3. Kat
3
KAT
S weat rises on the back of my neck in a prickle as I look around at the absolute disaster.
Piles of papers on the desk. A book lying open, for God’s sake. Another pile of folders on one of the shelves against the wall.
I take a deep breath. It’s one thing to let your office go a bit over the summer, when there aren’t many students on campus, but there are only a few days left until classes start back up for the fall semester. I’m the first to admit that being neat and organized isn’t my forte, but I try my best at work.
So instead of going over lesson plans, I’ll be cleaning today, making this place presentable. I mean, the lesson plans are done, but I like to double-check them before I upload them and print. I mentally add that to tomorrow’s to-do list.
On the plus side, organizing will hopefully take my mind off the guy. Blake. It’s been over a week, but he’s still on my mind.
I never go home with men from the bar. Or men at all. But there was something about him that made me agree to go with him, and it was the hottest thing I’ve done in years. I may or may not have fantasized about it daily since it happened.
I blow out a breath. It’s time to forget about that night, at least for now, because there’s an awful lot of shit to do around here.
I kick off my shoes under the desk and lift a pile of papers to start going through them.
“Hey, girl!” A knock sounds at the door of my office.
I look up to see Angela’s head poking in, the dark curls of her natural hair wild.
“Hey,” I say, lifting a pile of papers. “How’s it going? Ready for the semester?”
Angela is one of my closest friends at work. She teaches mostly Evolutionary Biology, which is about as far removed as you can get from my Anatomy and Physiology for Pre-Meds classes and still both be in the Biology department .
She nods as she steps into my office and lifts a stack of textbooks from the chair. She sets them on the desk and sits, crossing her leg to tuck a foot underneath her.
The pants she’s wearing are brightly patterned. Paired with a lime-green shirt, it’s the kind of outfit I’d never be able to pull off. I lean more toward classic cuts, neutral colors. It looks amazing on her, and as always, I’m jealous of her style.
“As ready as ever. You?”
“Those go on the bookshelf, Ang,” I say, glaring at the books.
To be fair, though, I’m the one who left them on the chair in the first place. The glare isn’t even for Ang. It’s for Past Kat, the one who figured that the messy office could be Future Kat’s problem.
I hate Past Kat right now. On the plus side, Two-Weeks-Ago Kat took care of anything that could be done remotely to get ready for the semester.
I blow out a breath. “I don’t feel ready. I’ll get there, though.”
She tosses her head back and laughs. “If you ever said you were ready without completely stressing, I’d die of shock. Let me guess, though. Lesson plans are done.”
“Yes,” I say grudgingly. I pick up the top two books and shelve them .
“You’ve looked over the class list and double-checked what you’re up against.”
“Maybe.”
She points a finger at me, her long nails a maroon red. “You’ve printed your syllabus and, not only that, but you formatted it all nice and turned it into a pdf that’s already on the course website.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose between my thumb and pointer finger. “Yes. But that’s not the point. This place is a disaster.”
“So?” Angela leans forward, clasping her hands together. “No one cares what your office looks like unless you plan to hold your lectures in here. How are you planning to fit ninety students in this room?”
I take the last book and place it on the shelf, making sure it’s in the right spot. Years of schooling equals piles of textbooks, and it’s a pain to have to go through all the shelves to find the one I need.
“I have office hours in here. And the department chair might stop by. Or the dean. Or someone else important.”
This is what I get for working at home all summer. I timed it perfectly, getting a research project’s data collection done at the same time the semester ended, so all I had to do over the summer was crunch numbers and write up a paper .
It seemed so luxurious. Writing in bed. Sitting on the front lawn while making graphs. Attending department meetings via Zoom.
I didn’t come into the office once this summer. I was so proud of myself, my ability to take time away, even if I was working nonstop.
And this is the thanks I get—an office that didn’t clean itself while I was gone.
“You know this is all your mess to begin with, right?” Angela asks pointedly. “It’s not like gremlins came in here and stacked papers a foot high. This is all stuff you were working on back in the spring.”
She’s right, of course. After the students left for the summer, I spent a week working like crazy to finish everything up, ignoring the building mess, and then hightailed it out of here.
“So is your office perfect?” I ask.
I pick up the seven pens—no, eight—that are strewn across the desk and place them in a coffee mug labelled I FOUND THIS HUMERUS , with a picture of an upper arm bone. I can’t hold back a snort of laughter.
Get it? Humerus?
It’s a running joke between Angela, me, and our other best friend, Naomi, who teaches genetics. We’re true science nerds, so every year we get one another gifts with science jokes that we think are hilarious.
Sure, a normal person may laugh at Naomi’s mug that says I USE THIS MUG PERIODICALLY below the periodic table of the elements, but most would just groan or not understand the jokes at all. Most of them only make sense to people who do this kind of thing for a living.
