Chapter 9 #2
She’s calmer now, no longer shaky. Straighter posture, hair back in place, glossy waves cascading across her shoulders and down her back.
Not a single stray thread on her oversized sweater.
She seems too polished for this landscape, like she was plucked from a runway and dropped into concrete suburbia.
And the way she looks at him with her intense dark eyes, as though he’s an optical illusion and she’s searching for some hidden message—he’s not used to that at all.
From anyone.
“How often can you go out in public without something like that happening?” he asks once they’ve absorbed themselves in the first few bites of perfection. “Not the bathroom—the getting recognized.”
She shrugs. “It’s easier than it used to be, but everyone’s eager to capture the mental breakdown I’m supposedly having, the botched surgery I’m hiding, or the secret baby I had.”
He nearly chokes on his carne asada. “Secret baby?”
“It’s one of the theories,” she says, completely straight-faced as she dips another chip into salsa.
Jesus. He can hardly conceptualize there being theories out there about her retirement, but he supposes that’s what it’s like, to live a life others are so wrapped up in.
He tries his best to relax into this tentative peace between them. They are two wild animals lowering their hackles, still not trusting that the other won’t lunge for their throat.
“Is it strange, not performing? Or recording, or—any of the other things you’d usually be doing right now?”
She takes a while to answer this, and for a moment he’s worried he’s overstepped his boundaries. He doesn’t want this to feel like an interrogation, but he’s suddenly so goddamn curious about her.
“I don’t miss performing,” she says slowly. “Or promoting. And god, I hated shooting music videos. Really, anything that involved interacting with other people.”
“Consider me shocked.”
Her mouth drops open in faux outrage as she swats his arm with a napkin. It’s almost too casual, and he has no idea how to process it. “But I haven’t been able to pick up a guitar since I quit, actually. So I do miss that part, but it’s impossible for me to separate the music from…the rest of it.”
Nick can tell this isn’t easy for her to talk about, the rest of it, this vast black hole of fame. “That must be tough.”
She dabs her mouth with the napkin, briefly covering that trio of freckles he shouldn’t be staring at.
“I meant what I said in your office. I quit because I wanted a chance at a normal life, whatever that looks like for me at this stage. I just couldn’t picture doing what I was doing forever.
Especially if I wanted to have a family. ”
“Celebrities have kids all the time.”
“That get photographed without their permission,” she says. “You’re giving someone this very public life they can’t possibly consent to.”
“A life with a hell of a lot more privilege than most of us get.”
Ramona goes quiet, which he interprets as her acknowledging that he has a point there. And it’s bizarre, isn’t it, talking about celebrity with someone who is an actual celebrity.
He has a feeling there’s more to her history, but since they’re not exactly about to become friends—this is clearly just a onetime thing—he’ll have to be okay with never knowing.
“I didn’t have a choice,” she finally says. “I don’t want to do that to anyone else.” Then, as though ready to move on from talking about herself: “What you do in the classroom is kind of a performance.”
He considers that for a moment. “I’m not exactly under a spotlight.”
“Maybe not in the literal sense, but everyone in that room is watching you, completely captivated. You have to be on, presenting this information in a way that’s not only interesting but that makes people remember it. If that’s not performing…”
Captivated. That’s not the word he’d use, but she sounded so sure of it.
“I’ve never thought of it that way,” he admits. “You’re not wrong. Although I’m guessing you didn’t call on audience members and ask them about touch receptors during your shows.”
“Only during VIP meet and greets.” Ramona takes another sip of her sparkling water. “What made you want to teach? You just loved psychology so much that you couldn’t fathom a world where you weren’t passing it on to the next generation of scholars?”
Nick relaxes into the plastic chair a bit, surprised by how easy it is to talk to her like this. Her sense of humor—he’d caught flashes of it during that first day in his office, but she’s even quicker than he thought. And there are few things he likes more than being kept on his toes.
“That, and I couldn’t think of another way to use my naturally captivating personality.
” Fuck, he’s not flirting, is he? Because that would be wrong.
Very deeply wrong. Maybe he’s a little too relaxed, and for a split second he forgot who they were.
He clears his throat and readjusts in his chair, forcing himself to be slightly uncomfortable. There.
“I took an intro class my freshman year and fell in love with it,” he says, trying to sound as mechanically unflirtatious as possible.
But he can’t help it—his voice begs to be animated when talking about something this precious to him.
“I’d always liked science, and the pull of understanding human behavior was just too strong.
I didn’t realize I was interested in academia until I lucked into a TA-ship as a senior.
I was blown away by what the students had to say, and the joy when they finally got something, and I thought, maybe I could do this.
” He makes himself suck in a breath, aware he’s talking too quickly.
“Obviously it’s not just teaching—there’s the research component too, and I’m up for tenure this year, which means I’d have a lot more freedom when it comes to research.
And, you know, the extra job stability. If I get it, that is. ”
Ramona has her chin propped on her fist, watching him like she’s genuinely interested in what he’s saying.
And even though he’s in front of a classroom several hours a day, her attention drags a shiver up his spine.
He’s used to students focusing on him with varying degrees of engagement—the dreaded glassy-eyed sleepiness and the rewarding lightbulb moments.
But this. He hasn’t been on the receiving end of a gaze like this in a long, long time.
Maybe he forgot how beautiful she is back at the mall, if only because there were more pressing matters to deal with.
But here in the golden-hour lighting, the sun teasing bronze from her dark hair and making her skin glow, she turns the whole parking lot glamorous.
It makes him all too aware of how old this sweater-vest is, and he hopes there aren’t any wrinkles in his chinos.
He gets it now, why the rest of the class dressed up for her.
He doesn’t know why part of him keeps expecting that she’s putting him on. Maybe the truth is that his initial impression of her was way off.
Because he’s having fun.
“You’re not what I imagined a professor would be like when I started thinking about this whole school thing,” Ramona says.
“What, dedicated and passionate about their subject?”
A swift shake of her head as her eyes meet his for a heavy moment. The way this makes his heart race is radically inappropriate. “Hot.”
Nick’s ears ring loud as a fire alarm.
All casual, Ramona unwraps more of her burrito like she hasn’t said anything that’s knocked him out of orbit, and in her mind, maybe she hasn’t. Maybe this kind of nonchalant compliment is just the currency of her world—her former world.
When she glances back up and sees what must be the sheer panic on his face, she laughs, though not meanly. “Calm down, professor. I’m not coming on to you or anything. Just stating a fact.”
Somehow, that doesn’t make it better.
“Well, sadly they took away the chili peppers on before I even started at UCLA, so if not for you, I’d never know.”
He returns to his burrito, biting right into a hidden jalapeno, which brings a rush of heat to his face as he fights against the stinging sensation in his eyes. Smooth. So incredibly smooth. Coughing, he reaches for his drink.
Ramona finds him attractive. No—hot, though this whole jalapeno debacle might cancel that out.
It’s the ego boost he didn’t know he needed.
“I lied,” he says, because if she can be honest, then he can, too. “I have heard your music. Before it came on in the car, that is. I took my niece to a show a few years back, at the Hollywood Bowl.”