by Ivy Collins
Slowly—very slowly—I run out of tears. I lean my head on his shoulder, too exhausted to move. I’m trembling uncontrollably. It’s always a little too cold in these lecture halls, and my body doesn’t have the strength to heat me up right now.
Professor Oliver shifts, leaning me down into the chair. I let out an instinctive whimper as he lets me go, and he winces as though I’ve hurt him. It’s almost more surreal seeing that human, worried expression on his face than it is that I’m shivering alone with him in the dark. “Just take a moment,” he tells me, with a reassuring squeeze of my hand. “I’ll find you something to warm up.”
He steps away, and I feel very alone and very afraid again. I close my eyes and try to breathe. This shouldn’t be so hard, I think. I’m just as afraid now as I was before he held me. But somehow, knowing that there’s a safer place I could be makes this all so much more painful.
I force some steel into my spine anyway. I can’t rely on someone else to hold me tonight. I’ve got things to do. I don’t have a solution for my housing situation yet, but I need one anyway, which means I need to start planning. I swallow down my weakness and force away those tantalizing thoughts of throwing myself into Professor Oliver’s arms and not letting go. He’s got his own life to deal with, and I’m not going to make this any more awkward on him than it already is.
I need to move my things, I think to myself logically. Which means I need a truck. Truck rentals are probably closed by now. I don’t know anyone with a truck.
A hint of panic rises up inside me again, but I ignore it ruthlessly.
I can leave some furniture behind. It’s mostly ratty stuff anyway. I can take the important things, put them in my car. I’ll find a motel for the night, and deal with the rest tomorrow.
That’s doable. That sounds good. It almost sounds like a plan.
A warm jacket closes around my shoulders, assaulting me with the intoxicating scent of cologne and interrupting my train of thought. I blink blearily, and see Professor Oliver leaning down toward me again, tucking his tailored tweed jacket around me. There’s a strange intensity to the way he looks at me, as though I’m one of his research problems that needs solving.
I like that look. It makes me shiver in a very different way, even if it’s not what I think it is.
“Oh,” I rasp dimly. The word slips out before I can stop it. I’d been so determined to get back to solving my life without him that I’d nearly convinced my brain he wasn’t in the room at all.
His eyebrow arches at me again. “Oh?” he repeats. “How eloquent. I look forward to your short answer questions, Miss Eddings. With rhetorical skills like that, I expect they’ll be sheer poetry.”
I choke on a laugh. This feels normal. Finally, a thread of sanity. “I was planning on writing you a sonnet about binary search trees,” I inform him. “But now that you’ve guessed my plan, I’ll have to switch things up. How do you feel about limericks?”
“Compact and to the point,” he says, with a hint of approval. He slides his arm through mine, helping me back to my feet, and I nearly lose my hard-won composure. He’s so damned warm, and he smells so good that I just want to lose myself in him all over again. “I’ll admit, if you summarize binary search trees in a single verse, I’ll be damned impressed.”
I grin shakily at him. “There once was a tree from Nantucket,” I start, “that kept all of its nodes in two buckets—“
He coughs in surprise, and now I know I have to keep going.
“—to search is O(h), ‘till that tree comes of age; it’s unbalanced and O(n), so fuck it.”
There’s an impressive silence after that, as he helps me toward the door. Finally, he says: “I refuse to believe you just made that up on the spot.”
A hysterical, half-mad cackle escapes me. “I was the limerick queen of elementary school,” I inform him triumphantly. “I can turn anything into a vaguely dirty rhyme.”
Professor Oliver shakes his head disbelievingly. The rest of what I said seeps in then, and he presses his fingers to his forehead. “You just made a double-entendre about fucking a tree?” he mutters.
I look away from him quickly at that. Something about hearing him say the word fuck so openly feels strange. It’s not like it’s not merited, given the stress of the last little bit, but it’s another step over the professional line between us, and I’m still guiltily enjoying it.
