Kissing Galileo: Dear Professor Book #2

by Penny Reid

  Her pleasure sounds struck me directly in the groin and I chased a breath, turning away from her and staring unseeingly at the stovetop. I couldn’t decide if I should never feed her anything delicious again, or if I should bake bread for her daily.

  “Sorry. It’s just that I lust crusty bread. This is so good.”

  I laughed lightly, shaking myself, and opening the carton of eggs on the counter for the carbonara sauce. But then I promptly forgot what I was doing when she moaned again.

  Dammit. I was not myself.

  Or maybe I was finally seeing myself for who I truly was. I’m naïve. I lack confidence because I lack knowledge and experience.

  Andy had been right about almost everything: I wanted her, badly. I was in love with her. I wasn’t in control.

  But he’d been wrong about one very important fact: Emily deserved so much more and better than me. And it wasn’t because of the way I looked with my clothes off, and it wasn’t because I’d been heavy my whole life until now, and it wasn’t because I didn’t think I was smart, or kind, or attractive. I knew I was intelligent, and good, and—objectively—handsome.

  It was because she was just so much more, in every way, on every list. Emily was the outlier in every cohort. No amount of adding my positive traits together would ever balance the sheet between us.

  I would never be enough.

  Chapter 16

  *Emily*

  “Admit it, it’s delicious.” I poked him in the side.

  Anna’s cousin shook his head, his lips pressed tightly together.

  “Admit it, Abram! It’s the best boxed wine you’ve ever had.” Anna also poked him.

  Abram caught her hand, giving her a cagey look. “It’s pretty good.”

  “Pretty good?!” Anna and I said in unison, making him laugh.

  It was one of those rare Saturdays when I didn’t have to work. The day was mine to do with whatever I pleased, and so it pleased me to hang out with Anna and her cousin, drinking red wine before we went out to an art show, pretending to be sophisticated. Abram was a musician, lived in New York, and I’d known him since I was seven.

  Taking another sip, he sauntered over to Anna’s couch. We stared after him, stunned. He sat at one end, sniffing his glass. “I’ve had a lot of boxed wine in my time, and—”

  Anna snorted. “Yeah. Okay, grandpa.”

  “And, this is pretty good, if you like your reds sweet with no legs. I’ll give you a list of others to check out for a better balance and robust body.”

  I was about to tell him how pretentious he sounded when my phone rang, distracting me.

  “You sound ridiculous,” Anna said, following him into the living room. “Better balance and robust body.’” I couldn’t see her face, but I knew she was rolling her eyes. “Oh? Really? Are you spending the summer in Napa? Fancy yourself a bit of a sommelier, do you?”

  Smirking as I glanced at my phone’s screen—I could always count on Anna to speak my mind—my good humor was quickly replaced with mild irritation.

  Landon. Blah.

  I sent the call to voicemail and joined my friends, sitting on the coffee table and sipping on my tasty wine. Abram was currently laughing as Anna took another sip of her wine, her pinkie finger straight in the air.

  “Who was it?” Anna lifted her chin toward me when she finished making fun of her cousin.

  “It’s . . .” I made a face and shook my head. I mean, who calls anymore? Didn’t he understand the rules of engagement? The only people who get a pass from the text-first rule were grandparents, parents, and best friends. That’s it. “Just this guy. Nothing important.”

  Landon was a guy in my differential equations class this semester who’d asked for my number last week. Presently, it was the third month of the spring term and he’d said it had taken him all three months to work up the courage to ask. I thought that was awfully sweet. So, since I was unattached, and Landon checked all the boxes on my type—cute, funny, sweet, small of stature—I’d given it to him. I realized now that I’d made a mistake.

  He . . . kept . . . calling, and we hadn’t even gone on a date yet. Send a text, Landon!

  “You didn’t answer it?” Abram lifted an eyebrow, and the action drew my attention to his nose. He’d broken it last year and it hadn’t healed right, which meant he sometimes didn’t look like himself. Like now.

