“It’s what I want to do, though. He can’t get away with doing this to you. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“That’s not entirely true,” I said, my hand tentative. “In his eyes, I absolutely have.”
“He’s acting like a crazy asshole,” he said. “And coming onto you like that, it’s disgusting.”
“He’s threatened. Not by me, but by what he feels like I represent. He’s lashing out.” I sat against the tree. The bark was cool on my skin. “I just don’t know what I can do to stop him.”
“Why the hell is he punishing you for his ‘sophomore slump’?” he asked, the shade making his eyes dark.
“Sometimes a monster needs a face.”
“If anyone’s a monster, it’s him.”
“What he wants to do is monstrous, what he tried to get me to do most certainly is,” I admitted, “but the way he’s acting is a lot more scared little boy.”
“You’re right.” He nodded. “He’s a coward. He can’t deal with his own failure, so he’s going to try to make you fail.”
“Lucky me.” I sighed.
“Should we kill him?” James asked, kissing my forehead.
I put my hand on his leg, trailed up his thigh to the pocket of his jeans. We couldn’t kill Professor Dylan, but there might be something we could do.
“That’s a better idea, for now at least,” he said, easing into me.
“I’m reaching for your phone, Romeo. I forgot mine at home.” I grabbed it, clicked into the University of Miami website, and opened the Code of Conduct file.
“Checking to see if killing a professor is against university bylaws?” he asked, putting his hands behind his head and leaning back against the tree.
“I think I might have a better idea,” I said.
I wasn’t about to let my future be under anyone else’s control anymore. Certainly not Professor Dylan’s.
Chapter Thirty-one
I went to see Julia in her office when I knew Professor Dylan would be across campus teaching his late-afternoon class. I walked into the English department quickly, my head down. I’d been in there so many times and everyone knew who I was, but I couldn’t help trying at least to hide I was making a beeline for Julia’s office. Not at all the office I should have been making a beeline for.
I knocked on her door. I’d never even been inside. Never had been invited and never wanted to be. I must have been really desperate if I was going to the POed Poet for help.
I could have just left school quietly, but aside from not wanting to leave James and Mandy, there was no way I could let Professor Dylan win. I was fighting for all the “little sluts with laptops.” I was fighting for all the “Candices,” too. Professor Dylan might not like it, but the guard was changing. The people teaching new budding authors should have been allowed to reflect that, too.
“Come,” she said. For Julia, it was too much trouble to even add the word in. I needed to stop thinking of her as an opponent, especially when I needed her now more than ever.
I walked in and closed the door behind me quickly.
“Wrong office,” she said, barely glancing up from her computer screen.
“I need your help,” I said, knowing I had to get to the point before she kicked me out.
“I’m not your faculty advisor,” she said, smiling like a witch casting an evil spell. “Wrong office.” She pointed at the door.
She wasn’t making this easy, but why would she? I’d treated her with a lot of disrespect over the last few weeks.
“That other office is why I’m here,” I said, still standing because I was afraid to move any closer.
She looked up, her eyebrow cocked with intrigue.
“I think we have a common enemy,” I said.
“Poor baby.” She made a clownish frown. “Did he dump you already?”
“I wish,” I said.
“Oh my God, don’t even tell me you’re pregnant. I just ate lunch.”
“No,” I said.
“STD? If so, it did not come from me,” she said, shaking her hands in front of her.
“No,” I spit.
“I’m all out of guesses and you’re still here,” she said, starting to type on her computer.
“I want you to help me take him down,” I said over clicking keys.
She stopped, her lips starting to spread on her face like trickling water. “What the hell took you so long?” she said, indicating the seat across from her.
I gathered myself and sat quickly. Afraid if I didn’t, she might change her mind. I took a deep breath and paused. Once I said what I said, there was no going back. If she agreed to help me, there was really no going back. Unfortunately, it didn’t feel like Professor Dylan had given me a choice. “I want to bring up sexual harassment charges against him,” I said.
She squinted. “But you two have been together since the beginning of the semester.”
“I haven’t been with him once,” I said.
She looked at me skeptically.
“Seriously,” I insisted. “He came onto me at the faculty mixer at the beginning of the semester and then again yesterday and I turned him down.”
“I believe you,” Julia said, “but considering I’ve even heard you guys are having a relationship, it’s going to be impossible to prove.”
“So that’s it then?” I asked, my voice rising. “He gets away with it.”
Julia only knew about him getting away with propositioning me, but in my mind I was equally as upset he would be able to get away with exposing Candy.
“We could find someone else to bring up the charges. Someone who everyone in the department doesn’t think is having a consensual relationship with him.”
“Who’s everyone in the department?” I asked, my face getting hot.
“Even Karen the receptionist knows.”
I shook my head. It didn’t matter if it was true or not, it appeared true, just like all the best fiction did.
