In Too Hard (Freshman Roommates Trilogy, Book 3) (2 page)

“God, just a blip? I flunked Calc. I think twice.” The smile again, this time a little bigger.
 

It was all I could do not to pull my top off and rub myself all over him. I tucked a strand of my straight hair behind an ear—a nervous habit I was trying to break. Like all my bad habits that I’d brought to Bribury. “But, anyway…yes, I was able to handle both the job and grades. It wasn’t a lot of hours at the admin building.”

“Think you could handle more?”

It wasn’t a loaded question in any way. No sexual innuendo in his voice at all. And yet I very much wanted to channel Jane and give him a Mae West answer about what all I could handle. “Yes,” was all I said.

“Good. I have something I think you’d be great at. It’s not for credits—though it should be—and it isn’t part of a work/study program, so you’d still have to keep your job at the admin building.”

He paused, and I nodded, waiting for him to go on.

“I balked at the extra section. Loudly. Part of the reason I took this year away from the city to do this was so I could really buckle down on my next novel. I barely got a few ideas jotted down this semester, and I jot down a
lot
of notes. I can only imagine the extra time it will take this spring.”

“Can’t they give you a TA or something, to help with reading all the papers?”

I briefly wondered if that’s what he had in mind for me. But no. They wouldn’t let a freshman, who had only just had the one class on creative writing, wield that much power over her fellow freshmen’s papers.

“They did offer a TA. And I probably should have taken it. But…I
really
like reading all the papers. Giving comments. Seeing if any of the stuff we talked about in class got through. I didn’t want to give that up. Not entirely. But then, what? Half the students have their papers read and critiqued by me, and the other half by a TA? That didn’t seem right. And, well, I’m sure a lot of people just randomly got my class. But, I’d like to think a few had actually heard of me and wanted to take the class
because
of me. So it didn’t seem, I don’t know,
right
to not read the papers myself.”

I wanted to tell him I’d taken his class because of him. That every time we had a paper returned I’d read and reread his comments on them. I just nodded and said, “Yes, I can see that. I think it’s good you want to read them yourself.”

“Is it?” He ran his hand across his mouth. A beautiful mouth with full lips, the lower one looking particularly suck-worthy. “Yeah. Good. I thought so.

“So instead of taking on a TA, they gave me the funds to use for an administrative assistant.”

“But if they wouldn’t be helping with the papers, or the class, what would the assistant be doing for you?” I asked. Then I had a vision of me running around town picking up Montrose’s dry cleaning and doing his grocery shopping or something.

I hated chores. With a passion. I’d had to do all of that back home, with two baby brothers and a mother that was, at best, neglectful, at worst, MIA.

And a father who, at least for me, was never in the picture.

Coming to Bribury, living in the dorms, meant I didn’t have to do those mundane chores anymore.

Sure, I had to do my laundry, and hit the store for snacks to have in the room and stuff like that. But I wasn’t planning dinner, or making sure the boys got to bed. Or to preschool. Or, basically survived.

So, the freedom of that kind of chore was symbolic to me, and I didn’t want to look back.

But the idea of being in Montrose’s life, even if it was to water his plants or something, was
very
tempting.

“Laundry, groceries, that type of thing?” I asked. I was about to nod my head that I’d be interested, but was stopped by his head shaking and the holding up of his hands.

“No. No. Nothing like that. I have a cleaning person who does all that crap.”

“Oh. What then?” Maybe my Mae West comeback wouldn’t have been far off base after all. Maybe he was looking for a different sort of “help.”

He motioned to my vacated chair for me to sit, which I did. Then he sat in Jane’s empty seat, turning his body toward mine. “For a long time now, I’ve been writing my second novel.”

“Okay?”

He rubbed his chin again, a look that was so “introspective professor” but on a young, hot face.

“Well, actually, not so much
writing
my next novel, as
working
on it. More like jotting down lots of notes on several different ideas I’m toying with.”

“I’m assuming that’s just part of the writing process?”

He shrugged, and looked forward, to the front of the classroom. He seemed kind of surprised by the role reversal, looking at the desk that he often leaned on as he lectured.

“I guess,” he said. “I don’t really know what the writing process is. Or what
my
typical process is.
Folly
just poured out of me. No notes, nothing. It was just a story I had to tell. This one…has not been…effortless.”

“Well, no. I imagine most novels aren’t. You’ll probably never have the experience you had with
Folly
again.”

His shoulders slumped, and he put his elbows on the little half table part of the desk. “That is the conclusion I have come to.” He looked over at me with an embarrassed smile. “And it took me five years to figure that out.”

“Better late than never?” I lamely offered.

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“I mean, it’s not like you’ve passed your prime. You’re still only…” I checked myself. “Late twenties? You haven’t even hit thirty yet, have you?”

He’d turned twenty-eight on October third. Unfortunately a day I didn’t have his class. Not that I would have brought it up or anything, but I thought maybe somebody in the class would have seen it online or somewhere and said something.

“Nope, not thirty. Only twenty-eight.” He looked to the ceiling. “God. Thirty in two fucking years.”

“It’s not exactly seventy.”

He shook his head and laughed a little, then looked at me. “You’re right. This might be a good arrangement. Don’t let me wallow, Ms. O’Brien. I tend to be a bit of a self-entitled prick at times.”

“Then you’re in the right place,” I said, waving my arms, encompassing all things Bribury.

An actual, full-bodied, laugh came out of him. A rich, deep sound that made my breath catch just a tiny bit, though I was very careful not to show my reaction.

“Yeah, pretty much,” he said. “So, I need to get my notes together. I’ve been rather…lax these past five years in organizing them in any way.”