  “I’m here with you.” I waved my free hand between my friends. “I don’t need to talk to him.”

  “Is it him?” Anna’s eyes grew very, very large and she lowered her voice by two octaves, making me chuckle.

  Abram glanced between us. “Him? Who is him?”

  “Anna—”

  She cut me off. “Him is Dr. Hanover, her—”

  “Gynecologist?” he asked, being the doofus that he was.

  “No, Abram. Not her gynecologist.” Anna sighed, making Abram laugh. The three of us had this relationship: we were the eternally exasperated younger sisters and he was the older brother who enjoyed teasing us. “Her research methods professor.”

  Abram shook his head as he moved it back to me, blinking his eyes cartoonishly. “Wait, what? Your research methods professor is your friend?”

  “Yes. He is. But that wasn’t Victor on the phone. That was someone else.”

  “Back up.” Abram rested back on the cushions, his elbow resting on the arm of the sofa. “How did you become friends with your research methods professor?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Oh. Good.” He checked his wrist, which didn’t have a watch. “That’s right, it’s story time.”

  “I didn’t say I was going to tell you the story.” I sipped my wine, glaring at him over the rim.

  “She’s hot for him, but they decided to be friends.”

  “Anna!” I almost choked on my wine.

  “It’s not that long of a story,” she said to me matter-of-factly. “You just don’t want to tell him.”

  “He friend-zoned you?” Abram was laughing, like this information thrilled him to no end.

  “I hate that word.” I stuck my nose in my wineglass and took a deep breath. Ah, wine, clearly my only friend in the room.

  “I hate that people hate that word.” Abram shrugged. “Take the word in the spirit it’s intended and stop reading so much into it.”

  “Fine. Then, yes. In the spirit in which the word was intended, he friend-zoned me. Or, I guess it was mutual.”

  “But you’re hot for him,” Anna helpfully reminded me.

  “I was.” I said this between clenched teeth.

  “She is.” Anna mimicked my clenched teeth voice.

  “But now we’re friends, and it’s good,” I said, reminding her and myself. “I like being his friend. He’s a good friend.”

  “How is he a good friend?” Abram asked, rubbing his bearded chin, looking genuinely curious. “I mean, I’m interested in this. How do you be friends with someone you’re hot for?”

  “You want me to give you a lesson? Uh, let’s see. He’s had me over to his place a few times. He’s made me dinner, or I’ve made dinner. We’ve been to a few movies. We went hiking. He helped me with my car, getting it fixed.” Talking about Victor made my chest feel tight and uncomfortable. I missed him. I hadn’t seen Victor in over three weeks. He’d left town for spring break and our schedules hadn’t aligned since. But! We still texted daily.

  “Huh.” Abram was still rubbing his chin.

  “What?” I nudged his leg with my foot.

  “It’s just—” Abram made a face, telling me he was confused. “Is he gay?”

  “Abram!” Anna sat straight up.

  “What? It’s a fair question. Emily is awesome. Smart, funny. Cool.” He gestured to me with his hand. “What’s his deal?”

  “Then what’s your deal?” Anna hit her cousin lightly on the shoulder. “You’ve never made a move on Emily.”

  “We grew up together. She’s like another one of you.”

  “Another on
e of me?”

  “Yes. Like a little sister. It would be—” Abram made a face of revulsion “—horrifying.”

  “Thanks, A-man. I feel the same way about you.”

  He gave me a grin, and even with the bushy beard I could just make out his dimples. “But I’m judging this guy—wait, how old is he?”

  I stared at the wall over Abram’s shoulder and tried to think back over the last few months, realizing I’d never asked Victor for his age. “I don’t know, early thirties, I guess.”

  “Okay, yes. I’m judging him for putting you in the friend zone. Unless he’s gay.”

  While I appreciated Abram acting like the big brother, I felt the need to defend Victor. “He’s not gay. He’s—”

  “What?”

  “He’s got a lot going on. And he’s my professor.”