“So what, we have to get someone to lie?” I asked. “To make people believe it.”
Julia pursed her lips. “It’s not really a lie if he actually did it to you, is it?”
“I guess not,” I said. “Who can we ask though?”
“None of my students,” she said. “Maybe you know someone.”
“No,” I said. I didn’t. Not anyone I could count on like that.
“Tony is a real douchebag,” she said. “There has to be someone else on campus who feels the same way.”
“I think I’m kind of a douchebag magnet,” I confessed. I couldn’t help wondering if James hadn’t come along if I would have just ended up with Professor Dylan. I wondered how many more douchebags I would have been with after Professor Dylan if James hadn’t come along.
“We all are,” Julia said, her eyes on her desk. She looked at me. “He’s going to know it was us.” Her words came quickly with the knowledge that the office next to her might finally be vacant. “Are you going to be strong enough to handle the fallout?”
“Yes,” I said, something I would have never had had the guts to say before James came along, before I became the girl I was after moving to Miami. I needed Professor Dylan gone, but doing this might mean him telling everyone about Candy, anyway. I could only hope the university would care a lot more about what we were going to get someone to say he’d done, than about who I actually was.
“Okay, no one can know about this except the girl we find to help us. My hatred for Tony is immense, but it’s not worth losing my job if anyone finds out. Once the student makes her complaint, the university will waste no time. I’ve seen this happen to other professors before. It could be within hours.”
“What will they do to him?” I asked the words shaky with the realization that I could ruin him. It was hard to believe, even though he’d been willing to ruin me.
“Probably nothing,” she said, crossing her hands over each other on the middle of her desk. “They are all smoke and no fire, but they will more than
politely suggest he find other employment before a case comes against the academic board.”
“What about the student?” I asked, still unsure who I could trust enough to come to with something like this.
“The university is bound by law, as is the professor who the complaint is made against, not to prosecute or academically hurt the student in any way. They are required to keep their mouths shut and wrists tied when it comes to students. Otherwise none of them would ever come forward.”
“How do you know so much about this?” Sure, I was asking a lot of questions, but she was answering them, more than answering them.
“Let’s just say I’ve been hoping for a student like you to come into my office for a while now. I’m kind of wondering why one hasn’t yet. I guess they’re all afraid.”
“So he’s done this before?” I asked.
“There’s a reason we’re not still together.”
“I’m sorry he hurt you,” I said, seeing a side of her I never had. A victim, like I had been before James. Like I was never going to let myself be with Professor Dylan.
She waved my comment away. “So which pretty little undergrad girl are we going to get to lie for us?” she asked, smiling wickedly.
I surprised myself and her by asking, “Does it have to be a girl?”
Chapter Thirty-two
It wasn’t James knocking furiously at my door that morning. It was Professor Dylan.
It had been easy to do what I’d done without having to see him as his sentence got handed down, but having him there in front of me in my sunny doorway made my body turn to stone; I counted in my head the amount of steps it would take me to get to the knife drawer in the kitchen.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, ready to run. I checked behind him. What was I expecting? An army? The police? James? Anyone to protect me from what he was about to do. What he had come here to do.
“I don’t really have anywhere else to be right now,” he said, glancing at his watch. “My schedule just completely opened up.”
He was trying to make me squirm, and I couldn’t blame him for it. He deserved to say whatever he needed to say, but I certainly didn’t want to hear it.
“You won,” he said, his head down, almost bowing.
“No, I just protected myself,” I replied. That was how it had felt. Why it had been so easy to move the parts of his life around like chess pieces, because it was what he had been prepared to do to me.
“If that helps you,” he said, eyeing me sideways.
“What do you want?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest, trying to hold down the guilt rising like acid in my throat. Not that I felt guilty for what had happened to him, just how I went about making it happen.
“You’re just as smart and talented as I always knew you were, Candice,” he said, talking quickly, letting me know he’d had a speech prepared before he got here. “Getting Julia on your side, very savvy. Getting James to make a complaint against me, even smarter. While I don’t care about people knowing I attempted to have a homosexual affair with one of my students, the university most certainly does.” He paused. “Even if it’s a lie.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, my arms still over my chest like armor. Though he’d connected the plot lines perfectly, like any New York Times bestselling author would, he hadn’t been smart enough to think of them before I did. Maybe it was his “sophomore slump.”
“It sounds just like a story line from the trash you write,” he said.
“It really only works for a plot like this one,” I spoke clearly, deliberately. “A bestselling author reluctantly losing his grasp on the success ladder, going after the one thing he feels like he can blame, trying to bribe her into sleeping with him to stay quiet.” I stood straighter, met his blue eyes with my own, unafraid.
“That’s your perspective,” he said, “albeit an incorrect one.”
“You can’t take back being a sexist prick-bag,” I said, “but it appears you can be punished for it.”