“Are they all electronic? On your laptop or something?”

“Hardly any of them. And there are boxes and boxes. I had them all shipped to the apartment the college provided for me for the year. I sublet my place in New York, so I wanted them all here. Plus, I thought I’d have lots of time to work with them.”

“And you haven’t because of the class. I get it.”

“Well, yeah. But, if I’m honest, every time I open one of the boxes to get started on it, it all feels, I don’t know, daunting or something. And I panic and shut the boxes up.

“I even brought a few of them to my office in this building, thinking maybe that would help.”

“And it didn’t?”

He shook his head. “Nope.” He turned his whole body to face me, the slope of the desk lifting the flap of his sports coat, showing off his white, cotton oxford beneath. “What I’m looking for is someone to go through all the boxes, organize the notes by the different novel ideas, and then transcribe them all into an outline format for each of the books.”

“Books? Plural?”

“Oh, God, there must be ideas for twenty different novels in all those boxes.”

I was already nodding, going into organizational mode. “Can you give me your top three or four book ideas that will have the most notes? Maybe the priority I should use when working through them?”

His eyes, light grey earlier, turned a deeper shade as an almost tortured look crossed his face. “That’s just it. There is no front-runner. Or top three or four. It’s just all one big jumbled mess of ideas. I can’t…I haven’t been able to…”

I wanted to reach out and touch his arm, to soothe him. It was obvious that he was in some kind of literary pain. But sympathy—and touching—probably wouldn’t help me get the job.

Which made me wonder… “Why did you ask me? I mean, I’m assuming you’re asking me if I’d be interested in the job?”

“I am. The job’s yours if you want it.” His face cleared of the clouds a little, and he looked at me with a bit of searching.

“I do. But again, why me? Not that I don’t think I’d be good at it. I do. I think it’d be right up my alley, actually.”

“So do I. That’s why I came to you. As to why I picked you? Well, you referenced a lot of literature in your papers, so it’s obvious you’re well-read.” I nodded and waited. “From the paper you wrote about where you came from, it’s apparent that, let’s say, organizational skills were a part of your daily life.”

A nice way of saying I had to hold it all together because no one else would. “Yes, I’m very organized.”

He nodded, but his look said he knew more about me than I wanted him to, that he’d read between the lines. A necessary evil, I supposed, if you’re going to be truthful in your writing class.

“Well, this job is going to take a lot of organizing. And from the way you wrote your papers, it was obvious you understand basic literary structure. That will be key when you’re transcribing the notes into a workable outline.”

“Makes sense.”

He leaned a little closer. Not quite in my space, but a little past his. “But the kicker was when you wrote about one of your favorite hobbies—besides reading—being jigsaw puzzles.”

“You remember
that?”

He smiled. “I do.”

“And that was beneficial to this?” I motioned between him and me, then waved it around the classroom for good measure.

“Yes. It was like a light bulb went off for me when I was given the okay for an assistant. Because this is going to be one big, gigantic, friggin’ jigsaw puzzle.”

To do something I would truly love, and to do it in the Billy Montrose atmosphere? “Yes. I would really like to do this.”

“You don’t even want to know what it pays?”

And to get
paid
to do it? But I put on my poker face. “Well, yes. What would the pay be? What hours would you need me? I don’t have a car on campus, would that be an issue?”

He settled back in his chair, but still faced me. Did I imagine it, or did he let out a tiny sigh of relief? “The hours are whenever you’re available. It’s a lump sum for the job, paid out at the beginning of each month starting in January and going through May. It’s not an hourly wage, but for the completed job, so you can work whenever you’re able. I’ll get you a key to my office. And once you’re through there we’ll figure out what to do with the boxes in my apartment. It’s right on the edge of campus, and I walk it, but maybe we’d bring all the boxes down to the office. Or we…I don’t know, we’ll figure it out, okay?”

“Okay.”

“The total for the job is ten thousand dollars. They figured it at their starting administrative assistant’s rate for six months. I can disperse that as I see fit. You’re obviously not expected to work forty hours, but you only have five months to do the job.

“You’d be paid two thousand on the first of each month. We would be in constant contact, obviously, with your progress. If it doesn’t seem like you can finish it all before you’re done for the year—”

“I’ll get it done.” Holy shit. Ten thousand would be a huge help with my expenses. It would maybe even allow me to stay here over the summer and get a few classes in.

The thought of going home for the summer had been the only sense of dread I’d had since arriving at Bribury.

He smiled. “Ms. O’Brien, you have not seen the amount of notes we’re talking about.”

“I’ll get it done. I accept the offer.”

“Great.” He stood up and moved to his desk and started to shove things into his satchel. “Are you still on campus tomorrow, or are you heading home today?”

“No, I’m here tomorrow. Actually, I’m staying through the break. Because of my job with the admin building, I’m helping with the testing of the new front end system they’re installing over the break.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, turning around. “I remember reading about that. A big deal, I guess?”

“Yeah. It affects every system on campus.”

“Right, right. I have to do something different for online grading next semester or…something. I have the email on it.”

“Yes. So, I’m here through the whole break.”

“Not going home at all?” he asked. He’d finished packing his bag, grabbed his coat and came to stand in front of me.

I stood up and reached for my coat. He took it from my hands and held it open for me. The gesture was so foreign to me that it took me a second to realize he was helping me. If that had happened in my neighborhood, the guy would have taken off running, my coat in hand, and me chasing after him.

I slid into the coat, wishing his hands would linger on my shoulders or some such mushy crap, but he stepped away as soon as the garment was on.