She did, but Amanda was the kind of person who was always truthful. She had no filter; she wasn’t afraid of what people thought of her. That was never clearer than when she shared the stories I molded into Couch Surfer.
“You’re right,” I said, like I was saying, You caught me, because she had.
“So who were you with?” she asked, tapping her nails against the kitchen table, waiting for my answer. She’d painted them gray like the dolphins she loved.
I stared down at the table. “James.” I breathed out.
She nodded. “I knew that.” She smiled. “I saw you guys kissing through the window.”
I slammed my hands against the table in mock anger. “Then why didn’t you say anything?”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” she replied and paused to glance at me, “Especially when we were out with Luke and Ryan.”
It was a crap move to have sex with James when I was on a blind date she’d set me up on. More than a crap move. Of course she’d known it then. She’d just kept her cool and not said anything because she really thought I would tell her eventually.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I haven’t even been sure what has been going on lately.”
“It’s okay,” she said, waving away what had happened. “I know how crazy thinking with your vajayjay can make you.”
“I have not been thinking with my vajajay,” I protested.
“So that means you like him?” She leaned forward, her lips forming a grin.
I didn’t answer at first, watched Mandy’s face start to shine with the realization that because I didn’t protest, I really must.
“Spill,” she said, waving her fingers around like she was drying her nails. “You owe me many details.”
I told her the whole long story. The dollar that started it all before I knew he was my student, the date I went on with him even after I knew he was. The morning I woke up in his bed, the parking lot at the restaurant, our Facebook rendezvous, and tonight.
“It’s not a big deal,” I said, hoping to make it seem like it wasn’t, even though after talking about him for ten minutes without letting her get a word in probably did not make it seem that way. “We had sex a few times. It’s not like we’re seeing each other or anything.”
“For someone who isn’t seeing someone, you sure have been a lot busier since you started not seeing him.”
“I guess.” I smiled. I couldn’t help it.
“All this time,” she said, her voice rising with admiration, “I thought you were a Miami virgin and you were snacking on the student smorgasbord.”
I held up a finger. “One student. No smorgasbord.”
“He’s one hell of a student.” She whistled.
“I know.” I nodded. “But he is a student.”
“It’s not against school policy or anything,” she said. Mandy knew this because she’d checked the first night James showed up here.
I’d checked, too. But it still wasn’t good for all kinds of reasons. Even if James ended up dropping my class, anyone could say it was because he felt uncomfortable being in it. He could even say that himself if things ended up badly between us. That was why getting involved with students was “frowned upon,” because it could easily go from having sex to getting sued.
“Oh, calm down. You get so worried about everything,” she said.
“Have you ever slept with a student?” I asked.
“No,” she said, “but not because I’m afraid to.”
I knew Mandy wasn’t lying. She didn’t do things out of fear, anxiety, or panic. She did things or did not do them because she wanted to.
“At least you finally got laid,” she said, standing up from the table, stretching with a yawn, and heading toward her room. “You were wound up tighter than a cuckoo clock.”
“Thanks a lot,” I yelled down the hallway after her.
“Anytime, Candy.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
I wasn’t in the mood to see Professor Dylan’s face filled with pity when I went to his office hours. Wait, is it filled with pity, or covered with pity? Or better yet rampant with pity?
I guess I couldn’t help revising the way I thought after my critique.
I wished I could rewind to the way I felt when I was with James last night. Being with him was all about being in the moment. I tried to brand a tattoo of the thoughts I had as we rode together on his motorcycle on the way back from the beach. The sultry night air whipping around us, our bodies so tightly pressed together we were almost one nervous system.
My fellow students could say whatever they wanted about my work. It didn’t matter. I was in charge of my destiny, not them. I would keep my head down and get my degree and Professor Dylan’s recommendation and get the hell out of there.
I would write as Candice and as Candy and whoever the hell else I wanted to write as. There was nothing left to prove to anyone besides myself.
“You’re alive,” Professor Dylan said as I entered his office, the pity on his face even piti-er than I expected, his mouth downturned, his eyes, cheeks, and forehead frowning, too.
“I am,” I replied. “I miraculously survived.” I quickly sat down. It was my attempt to stop the pity from oozing into the pores on his face.
“You left so quickly yesterday I didn’t get to talk to you.”
“I’m okay,” I said. I was. I had been. Sure, my peers had ripped me a new one, but like James had said, what writer hadn’t been ripped a new one? It was a rite of passage and I had endured it. But apparently Professor Dylan wasn’t so sure.
“You don’t look okay,” he said. Did he want me to be crushed? Did he want to console me? Be able to take me in his arms and finally finish our kiss? Or maybe like some people who are successful, he wanted to be able to hear about my failure, to revel in his own success—past success.
“Really,” I said, “it’s not a big deal.” I had felt okay. I wondered if I didn’t look okay anymore because I was in Professor Dylan’s office, because I knew something else was probably just around the corner. With him I’d learned there always was. With him I learned it was never as simple as just a meeting.