“Looks like your erotic work is expanding your vulgar vocabulary nicely,” he retorted.
“By the way, have you ever even bothered to read what you call ‘trash’?”
“Why would I waste my time?” he spit.
“Because just like your books, my books make people feel when they read them. Make them laugh, cry, cause their hearts to swell. What all good writing should do,” I said, my voice rising with insistence. I shook my head. “For a professor, you have a lot to learn.”
“I’m not here to fight with you,” he said. “I certainly don’t need another possible lawsuit over my head. I just wanted you to know that I know what you did.”
I wanted to say, you’re just as smart and talented as I always knew you were. Wanted to throw his fake-compliment back at him, but I’d already done enough. Said everything I needed to say by doing what I’d done.
“I’m forgoing the formal harassment investigation and leaving by choice.”
It was what Julia had said would probably happen. What everyone did whether they were guilty or innocent. Professor Dylan wasn’t particularly innocent; he was just innocent of what he’d been accused of, who’d he’d been accused by.
“I’ve been offered a position at Boston University,” he continued. “When I told them I wasn’t happy at Miami, they jumped at the chance to get me.”
“Lucky them,” I said.
“So, I’m out of your life,” he said. “Your lives,” he added for effect.
“Lucky us,” I said, knowing he meant me and Candy.
“I wanted to tell the academic board about you,” he said, “but I knew it would be my word against yours, and after what James said, my word doesn’t mean much here anymore.”
“I already told them,” I said. I had. Even with Professor Dylan gone, I didn’t want to hide it anymore. I left out everything that had happened with him based on Julia’s advice. James’s complaint held a lot more power alone. But I knew I still needed to tell them about Candy. I was never going to fear what other people would think of me again.
Now I was all about what I wanted. What the girl who I wanted to be wanted.
Candy had started as a way to make money, but what she became was a way to be me.
“I’m on academic probation for ‘misuse of my fellowship,’” I said, “and I have to pay back the money I received for this semester, but they’re letting me stay as a student and a TA,” I finished. I didn’t know if I’d get into a PhD program, but I’d still try; for me, for Candy, for all the authors who wanted to publish without judgment.
“Guess you better get writing then,” he said. He turned like he was about to walk away, but paused and looked back at me. “How did you get James to lie for you?”
“Does it matter?” I asked.
He lips turned up as he realized. “I’d be careful, Candice,” he said, his voice steady. “Even someone who seems like your star student can turn out to be anything but.”
“I’ve heard the same thing about professors,” I replied, not taking his bait.
“Then I guess we’ve come to the end of our story,” he said, holding his hands up.
I watched him walk back to his cardboard-box-stuffed Subaru and drive away. He was out of my life, our lives, and I’d been the one to make it happen. I’d also been the one to decide that people knew about Candy.
For the first time, I was sure I’d made the right life-altering choice.
Chapter Thirty-three
Ten minutes later, James arrived at the door. He held a dozen candy apples sparkling in the sun on long rose-length stems.
“I kind of thought these were more appropriate than roses,” he said.
“You’re really not giving up on me as a teacher who doesn’t like apples, are you?” I asked, taking them from him. They were heavy, unwieldy. I couldn’t help but laugh.
“I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, since you’re not mine, but you are still faculty.” He pulle
d out a small wrapped box. Not small enough for a ring but small enough it might have been jewelry.
“More gifts?” I asked.
“This one is for both of us,” he said, putting his hands nervously in his pockets.
I opened it and found a piece of paper folded up. It was an affidavit signed by James that stated that even as a faculty member and a student, we were in a consensual relationship.
“I learned a lot on my trip to the Equality Administration office.” He smiled. “This makes things safer.”
“How am I supposed to wear this?” I asked, holding it up in front of my chest like a dress I was considering.
“You’re supposed to wear me,” he said, moving in close so I could feel the fever of his words. “I go with any outfit.”
“You go better without one,” I said, kissing him, James’s strong, steady hands in my hair, his lips forcing me toward him.
He pulled back and ran his thumb along my cheekbone, tugging playfully on my ear. “I wanted everyone to know you were the author I couldn’t live without,” he said.
(Cliché-inducing double-entendre alert.)
“Me over J.D. Salinger?” I joked.
“You have way better legs,” he said.
“Before or after he died?”
He moved his lips together like he really had to think about it. “Both.” He pointed to the paper in my hand. “Now that that’s settled, I think it’s time for me to meet your parents.”
I looked down. “They still don’t want to see me, so I doubt they want to meet you,” I said.
“That’s why I want to meet them. They should know you’re with someone who doesn’t care what they want.”
“With someone?” I nuzzled into the crook in his neck.
“You and your semantics,” he said, holding me. “Did you read the form or what?”
“I don’t need you to meet my parents,” I said, looking up at him. “I couldn’t care less what they think of you. All that matters is what I think of you.”
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