He’s got my bag over his shoulder, I notice belatedly. It’s another tempting whisper in that fantasy of mine. Someone to hold me. Someone who does things for me when I’m upset, just because they notice I need it.
I’m almost disappointed to realize that Professor Oliver is a good, generous man, underneath that cutting tongue of his. I might have been able to take this crazy fantasy of mine a little farther, if it wasn’t for that exact decency. He’s shown me more of himself than he should, crossed lines that he probably shouldn’t, out of a sense of generosity. The fantasy, I decide, has to stay safely in my head. I’ll indulge it there—for the sake of my sanity, for the sake of having something to be happy about right now. But at the end of the day, I know I’m going to help him put new distance between us as soon as it’s reasonably possible.
“Thanks,” I mumble shyly, as we head out into the parking lot. It’s dark outside already—still a little chilly, since we’re in the middle of December. It’s started to drizzle miserably, just to cap things off. It’s not going to be fun loading up my car with a flashlight. But the longer I lean on Professor Oliver—Elijah, that fantasy sighs at me—the more I feel like I’m building up strength. I might just have the fortitude in me to get through this gauntlet and collapse in a motel bed at some ungodly hour. “I, um. I really appreciate this. I’m sure I’ll be fine in a bit.”
Elijah pulls a set of keys from the pocket in the jacket that still rests around my shoulders. He flicks a button, and the sedan in front of us chirps, unlocking its doors.
I blink.
“I’m hardly going to let you drive in this state,” he says, with a hint of acid in his tone. It sounds like the most reasonable thing in the world, the way he says it. “There’s a halfway decent cafe nearby. We’ll get you a hot meal and some proper tea, and—“ He pauses partway through, then sighs. “We’ll get you a hot meal and some coffee, I suppose. There’s no proper tea to be found in this hellscape.”
I’m too dazed to bother protesting. I know I need to get started on moving my things, but the prospect of cozying up to my hot British professor in a cafe is too tempting to pass up. Instead, my mouth moves without me, and I say: “We threw all the proper tea in the harbor, just to spite you personally.”
Elijah shakes his head at me. “Get in the passenger’s seat,” he mutters. “And for god’s sake, use your seatbelt, you colonial scum.”
ELIJAH
What am I going to do with this woman?
I’ve been sitting across from her at the popular late-night cafe near campus for a good fifteen minutes now, ruminating on that question.
There’s a bit of light back in her eyes, now that she’s had a good cry and nibbled around the edges of a sandwich. There was a brief moment where she protested that seven dollar sandwich with that bizarre American stubbornness of hers—as though seven dollars and change is going to break me. I studiously ignored her, and added a coffee onto the tab as punishment. I’ve slowly learned that arguing with Sophie is the best way to make her dig in her heels even further. Ignoring her arguments just drives her enjoyably wild.
My lips twitch at that thought, before I can stop myself. Then, a very inappropriate image asserts itself in my mind, taking things a step further. I imagine how satisfying it would be to ignore her as she breathes my name, begging for mercy, as I kiss my way up her thighs—
“Thinking about fucking trees again?” Sophie asks me mildly.
I blink quickly, jerked back to the present. The joking remark hits far too close to home, and I find myself flustered for once. I’m deeply aware of the inappropri
ateness of the thought, but absolutely unable to banish it as I stare across the table at her smirk. The cafe is dimly lit, with plenty of private corners. It’s a far cry from the sterile fluorescent atmosphere of a lecture hall.
“Fucking binary search trees,” I correct her. “You have to be specific. There’s an awful messy number of trees out there. Every time I think we’ve done coming up with them, someone else gets a bright idea of how to build their own special bubble sort/self-balancing/FUBAR-enabled binary tree implementation that will surely be different from all the others—“
That wicked grin of hers increases, and an oddly warm, gentle feeling joins the heat in my blood. It’s good to see her smile. It’s good to make her smile, to know I’ve engineered the outcome myself.
“Are FUBAR-enabled binary trees going to be on the exam, Professor?” Sophie asks me, with a blatantly bemused expression on her face.
