Broken (2 page)

“So my mom comes in drunk off her ass, again. Of course. And you will never guess who came to my rescue.”

“Who?” Jack was interested in this.

“You remember me telling you about my professor?”

“The hot one?”

“The smoking hot one,” I said with a giggle. “Oh, lord, I’m quite sure that he got an eyeful and an earful from dear Ms. James. I sure hope that she wasn’t too much in rare form last night.”

“You know she was,” Jack said. “Bitch don’t know how to act differently.” Jack poured me another glass of orange juice. “So, how did he come to your rescue?”

“He hired a nanny to go and watch Aaron, and sent a driver to drive her drunk ass back to her hovel.” I shook my head. “What a guy, huh?”

“Uh, huh. Just don’t go fantasizing about Professor O’Dreamboat.”

“I’m not,” I said, then immediately felt embarrassed. I took another sip of orange juice and dug into my French toast. “So, what are you guys doing today?” I hoped that they were going somewhere. I really needed some personal time.

“Catching some movies at the film festival they’re having in midtown. You wanna come with?”

“No, thanks. I really need to decompress. This is my only day off. Besides, I need to do some studying.” God knew I was way behind on that.

But I didn’t end up studying. I ended up watching shows on television and zoning out on the couch. This was usually my reaction to stress, and the entire events of the previous evening had me way stressed. I ended up dozing on the couch.

About 3 PM, however, I heard my door buzz.

“Hello?” I said into the receiver. “May I help you?”

“Ms. James?” a familiar voice questioned me. “This is Professor O’Hara. Could I come up?”

What the hell?
“Uh, yeah, come on up,” I said, buzzing him, and then looked around the room. The apartment was neat enough, but I felt even more embarrassment about the size of it. Living in Manhattan was ridiculously expensive, he had to understand that. Even so, I imagined that he might be appalled by my hovel.

He appeared at my door a few minutes later. My breath caught upon looking at him. Dressed in a leather jacket, scarf, white button down and jeans, he looked every bit the part of a male model who somehow managed to become one of the world’s premiere architects. His eyes were so blue that I couldn’t stand to look at them for more than two seconds, before I looked away with shyness.

“Uh, come in,” I said. “Sit down. Can I fix you a drink?”

“No, I can’t stay,” he said. “My, uh, girlfriend is in the car downstairs.”

“You have a car?” I said. “You’re like the only person I know who has a car.”

He smiled, showing his dimples. I felt my knees turning to jelly, and I saw that my hand was shaking as I handed him my proffering of water. He drank it politely. “I, uh, just wanted to make sure you’re ok. I didn’t get to see you much last night. Penelope didn’t want to stay.”

I felt a little stunned. Nobody had ever gone out their way to help me like this. “Yes, thanks so much for last night.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Well, we were in the neighborhood so….” At that, I heard a loud sound of a car honking. He shrugged. “Double parked. I’ll see you tomorrow.” And, just like that, he was gone.

Chapter 2

Nick

I made my way back to my car, after seeing Scotty, my student. I felt badly for her, having seen the effect of dysfunctional parents upon Ryan, my best friend and sometime lover back in the day. Well, not really back in the day, if you count that amazing night I had with him and Iris, which happened right before I decided to high-tail it out of Kansas City. I got out of town in part because I was offered a job here, which would be a definite step up, as I would get the chance to design some of the most high-profile projects in the world. I also had always wanted the chance to help produce future architects, so my part-time position as
an adjunct professor at Columbia was also a good fit.

Mainly, though, I needed to put some distance between myself and Iris. I never knew that I could fall in love like that, and it still stung. I didn’t really want her and Ryan to be in my life anymore on a regular basis, and I knew that if I stayed in town, that’s exactly what would happen. So, I left. I had to. Otherwise, I don’t think that I could have moved on.

