories came rushing back, overtaking my brain and making my face burn—with embarrassment now.
You know I could get you expelled.
Attempting to control my breathing, I stared out the window at the trees and the gray sky showing in strips between them. Wind moved the heavy branches and pushed the clouds across the sky, their shapes swirling and combining.
His email was still sitting unanswered in my inbox.
Whenever I thought about it, I got anxious all over again, remembering the feeling of waking up so unexpectedly in his office. The way I’d been so shaky and immediately defensive, expecting him to try and cut me down before I got the chance to say a word.
I didn’t understand why he would extend the offer again if he was so worried about me doing something that would put his career in jeopardy.
Propositioning him for sex. I crossed my arms on the desk and laid my head down, hiding my face as nausea curled in my gut.
He had to be bluffing, though. Didn’t he?
He was the one who invited me to lay down in his private office, and that had to have some sort of significance. He noticed me leaving class early. He sought me out to see if I was sick.
I didn’t do any of that.
I simply reacted.
But he wanted to make me believe I was weaving my own illusions of our interactions, creating intricate webs that didn’t correctly estimate reality.
Footsteps in front of the table made me stiffen, my eyes slowly turning to see the shoes.
“Masters,” Dr. Killshaw said.
I reluctantly sat up, staring at his large hand resting on the surface of the desk in front of me, relaxed, his fingers loosely postured.
“Would you mind staying a minute after class?”
Slowly, I let my gaze drift upwards from his hand, traveling his arm before landing on his face. His eyes were unreadable but intense. Focused directly on me.
“Sure,” I answered flatly.
He nodded once, then left.
For all I knew, he was probably going to let me know he’d decided to inform the dean of my almost-offer of sex and I was getting expelled today.
Probably not—but maybe. I could never tell with him, could never tell what he was actually thinking or what he actually wanted.
He was a frustrating mystery, slowly making me lose all sanity.
It was almost impossible to focus on any of the actual content during lecture, because I was so fixated on worrying about the man at the front of the room.
As the minutes ticked on, my guts twisted into a tighter and tighter knot of anxiety.
I wiped my palms on my jeans, eyes constantly returning to the clock on the side wall by the door.
By the end of lecture, I hadn’t comprehended a word of content, and I felt like I was going to throw up. I’d sufficiently worked myself up to the point of genuine panic.
Maybe it was irrational, but I couldn’t stop my mind from infinitely running through the same loop, the same thoughts. Even when I told myself I was freaking out over nothing, I couldn’t break the cycle.
I needed reassurance.
And I hated that feeling, because I’d never get enough of it. There was no amount of reassurance that would actually cure me or soothe my brain for good. I knew that.
The clock flipped past the final minute of class, and everyone started packing up, chatting and taking their time leaving the room.
A few people went up to the front to talk to Dr. Killshaw, but I stayed where I was, white-knuckling the table and trying not to lose every ounce of courage in my body.
Finally, the last student left, the door swinging shut behind him.
Dr. Killshaw didn’t look up from his laptop, bent over his desk while he spoke loudly, voice carrying across the room, “You can come down here.”
Swallowing against the tightness in my throat, I slowly rose from my seat and made my way down to his desk. He finished whatever he was doing on his laptop, then slammed it shut, rounding the desk to sit on the edge of it in front of me, arms braced at his sides.
“You didn’t respond to my email.”
“I’m sorry.” My voice was too quiet, and I couldn’t quite look at his face. At least he wasn’t starting with my expulsion notice.
“So you did see the email,” he inferred. “You just ignored it.”
I didn’t miss his tone when he coolly called me out for ignoring him. It rang clear in my mind, a perfect callback to that afternoon in his office when I’d accused him of ignoring me. Looks like we’re both good at avoiding each other.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
“You could let me know if you’re interested. And then we’d talk about it.”
I pinched the hem of my sweater between my fingers, running my fingernail lightly along the edge. “To be honest, I don’t really know what your research is about. I’m also pretty busy, so I’m not sure if I’d have time to help you with it.”
Dr. Killshaw crossed his arms. My stare was drawn upwards to his chest, then his face. He appeared to be thinking about something, weighing his options in his mind.
“Do you have class right now?”
“Not for a couple hours.”
“I could show you my lab, explain some of the logistics, then you can get back to me about it later,” he suggested, his brows pulled together.
“Now?” My grip tightened on the strap of my bag, fingernails digging into my palm. Maybe we weren’t going to talk about the incident at all.
“That’s what I was offering, but it’s up to you.”
“Okay. That’s fine,” I answered, almost mechanically.
“Alright.” He pushed off the desk, standing up fully. “It’s in the basement, connected to the main Unit Ops lab.”