“Yes,” I tell her, with as stiff a tone as I can manage. “Right next to fucking binary search trees and short answer limerick questions.”
She laughs delightedly, and the sound doesn’t bother me. It’s rich and genuine, and it feels like an earned exchange. We’ve built enough inside jokes between us in the last hour to last another full year.
I could spend another twelve hours just sitting here talking with her, and not get tired of it. I normally hate social engagements without a particular goal in mind, but something about Sophie makes me feel sharp and alert—on top of my game. She picks things up so quickly, I know she could go far, if she can only work her way through whatever nasty business is holding her down right now.
Speaking of which, I think. It’s probably time to bring that up. I’ve been avoiding the subject, hoping she’ll get to it naturally on her own. But now that she’s feeling stronger, I suspect Sophie has tucked away her misery and started figuring out how to handle things on her own. That independent streak is admirable a lot of the time, but there’s such a thing as taking it too far.
I meet her chocolate brown eyes evenly. “Who was that phone call from, Sophie?” I ask her.
Her lips part in surprise. The laughter fades from her face. I see a hint of fear there now, and I know that whatever has happened, it isn’t done with yet.
“It’s... fine,” Sophie tells me. There’s a tired, lackluster feel to her voice now, and I despise it. “I was just caught off-guard, is all. I can handle it.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “My shirt is a damned bloody mess,” I inform her curtly. “So either you owe me a new one, or else you owe me the truth.”
Sophie smiles weakly. “I don’t guess they sell those fancy Oxford shirts this side of the ocean?” she asks me.
“They do not,” I lie pleasantly. The banter relaxes her just enough that she sighs and gives up, running her fingers back through her hair in frustration.
“I... I’ve been evicted,” she says finally. The shame in her voice is palpable, and I suddenly understand why she might have found the matter embarrassing to discuss. “There was an issue at my apartment last week, and my landlord doesn’t want me there anymore. I thought I had more time to find a new place, but he...” She swallows hard. “He wants me out tonight. He said he’ll change the locks tomorrow, and I think he’ll really do it.”
That anger from before surges back full-force. “That cannot possibly be legal,” I say. “Evictions take time.”
Sophie shrugs tiredly. “There’s no way I can afford a lawyer, so the technical law doesn’t really matter, does it? I sure as hell can’t find one this late in the day anyway, which was probably part of the point.”
She’s right, of course. The keen observation cuts through my anger just for a moment. Even in her current state, with a hundred things commanding her attention, Sophie has picked up on that little detail. She’s turned the problem over in her head, analyzed it from a number of angles, and started formulating a plan to deal with it.
“You know the university has lawyers for this sort of thing?” I say. “You pay student dues, so they’re available to you.”
Sophie knits her brow. “I didn’t know that,” she admits. “I just kind of assumed...” She trails off sheepishly. “I shouldn’t have assumed. But I’ve never had a bureaucracy on my side before. I always thought of the student center as the place that takes my money and puts as much red tape as possible between me and graduation.”
“Well,” I admit. “It is also that. But it has its advantages nonetheless. I can put you in touch tomorrow—”
I cut myself off as a thought occurs to me. There’s a growing hope on Sophie’s face, and I wince as I realize I have to crush it. “Damn. They’re already closed for the holidays. They won’t be back until January. Maybe I can ask around the legal faculty instead. I’m sure one of them would be happy to draft a stern legal letter for you, given that it’s an emergency.”
Exhaustion sets in on Sophie’s face again. There’s a resigned practicality there that hurts to see. “I still have to get my things out tonight,” she sighs. “It’s not like anyone can stop that. And afterward... I don’t know. What would I even be fighting for? The right to stay somewhere I’m not wanted? A monetary judgment that’ll convince all the other landlords in town never to rent to me again? It’s probably just best not to make waves.”