I met Penelope at an art gallery opening that I attended when I first go to town. I rolled into the event, she was there, we ended up in bed about two hours later, and she basically never left my Tribeca loft. Not that she moved in, but she soon became a fixture. Yeah, it was my pattern, and Penelope was like every other woman that I ended up with. But, it was best to be with someone like her. No chance of falling in love, so there was no chance of getting my heart stomped on like what had happened with Iris.

I got into the car. Penelope had a disinterested look on her beautiful face. She raised a single eyebrow. “You see your lackey?” she asked, then brought out a compact mirror and looked into it. “I really need to get more highlights,” she said with a note of disgust. She fluffed her hair up a little, then pursed her lips. She looked like a parakeet flirting with her reflection. The parakeets have an excuse, though- they think that that their reflection is another bird. Penelope was just a narcissist.

“Yeah, I saw her. She seemed okay.”

Penelope wasn’t listening to me, though. She was too busy looking in the mirror. I reached over and grabbed the mirror out of her hand.

She narrowed her eyes, said nothing, and just brought another mirror out of her purse.

I sighed. It wasn’t worth fighting about.

“So, I was thinking of asking Scotty if she would like to intern at my office,” I said.

This got Penelope’s attention. “Like hell you will.”

I raised both of my eyebrows. “I wasn’t aware that I had to get your permission to do this.”

“Listen, buddy. Don’t ever think that I can’t snap my fingers and be with anybody in this city. You piss me off, and you’ll see what happens.”

At that, I stopped the car in the middle of the busy Manhattan street. “Get out,” I ordered her. “NOW.”

The look on her face was priceless as she stepped out of my car and made her way to the sidewalk. She was immediately on her phone and hailing a cab simultaneously.

I shook my head. Somehow women like Penelope were losing their hold on my attention. It was almost as if Iris broke some kind of fever I had, a fever that actually drew me to these narcissistic bimbos in the first place. Penelope wasn’t even particularly good in bed. Narcissistic people usually weren’t. Alexis was the exception, but she really wasn’t narcissistic as much she was just plumb crazy.

Iris had managed to penetrate my armor, and I didn’t like it one bit. It was time to put my wall up again. So, I backed up the car and motioned to Penelope. “Get in,” I ordered. To my surprise, she got back into the car with
out a word of protest. She looked at me expectantly. “Let’s get one thing straight,” I said, “if I want to offer Scotty an internship, I’m going to. I won’t have you or anybody else dictating anything in my life. We clear?”

She said nothing, just nodded her head.

“Good. Now let’s go to my home.”

And we headed to my loft in Tribeca, Penelope not saying another word.

Chapter 3

Scotty

Monday evening, after my night design course, Professor O’Hara asked to speak to me.

“Ms. James,” he called to me as I was packing up my backpack. I turned my head. I was still so mortified about how he had to help me with my mom, and his short visit to my place didn’t dim this mortification one bit. I spent the entire class that evening studiously avoiding his eyes.

“Uh, yes, Professor?”

“I was wondering if you could meet me in my office tomorrow.”

“What time?” I asked, thinking that I would have to fit it in between studying, going to class, and my night shift at the bar tomorrow night, which would start at 4 PM.

“What’s good for you?”

“No later than two,” I said. That would give me time to take the subway home, change and shower and get to the bar on time, assuming that this wasn’t a long meeting.

“Two it is then,” he said.

Which is how I found myself making my way to his office at two o’clock that Tuesday. I had no idea why he wanted to see me. I hoped that the incident with my mom and brother wouldn’t rear its ugly head. I really wanted to put that entire thing behind me.

I took a deep breath as I made my way to his office. I knocked lightly on the door, which was open.

“Come in,” he said, and I entered his enormous office. I was stunned that he could have such a beautiful place here on campus, considering he was only an adjunct professor. High ceilings, and floor to ceiling windows that looked out on the bustling city. He also had amazing, modern taste.
A glass desk wrapped around one of the walls, and a leather sofa with chrome feet was on another wall. His floors were hardwood, with an enormous throw-rug in multiple colors and patterns covered up much of the area. A Kandinsky painting was on one of the walls. I somehow knew this about him, that he preferred edgy and contemporary, because the buildings that he designed all had a certain contemporary and edgy flair themselves.