  “Was your professor, last semester,” Anna corrected. “Plus, he had that woman appointed as your advocate.”

  “Oh, like you and Luca?” Abram pointed at his cousin.

  “Yes. Precisely.”

  “Why’d he have an advocate appointed?”

  “It’s a long story!” I went to take a sip of my wine, hoping it would encourage them to do the same, and found my glass was empty. Standing, I offered, “More wine?”

  They shook their heads, so I walked to the kitchen.

  But then I heard Anna loud-whisper, “He saw her naked.”

  “ANNA!” I never should have told her about my job!

  “What?” She turned over her shoulder, giving me a disgruntled look. “You keep saying things are long stories and they’re not.”

  “Hold up. When and how did he see you naked?”

  I glared at Anna. She swallowed uncomfortably, realizing her mistake too late.

  Abram glanced between us, looking like he was ready to go into overprotective mode. “Wait. Did he—”

  I waved my hand in the air. “It’s fine. Whatever. I’ve been working at a lingerie store modeling lingerie. He came in with a customer—his dad, gross, right? But his dad is gross, not Victor—and I was stage three naked when he saw me.”

  “Huh.” He nodded, frowning mildly. “What’s stage three naked?”

  Of course Abram isn’t fazed by me modeling lingerie. Of course.

  “That is a long story,” Anna cut in. “Just accept the fact that he saw her naked, realized she was a student, and then had the advocate appointed for her peace of mind. It was very stand-up of him.”

  I shrugged, filling my glass from the wine spigot, again feeling protective of Victor. “Well, he’s a stand-up guy.”

  “Ohhhh,” Abram said, like he just realized something.

  “What?” Anna and I asked in unison.

  “He’s a stand-up guy.”

  My friend and I shared a look, and she asked, “So?”

  “So, he thinks you’re too young to date.” Abram nodded, like this explained everything.

  “What?” I couldn’t keep the irritation from my voice. “That’s preposterous.”

  “It’s not. The age difference, he sees you as a kid, too young to date, but he enjoys your company.” Abram was back to rubbing his chin. “Well, good for him. I like him already.”

  “You like him because he won’t date me?”

  “Actually, yes. I like him because he likes you enough to hang out with you and not date you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I reclaimed my seat on the coffee table. “Why is this worthy of your respect?”

  “Because most men are not this way. Either a girl is to fuck, date, related, or nothing.”

  Anna gasped. And then she and I shared a shocked looked. And then she said, “That’s super shitty.”

  “That’s men.”

  “I object. What about your friend Kaitlyn? O—or Ruthie? Or—or your friend Jenny?” Anna stumbled over her words.

  “I didn’t say I was that way. I have a lot of female friends. I like hanging out with women, especially other musicians. I love women. But most guys I know only have male friends.”

  “Why is that?”

  Abram shrugged. “If I had to guess, then I’d say because they have an inability to see a woman as anything other than something sexual. Marie writes about this shit all the time.”

  Marie was Abram’s older sister and therefore Anna’s cousin. She was also a journalist.

  “What? Which article?” I hadn’t been keeping up with her work, though I did enjoy reading her when I was a teenager. The topics made me feel scandalized even as they informed me.

  “For starters, that one about men with sisters, or raised exclusively by women, and how they’re more likely to have female friends, and even then it’s still super low.”

  “Well. That’s depressing.” Anna took a sip of her wine as though to punctuate her opinion.

  “But it makes sense, right? Look at how women are depicted in the media. Look at all the products out there for women that aren’t for men. She wrote that other piece about how people are treated differently if they’re overweight, but women get it much, much, much worse than men, and they think this is because a woman’s value is still intrinsically tied to—”

  “Wait. Wait a minute.” I waved my hand to get his attention. “Go back. What was that? About how overweight people are treated? What did she say?”

  “She didn’t say anything, she just reported on results from a meta thing.”

  “A meta thing? You mean a meta-analysis?” I asked.