I shake my head at her. “You are being terribly unAmerican right now,” I inform her. “What happened to dumping all our tea in the harbor and raising merry hell? This British stiff upper-lip nonsense needs to end. Why, it’s basically plagiarism.”
Sophie shoots me a wry look. “I’m being very American right now,” she tells me. “Assume all the rich people are out to screw you, and hold your tongue until you’re rich enough to screw them.”
“Ugh,” I mutter. “How depressing. I preferred the ruination of perfectly good tea. Believe me, that’s saying something.”
This isn’t much better than having her cry in a lecture hall. I already know I can’t just let her slink away on her own to desperately collect her things. I shake my head again, and shove to my feet. “Well, you haven’t much time, apparently. Ask them to wrap up your sandwich for the car.”
Sophie looks utterly crushed at that. She was probably hoping to spend the next few minutes steeling herself against the evening. But I know the night’s going to be long, and I’d rather spend the latter part of it finding her a decent place to sleep. “Oh, don’t look so depressed,” I tell her. “I’m going with you. I promise I won’t abandon you until you have your things stowed and you’ve found a proper bed for the evening.”
Her mouth drops open, and I have just a second to appreciate the fact that I’ve stunned witty Sophie Eddings. “You what?” she stutters. “But you—you have class tomorrow morning, don’t you?”
I roll my eyes at her. “I also have sick days, and the ability to email the class—from my phone—right this instant. I assure you, three quarters of them don’t intend to show up for an exam review at eight-thirty in the morning anyway. I was under the impression you were nearly done with your degree, Sophie, you cannot be this dense.”
Her mouth works soundlessly a few more seconds, and I see that I’ve expertly disarmed any further protests she might have had by pricking at her temper. “Well, I wonder why no one wants to show up to your class, if you’re always such a ray of sunshine!” she manages finally.
“Oh, it’s quite simple,” I assure her. “Human beings just enjoy being abused, deep down. How else do you explain the rent in this area?”
She huffs, still reeling from the whiplash of our discussion. Instead of answering, she snatches up her sandwich and her coffee and stalks over toward the counter to get it packaged up for the road.
For myself, I’m not sure whether to be pleased or angry or wary of the whole situation. I’m pleased to have a benevolent reason to spend an entire evening with a woman I shouldn’t be taking to coffee or holding in my arms or thinking about shagging against the wall. I’m angry that the world—and certain particularly t
errible people in it—is such that Sophie ended up needing my help at all. I’m wary of the fact that I’m still burning with the awareness of her presence, that my mind starts drifting toward excuses to be near her, to touch her, to kiss her senseless, whenever I lose an inch of my focus.
I can’t let those excuses get the better of me. But I already know I want them to.
3
Sophie
I’m desperately glad to have a sandwich in my stomach and Elijah standing next to me as I survey the sidewalk just outside my apartment.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I repeat. I’ve probably said it five times now, just because I still can’t believe my eyes.
Elijah has no witty reply, this time. His jaw is tight, and he’s crossed his arms. It’s good to know I’m not just imagining the sheer injustice of the situation.
The entire contents of my apartment have been strewn across the curb outside. I can’t even see it all properly in the darkness, but I know that what hasn’t been picked through by curious passers-by is probably so wet from the rain that it’s too late to salvage it.
Thank god my laptop is in my bag, in the back seat of Elijah’s car. I try to focus on that bright spot, fixing it firmly in my mind. I can survive eating off of paper plates for a while. I can sleep on the floor if I have to. But all of my programming projects for the year are on my computer, and if I’d lost all of that work at the very last second, I really think I’d be looking for a corner somewhere to lay down and die.
“This is ridiculous,” Elijah says coldly. There’s a truly frigid snap to his voice that I realize I’ve never heard before. He closes his eyes and breathes in deeply. I can almost hear him counting to ten in his head, trying to calm himself down. When he opens his eyes again, there’s a disciplined, directed fury in them. “Pick up anything you still want to take with you. I’m going to take pictures of this, for proof. And then, I’m going to make some phone calls.”