“Did someone give you a pep talk already?” he asked, his gaze pointed. “Maybe another student?”
“No,” I scoffed, a protest that probably came too quickly.
He pushed his lips together. He didn’t believe me.
I took out my laptop and started typing. I didn’t know what else to do. Writing was my escape, literally and figuratively.
“Revising the piece already?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. Really, I was working on a new Candy story about two lovers on a tropical island. Plaid blankets played heavily in the plot. I’d already written thirty pages.
“You can give yourself time to breathe,” he said, getting up and walking over to me.
I understood what he meant when it came to writing, but when it came to life I felt like that was where everything went wrong. I spent too much time breathing, sitting on the sidelines waiting. Not just going out and doing whatever it was my mind usually made a labyrinth out of doing.
I closed the Candy file quickly and opened the story that had been workshopped yesterday. My plan had been to shelve it, not to revise it, but whatever. I could pretend for the minute I hoped Professor Dylan would spend next to me.
I could smell his shampoo. A smell I associated with him now—astringent, so, so clean. I couldn’t help but think about the shower scene with the James character. What would it have been like with Professor Dylan? It was all I had wanted before I met James. Before I knew being with a man was not about power or possession. About what I thought I should want.
I turned to him. “How’s it going?” I asked, trying to remind him he was sitting next to me saying nothing.
“You know the way the other students acted had nothing to do with your story. They were so rough on you because they think we’re together,” he said. I saw him lift his hand up like he was going
to put it on my knee and then think better of it.
“What?” I barked. My body tensed. I was nauseous, disgusted, like I wanted to gather all the sexual feelings I’d ever had about Professor Dylan and vomit them out onto his lap.
“I mean they assume we are.” He nodded solemnly.
I didn’t feel solemn. I felt pissed. “How do you know that?” I asked, wheezing as heavy as the rock my heart felt like. My body pulled away from him, wishing there were more than two chairs at the back of his office. Unfortunately, there were only two, almost pasted together like one of those Rorschach tests.
Yes, I know. More chair metaphors.
“I’ve heard things,” he acknowledged.
“I haven’t,” I said, holding my ground. Afraid if I didn’t I would keep pulling away and fall off the chair.
“Guess you’ve been too busy to listen.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re a graduate student,” he explained.
Right, I thought, my mind on fire, if you really meant busy with schoolwork, why would you keep me stuck here with you for an hour every other day?
“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head.
“They can see you’re hiding something.” He paused and turned to me. “I mean, I can.”
“If you know something, just say it,” I insisted, my eyes tight on his. Directly saying what I should have said to him days ago. Of course, days ago I had no idea everyone I went to school with didn’t only think I was kissing his ass, but licking his junk.
“People can think whatever they want about us, Candice,” he said, gesturing at the department outside the closed door, “as long as it’s not the tenure committee.”
“But you don’t have to perpetuate it,” I protested.
“If it wasn’t you, it would be someone else. Besides, I don’t think you seem too concerned about crossing the line, academically speaking.” He paused. “Candy.”
I breathed out. He’d said it. There was no autocorrecting that.
Now, it was real.
“So you know,” I said. My eyes were bleary, my heart whacking against my rib cage. Out of habit, I reached into my pocket for my phone. It wasn’t there. I must have forgotten it at home, but what was I going to do, call 911?
“You haven’t really done a great job hiding it.”
“When were you sure? When Amanda said my name?”
“I suspected. I didn’t want to believe it, and when I started to believe it I still thought you might come back. Melted indicates you haven’t.”
I turned to face him. “How did you…?”
“You really shouldn’t use the university server to upload your books.” He spit the word to let me know he certainly didn’t consider what I’d uploaded a book.
How stupid was I?
That stupid.
He’d suspected and I knew it and I’d still given him proof.
Maybe I really just didn’t care about hiding it anymore.
“What happens now?” I looked at him sideways, waiting for my fate. The floor felt uneven. Cold sweat covered my skin.
“Unsure yet, but I don’t think most PhD programs would be waiting with open arms if they knew.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with the work I do here,” I protested.
“You can tell them. You can even tell the academic board here. They might listen. But”—he paused—“I think you know that with a fellowship you claimed a certain amount of income. My guess is you’re not declaring this.”
Screw me.
“I get that it bothers you,” I said, “but why can’t you just let me write what I want?” I wrote books I liked writing and people liked reading. Why did it matter what they were about?
“You can, just not here,” he said. “I can’t do anything about the thousands of other pseudo-authors ruining the publishing industry, but your future is in my control.”
I froze. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. My windpipe seared. “I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” I said, even though I did. He’d taken my affront as a declaration of war and now as punishment he was going to expose me. One of Candy’s favorite words, with its most unfavorite meaning.