“What are you laughing at?” Angela asks, ignoring the question about her office.
Her office is, I’m sure, perfect, everything in its place, the way it always is. She even has coasters for our nerdy mugs to keep her surfaces clean.
The coasters were from me. They each have a tongue-in-cheek lab rule, like Science: like cooking, but don’t lick the spoon and Hot glass looks just like cold glass until you touch it .
“The humerus joke.” I turn the mug so she can see it.
Angela snorts. “That one is a classic. Anyway, you never told me about the guy you went home with. It’s been like a week. You promised me details.”
“Okay. So I was supposed to meet up with one guy from Tinder.”
“And you went home with him?”
“No. He never showed. ”
“That asshole.” Angela has the good grace to look offended on my behalf.
“Yeah. Well, anyway, some creep tried to hit on me, and I ended up meeting the other guy. And…yeah. It was good.”
Angela wiggles her brows. “And? Details. Was there dancing?”
I’m not sure I want to spill all the dirty details, even to Ang. And if I’m going to get into it, I’d rather do it with Naomi here, too, so they can get all of their gossip in the same place.
“How about we just talk about it at journal club?”
Angela nods vigorously. “Yes. And with the semester starting, we need a journal club ASAP.”
For those in academia, journal club is a common thing—pick an article from a peer-reviewed journal in your specialty, and you get together with colleagues to review it.
In our little group, journal club is what we call it when we meet at one of our houses for drinks and gossip and to review romance books. The smuttier, the better.
“Can you text Naomi? See when she can come?”
Naomi is married and has a five-year-old daughter, who is about the cutest thing in the world. But it means she has more commitments, generally, than Ang or I do, so we work around her schedule when we can.
Angela nods, already typing on her phone. “On it. So, are you seeing the guy again?”
I shrug. No, I’m not, but I’d rather wait to get into it.
He made it clear that it was just a onetime thing. We both agreed on that.
Angela’s phone buzzes with a notification. “She’s free tonight. Your house or mine?”
Why do I agree to these things?
You’d think I’d have learned by now that hosting any kind of event at my place is a recipe for disaster.
I pick up an empty cup from the coffee table and a pair of socks from the couch. I don’t remember taking them off, but since I rarely have guests over here other than Naomi and Angela, they must be mine.
How long have they been sitting here? I sniff one of the socks and immediately wish I hadn’t.
Also, I remember why I took them off. It was a week ago. Maybe two. I dripped some ice cream on the coffee table by accident while eating in front of the TV, and instead of getting up to grab a towel, I used my socks.
At the time, it seemed well reasoned—I was going to take them off soon and toss them in the laundry anyway, so why not put them to good use?
I shove the socks in the laundry along with the tip-top of the pile of dirty clothes that never seems to get any smaller and add detergent, then I add a little extra.
I’m not taking any chances here. The sweaty-feet-and-sour-milk aroma cannot spread to the rest of my clothes.
God, we should have met at Angela’s house. The woman keeps her place just like her office—perfect. Everything in its place. She even freaking dusts .
Even Naomi’s house would have been better. Her daughter—Briar—tries to be part of our discussions, which means we have to censor ourselves, but if I don’t have to clean, it would be worth it to refer to our main characters’ coital scenes as “dancing.”
Briar asked us why our characters liked to dance so much. Angela and I laughed so hard we were in tears, while Naomi calmly explained that we liked to read books about ballet. Her ability to lie with a straight face is next level.
And now we also refer to sex as “ballet” or “dancing” and, occasionally, dating as “ballet class . ”
By the time I open the door to find Naomi holding a bottle of wine, I’ve managed to clean up most of the clutter. Some has been shoved into a closet, but the house looks passable.
Plus, the girls know me. It’s not like they think I’m a clean freak like Ang. They accept me anyway.
“Come on in!” I say, taking the wine.
Naomi slips off her loafers and tucks a strand of her chestnut hair behind one ear, even though her chin-length hair is in a perfect bob to begin with.
It’s prosecco—one of my favorites, and our usual for journal club. We love to experiment with different juices to create the ultimate mimosa.
She follows me to the kitchen, where we uncork the wine and fill the three waiting glasses halfway.
“Did Ang say what she was going to bring tonight?” Naomi asks, sipping from her glass while I pull the bottle of orange-guava-papaya-pineapple juice from the fridge.
“She didn’t say, but I’m hoping it’s something salty. I’m craving chips or pretzels or something.” I fill each glass to the top with the juice. “Cheers.”
Naomi and I clink glasses as the doorbell rings, followed by the sound of the front door opening.
“I’m here!” Angela’s voice travels through the house .
Her footsteps pad along the hallway to the kitchen in the back. She and Naomi have both spent so much time here that they treat my place like home, which I love.