My heart was pounding as I made my way to one of his ergonomic chairs. He looked at me, and my heart was pounding even more. Those eyes, those beautiful blue eyes….so bright and
so…haunted? Was I interpreting them correctly? I shook my head, shaking off my woman’s intuition in the process.

I took a deep breath. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, uh…do you mind if I call you Scotia?” Which was my given name.

I shook my head. “Actually, everybody just calls me Scotty.”

He smiled, his dimples reappearing. I wanted to melt after seeing those dimples. His teeth were absolutely perfect, and his smile lit up the entire room.

“Ok, Scotty,” he said. “The reason why I wanted to see you is, well, I was wondering where you wanted to go with your career. You have some real talent, and my firm was actually looking for an intern.”

My mouth dropped open. The top architectural firm in New York City, one of the top ten in the entire world, and I was getting the chance to intern with them?

My mouth ran before my brain could catch up. “Uh, what’s the catch?” Then I immediately felt embarrassed. “Oh, I mean-“

But Professor O’Hara was smiling. “No catch. I just see some real potential with you, that’s all.”

I wasn’t prepared for this, somehow. And I really didn’t know where I would ever fit it in. Full load of graduate architectural classes, working part-time…I barely had a chance to sleep as it was. And there was, in the back of my mind, the thought that this was possibly a pity offer. Although I don’t quite know how he could have convinced his partners to hire me out of pity.

“Professor O’Hara,” I began.

“Please, call me Nick.”

That didn’t seem right at all, calling him by his first name. I never called a professor by his first name. But I obliged anyway. “Uh, Nick, uh, that’s such a wonderful offer, but I, I, I don’t have the time in my schedule to fit something like that in.”

He nodded. “Well, there will be pay, of course. In exchange for 20 hours a week at the firm, we can pay you $40,000 a year.”

$40,000 a year? That was about what I made working 30 hours a week at the bar. And this position, unlike my bartending position, would actually give me a great deal of professional development.

“Uh,” I began.

He interrupted. “Scotty. I get the feeling that you don’t believe in yourself.” He didn’t elaborate on this comment, but just sat there, looking at me. His body language and expression was no longer inviting. He looked annoyed, and his arms were crossed in front of him.

“No, it’s not that. It’s just, well, there are so many other talented students out there. I was just wondering, if, you know, this has something to do with my, uh, home life.”

He raised one eyebrow. “What, you think that I would stick my neck out for you because your mother is a drunk and your brother probably needs to be in foster care?” Then he snorted. “Somehow I get the feeling that you not only don’t believe in yourself, but you also don’t believe in me.”

This conversation was taking a turn for the surreal. I never imagined that I would be having such a talk with my professor. “It’s not that,” I said, feeling my defensive hackles rising.

“Than what is it?”

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t feel that I was worthy. I wanted to be honest. Being a foster kid, off and on, for most of my life instilled a general sense of unworthiness in me, as did my verbally abusive mother, who always told me that I would never amount to anything. But I was too embarrassed to admit to this. So I just said “I don’t want to work for your firm. It’s not the direction that I want to go.”

“Really. Not the direction you want to go.” This was not a question, but a very skeptical statement. “Not the direction you want to go.”

“Right. I was thinking more along the lines of a firm that has more of a classical aesthetic.”

“Scotty. I’ve seen your designs. You’re a perfect fit.”

“I just don’t want to,” I said, well aware of how unprofessional I was sounding. “Can I go? I’m going to be late for my shift.” I desperately looked at the clock on the wall. It read 2:30. I was going to be cutting it close as it was.

He said nothing, but just waved his hand dismissively.

He looked pissed.

At that, I left.