  “Yep. That’s it.” He nodded. “Meta-analysis, where they take a bunch of studies and look at all the information together.”

  “That’s right. What did it say?” I leaned closer.

  “Just that they’re ignored—particularly women—in our society. They did these tests situations, where they sent in a thin woman, to like—you know—an auto repair shop, the grocery store, or the doctor’s office. Whatever, normal, everyday places. And then they dressed the same woman up to be heavier. When she was thin, people made eye contact, smiled more, spoke more, she had to wait less to be waited on. When she was heavy, she was basically ignored.”

  Now I gasped. “Holy shit.”

  “This surprises you?” Anna asked, giving me the side-eye.

  “I guess I’ve never thought about it. Did they do it with a man?”

  “Yeah. But he wasn’t as ignored. People didn’t smile as much and all that as when he was thin, but they treated him better than the woman. They still waited on him, they just weren’t as friendly.”

  “That is so messed up.” My gaze fell to the couch as I worked through my feelings. Apparently, I had a lot of feelings about this. “Why did I not know about this? I feel like an idiot.” Especially considering how my mother struggled with body image.

  I’d always considered her concerns to be about self-worth, not about how others treated her. BLARG!

  I felt ashamed of my own ignorance. But also, like the clouds that had obscured Victor parted. He didn’t like hanging out in public. He liked watching movies at my place or at his. When we did go out to dinner, he always seemed hyper aware of the women who looked at him—or the men—and, invariably, just like the first time when he pointed it out, he couldn’t seem to relax.

  What had he said?

  None of these people would look at me twice if they saw what I looked like before.

  And I liked that person, even if no one else did.

  “It is messed up,” Abram said on a sigh. “Marie was pretty enraged. She wouldn’t stop talking about it for months. She still brings it up.”

  “No wonder,” I mumbled.

  “No wonder what?” Anna nudged me with her foot like I’d done to Abram earlier.

  “It’s just, Victor—Dr. Hanover—doesn’t like going out to restaurants, so we always go to his place or my place, and it must be because he doesn’t like the attention he gets.”

  “Am I missing something?” Abram was glancing between us again.

  Anna pointed a finger at me. “Don’t
say it’s a long story.”

  Rolling my eyes, I said, “Victor lost about a hundred and fifty pounds last year.”

  “Whoa.” Abram’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Yes.”

  “And he told you he doesn’t like the attention?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I never pushed him on it. When we first decided to be friends he said something like, ‘If they saw the real me, they wouldn’t look at me.’ And so I assumed it meant he had, or has, residual body image concerns or self-consciousness about how he looks. And when I say he doesn’t like going out, I mean he really hates it. Like, he actively scowls at women who are sending him flirty looks whenever we do.”

  Abram was shaking his head before I finished speaking. “Dude, you should read Marie’s story. I’ll send it to you. She goes over this. Usually, it’s not about a person’s image of themselves, it’s about how they’re being treated by others. This guy, this Victor guy you’re friends with, think about things from his perspective. He’s treated one way for most of his life, right? Like, people aren’t friendly with him, women don’t give him attention. That’s not because there’s anything wrong with him. Marie talks about this, that’s because the world we live in sees non-thin people as less valuable.”

  “Ugh.”

  “And then, he loses the weight, right? And he’s not a different person, right? He’s the same—same intelligence, same interests, same sense of humor, all that—but people are treating him differently. Like, a lot differently. Like, he’s worthier of their attention, they see him, they want to know him. And why? Because he weighs less? That would piss me off too.”

  I tapped my nail on the lip of my wineglass. “Well, when you put it like that.”

  “Man, I really like this guy. He sounds awesome.” Abram took a gulp of his wine and then made a face, glancing at it. “This is really sweet. Do you guys have anything else?”

  I ignored his request for an alternate beverage, mostly because I was thinking about Victor. And when I thought about Victor, it was difficult to stop. “He is actually kind of awesome.”

  “No wonder you’re hot for him.” Abram set his glass on the side table.