Dr. Killshaw lead me out of the classroom into the wide hallway, large panes of glass spanning one of the walls and showing a nice view of some campus walkways. Small droplets of precipitation were starting to sprinkle on the glass as we walked towards the door to the stairs.
No elevator this time.
It was echoey in the stairwell, our footsteps ricocheting off the cinder block walls and metal railings, filling the space with harsh sounds in the absence of conversation. Dr. Killshaw pushed the door open at the bottom and I followed him through it, being careful not to get too close to him.
I wondered if we’d ever talk about what’d happened in his office. Did he still think about it? Did he hold it against me? I couldn’t be sure. Even though he’d given me this opportunity, that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to use the proximity to hurt me in some way.
A few students were by the lockers, sitting at the round tables with their laptops open, typing away.
We passed them, turning down a different hallway.
It was a hallway I’d never had reason to be in, much like the one containing his office on the sixth floor.
Maybe something terrible waited for me here too.
Dr. Killshaw opened a door that was adjacent to the main lab, connected on one wall, but a separate room. It smelled faintly of heated metal and solvent vapors.
Stacked shelving made the corners of the room shadowed, low florescent lights shining on the rest, faintly gleaming on the scuffed black epoxy benchtops.
Clean glassware hung on a drying rack above a small sink, and a few rags laying on the counters had random tools and oddly-specific fittings laid out on them.
Metal stools were shoved under the benchtops, covering faint chalk marks on the floor.
There was a whiteboard on one wall, covered in half-erased calculations and flow diagrams, scribbled in blue marker. I stared at it for a minute, tracing the quickly-sketched lines. It was somehow tidy and chaotic at the same time.
Every time I was reminded of the genuine intelligence Dr. Killshaw possessed, it stirred something low in my stomach.
I sometimes forgot he wasn’t just teaching the concepts of this class, and that he actually knew a vast amount of things beyond the confines of those lectures.
That he was able to really think on his own, to apply his knowledge in the real world.
“This is my lab,” he started. “Right now, I’ve got one grad student working for me, but his schedule has been a little more hectic recently. That’s why I asked you.”
It didn’t make much sense, because I still didn’t understand why he’d choose me out of everyone; there were other, more qualified students in the class. I just made a small humming noise, noncommittal.
“This is the distillation column,” Dr. Killshaw said, turning my attention to the main piece of equipment in the room. “I already got it set up for the day before lecture, and my grad student spent some time monitoring earlier.”
The distillation column was a cylinder about six feet tall, mounted on a metal frame screwed into the floor.
Glass panels showed the inside of the column, the various types of packing on different trays.
A metal reboiler sat underneath the column, a condenser at the top, with a cold jacket surrounding the glass.
“It’s the main focus of my research,” Dr. Killshaw continued over the faint hum of the reboiler, the sound of the condenser hissing with its cold water flow. “I’ve been working on industrial waste stream improvements.”
I still didn’t know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut. He didn’t seem bothered by my silence. He was clearly comfortable here.
“Your hours would be flexible, and completely up to you. I am allowed to pay you, but not much. I’ll understand if you need the time to do other things.”
Twisting my lips to the side, I cast my gaze around the room again.
It wasn’t very large, but I was sure all of the equipment in here must’ve cost a lot.
It made me nervous in a way, nervous to touch anything and mess it up somehow.
I wondered how much money Dr. Killshaw got from the university for all this.
“There’s a decent amount of downtime, though,” he added.
“While the column stabilizes,” I inferred. If I had time to do my homework in here, it might be really nice. I’d have access to the school’s fast internet, but I wouldn’t be stuck in a public study room or library. It was private down here.
“Correct.”
“So, what exactly are you doing?”
He walked over to the column, my feet carrying me to follow him. Every so often, a drop of distillate formed in the glass receiver at the top, swelling heavy until it fell into the waiting flask with a quiet plink. “Reclaiming solvents from industrial waste streams. Sustainability.”
“And I’d be paid for my time?”
“Only fifty cents more than minimum wage,” he warned. “Don’t do this hoping for good money.”
Any amount of money was helpful for me, especially if I was essentially being paid to sit here and do homework. It would make my time more worth it.
“Okay. The hours?”
“That’s going to be up to you. I’m in here most of the time when I’m not lecturing—or my office,” he added.
I swallowed, glancing down at my boots on the tile.
“The column won’t always be running, but there are always things to do.
Nick—my grad student—has a usual schedule for when he stops by, but he also just keeps me updated. Sometimes it’s less.”
His lack of structure around the lab was surprising to me. But I supposed if this was what he ate, slept, and breathed, it wouldn’t matter if other people joined him. I assumed he could do all his work by himself, but liked to have help when he could get it.
“I…”
“You can think about—”
“No,” I cut him off. His face was mildly shocked. Amused, maybe. “I’ll do it.”