I’d say I treat their houses like my home, but I try to be on better behavior there than I am in my own place.
We settle in my living room, each of us with a glass in hand. Angela’s veggie tray sits on the coffee table between us. It’s not chips, but there’s ranch dip, and the carrots are crunchy, so it’s a close second.
“So what did we think of the book?” I ask, looking between the two of them.
We’ve been reading a book by Sierra Simone, and let me just say, there was a lot of “dancing” involved.
“Forget the book. Tell us about the guy.” Angela points at me with her wineglass.
Naomi swallows her mouthful of carrots. “Oh. Yes. Details, please. I can’t believe you told Ang before you told me.”
“She didn’t tell me shit.”
They both stare at me.
I take a sip of my mimosa—orange-guava-papaya-pineapple makes a great mimosa, by the way—and prepare for a dramatic retelling of my wild night.
The late August temperatures are deceiving, a perfect seventy-five degrees and barely a cloud in the sky as we make our way across the quad to the student union for lunch.
This is the key time for campus tours for prospective students—June through August. The admissions office packs them in, offering a view of the campus through the lens of summer vacation and near-perfect weather.
We’ll have another few weeks of this before it gets cold, then colder.
It’s always mystified me that high school students do their college tours during the summer. I mean, I know that’s when they’re on vacation, and it’s convenient for their parents, obviously.
But it seems almost…disingenuous, somehow. Unless you go to college in a tropical climate, it’s going to be cold for most of the school year. Shouldn’t you visit your prospective home for the next four years at a time that’s representative of how your life will be?
The student union is a hub of campus activity. Right now, before most students come back for the semester, it seems almost dull compared to the usual bustle. There are a handful of upperclassmen here early—orientation leaders, student government representatives, RAs. They cluster around the larger tables, the ones with booth seating.
Angela, Naomi, and I head directly to our favorite spot—The Panini Press.
“What can I get you?” the shaggy-haired worker asks.
He keeps his eyes on the sandwich fixings, not looking up at us.
“Turkey and provolone with avocado,” I say.
It still feels strange to order with such abandon, to not worry about my weight the way I did when I was modeling.
“Chicken and pesto,” Naomi says. “Extra pesto, please.”
“Ham, Swiss, roasted red peppers, and tomatoes,” Angela adds. “And three bags of chips and three fountain drinks.”
“Three combos, coming right up.”
Naomi and I pull out our wallets, but Angela waves us off.
“I’ve got this one,” she says.
I bump her hip with mine as I grab two bags of Lay’s. Yes, I got the baked ones. Old habits die hard.
“Thanks, lady,” I tell her .
Shaggy sets three empty cups on the counter, pushing them toward us.
“Diet Coke?” I ask, picking up the cups and handing one to Naomi.
“You know it.” Angela waits for the paninis while Naomi and I fill the cups—two with Diet Coke for me and Angela, one with lemonade for Naomi.
She says soda rots your teeth, and she’s married to a dentist, so she’s probably right.
We carry the drinks to a table against one wall and set them down just as Angela arrives with three paninis.
I reach for the chips first, needing the crunch and the salty goodness, while Naomi reaches for her panini.
“So did I tell you what Josh and I did this weekend?” Naomi asks around a mouthful of food.
Angela’s eyes widen. “No. Is it dirty?”
Naomi grins wickedly. “Well. On Friday night, we…”
I chew the last bite of my panini slowly as Naomi shares the details, most of it in code, because undergrads aren’t much better than five-year-olds, at least when it comes to overhearing things and sharing them in inappropriate situations.
I let my gaze wander around the food court section of the student union to people watch. I especially love checking out what people are wearing, or eating, or how they walk, and seeing if I can guess which academic department they belong to.
The table of men in tweed jackets typing on laptops—English department. Professors working on their novels.
A woman scratching at a stack of papers with a pencil—Math. Probably theoretical, or maybe Physics.
Two dark-haired men in jeans, walking toward the panini station. One of them is from the Econ department, but the other I don’t recognize at first. Blue button-down shirt. I sip at my soda, thinking. He looks too casual for the sciences. Too down-to-earth for departments like Physiology or Religion or even Sociology.
God, I love puzzles.
I’m still trying to figure him out when he turns. I get a good look at his face, and it’s like a gut punch.
I’m no longer listening to Naomi’s story. I can barely hear her over the ringing in my ears.
Because even though I still don’t know what department he belongs in, I can easily place him.
It’s the guy from the bar.
My stand-in boyfriend.
My one-night stand.
The one I was never supposed to see again .
Heat rises in my cheeks as I remember our night together.
How he played my body effortlessly.
How I let him take control.
It was erotic and hot as hell in the moment, but that was when I thought I’d never see him again.
What is he doing here?