He was right, he might not be able to do anything about the thousands of other “Candys,” he couldn’t stop the wave “reader choice” was having in the world of publishing, but he could make me pay. He could take all the anger and frustration he had at what he and his colleagues could no longer regulate, at the sales they were losing, and punish me for it.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
He put his hand on my knee and squeezed. I tensed at his touch. He didn’t care or didn’t notice, as he kept sliding his hand up my thigh.
I slapped his hand away and stood.
“I’d suggest you be a lot nicer if you don’t want me to say anything,” he said.
“Excuse me?” I spit.
“I mean,” he said, standing up and meeting my gaze, his lips inches from mine, “if everyone thinks we’re having an affair anyway, we might as well make it true.”
“If you ever touch me again, I will break your hand,” I said, my whole body shaking in a completely new way. I hated him. Hated I’d put myself into this situation and hated there was nothing more I could do than just say no.
“I’m sorry you feel that way.” He shrugged. “I might have considered keeping quiet if you were more agreeable.” He walked back to sit behind his desk. “But I’m not feeling all that generous anymore.”
“You’re a pig.”
“A pig,” he admitted, “with information.”
He looked at his watch. I understood that meant he was done with me, permanently. “You should probably get going. You’re going to be late for your Fiction 201 class. You might want to teach it while you still can.”
Chapter Thirty
After class, which I spent virtually pacing over what Professor Dylan had just said to me, tried to do to me, and trembling so hard my teeth were chattering, I went to find James. There was no doubt Professor Dylan was going to make me pay for being Candy. Make me pay for rejecting his advances. Once he went to the academic board, my time as an MFA student and a TA at the University of Miami was probably through. Once it got out into the rest of the academic literary community, I would be through at every other school, too.
I saw James parking his motorcycle outside Waltham Hall.
“I dropped your class,” he said, reaching out and hugging me. I fell into him, clutched him like he was a life preserver.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “I thought you’d be happy.”
“He knows,” I said into his shoulder. “He knows and he’s going to tell everyone.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
I pulled back so I could look at his eyes. “I think him saying, I should ‘teach my class while I still can’ is pretty certain.”
He put his hand on my chin. “It can’t be that bad.”
“It’s worse than bad,” I said. “He basically tried to get me to sleep with him to stay quiet. I need to get out of here.”
“I need to kick his ass first,” James said, starting to head toward the Language Arts building.
“No,” I said holding him back, “that won’t solve anything.”
“He deserves to have the shit beat out of him,” James said, breathing heavily through his nostrils.
“I agree,” I said, “but not by you.”
James closed his eyes and put his hands on my shoulders, calming himself. He exhaled and looked at me. “Okay. Where to?”
“The other side of the highway,” I replied.
He examined me, my eyes, my lips, finally my chest, which I was still trying desperately to keep from convulsing into gasps, and nodded. He knew exactly what I meant.
We drove away from campus, the sunshine reflecting blindly off the pavement and the motorcycle. I didn’t know where we were going. I didn’t know if James did, either. I just knew I nee
ded to feel connected to him. I needed to hold him so tightly it was hard to breathe. We blew past Buzzers and up San Amaro Drive toward Coral Gables.
I inhaled his scent, sandalwood and sweat, tried to feel his beating heart over the roar of the motorcycle. Tried for what might be the last time to really sense what it was like to be this close.
If I was kicked out of school, I could stay in Miami, I guess, but it might also mean James and I would be separated. The thing I’d wished for, that we were no longer teacher and student, might just come back to ruin us.
James pulled in at a sign for The Gifford Arboretum. He parked the motorcycle and turned around. “This was where I came the last time I ditched your class.”
“At least you finally admit it,” I said, forgetting myself for a moment. I followed him off the motorcycle and surveyed the grounds. It was stunning. A swath of land covered in palm trees, tropical flowers, and mangroves; paradise ten minutes from the Language Arts building.
We moved through the parking lot to a path lined on either side with birds-of-paradise.
He took my hand and we continued walking between the tall palms shading the sun above us like a canopy. We moved in silence for a few minutes, taking in the lush, sticky oasis around us.
“Okay, Candice,” he said, turning to me. “Tell me everything Professor Dylan said.”
The words came out slowly at first, like when you’re writing and get stuck on a line, but eventually they started to flow, the kind of gush when you’re not even looking at the keyboard anymore. I didn’t just tell him everything Professor Dylan said, I told him everything. How I had almost kissed Professor Dylan. How he’d played with me for weeks following. What he was letting my fellow graduate students think, exactly how he’d propositioned me and that telling everyone about Candy was next on his list.
“If you won’t let me kick his ass, I think we should kill him,” James said, sounding like he was trying to even out his breathing.
“I’d love to, but that’s not a solution,” I said, even though fictionally it could have been. Too bad I couldn’t just delete him like a character in a book.
We sat down under a mangrove tree growing up out of the soil like a huge mushroom. I touched his knee. It was weird I was comforting him, but it also felt nice. It meant he really was upset. It meant he really did care. He didn’t want to lose me.
Sneaking Candy Page 20