In Too Hard (Freshman Roommates Trilogy, Book 3)

by Mara Jacobs

  At least this time.

  He let go of the scarf and I smiled, silently promising him there would be many more nights where he would be able to see me in nothing but the unique garment.

  “Text me when you get to your dorm. If you haven’t texted in fifteen minutes, I’m coming after you.”

  “I will,” I said. As I pulled my coat off the hook he again made to rise, but I motioned him to stay. I pointed to the closed laptop. “Open it,” I said as I unlocked and opened his office door. He did. “Write.”

  He smiled at me, and after I shut the door behind me, I stood in the deserted hallway a moment and listened. It was hard to tell for sure, but I was pretty certain the clacking of keys began right away.

  I walked back to Creyts not even noticing the fierce February wind.

  After I texted Montrose that I was in my room and he responded, I took a long shower, put on my pajamas and left the door to my room from the bathroom open. I was unpacking my bag from the day at my desk when I heard Jane shuffling into my room.

  “Hey,” she said as she entered. She was bundled up in her comforter and she crawled onto my former roommate Megan’s unused bed.

  Megan had gone home to Nebraska after the first week because her mom had died. She’d hoped she’d be back for this semester, but she hadn’t shown in January. At first I’d texted with her a little bit, but I hadn’t heard anything in a while. I wanted to reach out, but I was also trying to respect her privacy. I had barely gotten to know her before she was gone. I knew if it had been me, and my mother had died, I’d be at home now taking care of Duncan and Liam. There was no way my stepfather would have let me go back to school.

  I’d waited for Housing to move someone else into our suite, but they didn’t, even with Megan not coming back for second semester. So, her bed was mostly a gathering spot for Jane and/or Lily when they came over to my side of the suite. Sometimes I was really grateful to have the room to myself, often times I truly missed having company, even though Lily and Jane were just a bathroom away.

  “Hey,” I said back to Jane as I laid the scarf over my coat, my fingers stroking the fabric. “Sorry I woke you.”

  “You didn’t. Or I don’t think you did.”

  I felt bad about bailing on Jane tonight, but I could see that under her comforter she was still dressed in leggings and a top. “Were you out?”

  “No, I stayed in.”

  “Sorry I had to work,” I said. Pulling back my wet hair into a ponytail, I moved over to my bed and climbed in. “Lily with Lucas?” I asked. Jane nodded. “That’s nice, that he was able to get Valentine’s off and that they can be alone together,” I said.

  “I guess,” Jane answered, shrugging. Unsentimental as always.

  I thought about Lily and Lucas out tonight. He’d probably taken her out to dinner. Maybe they’d gone somewhere else after for dessert or dancing. I knew I would never have that with Billy. I wouldn’t have traded the past few hours for anything, but to have him look at me like he had, but over a candlelit dinner in some restaurant would have been nice too.

  I sighed and stretched, placing my arms over my face, trying to blot out the thoughts of the road blocks that Billy and I would face for the rest of our time together. “It’s so easy for them, hey?” I said, thinking again about Lily and her boyfriend. “They both know they love each other. There’s no drama. No should-they-or-shouldn’t-they. It’s nice, right?”

  I could feel Jane’s eyes on me, but I kept my face covered. “Well, it wasn’t easy at first, remember?”

  That was true. “But it was never because she didn’t trust her feelings, right? It was just shit that got in their way,” I said.

  Jane didn’t answer, I guess caught up in her own thoughts.

  “It’s just so hard, you know,” I said. I wasn’t really talking about Lily anymore, but I didn’t let on about that to Jane.

  We lay in silence for a bit more, then I heard Jane get off Megan’s bed (I still thought of it as her bed) and make her way to the connecting bathroom. “This new?” she asked.

  I looked up and saw her holding the scarf. I nodded, and willed my body not to blush. “Just got it,” I said. It was true, but I knew the answer was nondescript enough that Jane would figure I’d gotten it in the past few days. I propped myself up on my elbows and watched Jane hold the scarf that had recently kept me warm after Billy left me sleeping on the couch to start writing.

  “It’s beautiful,” Jane said, sounding sincere.

  “Thanks,” I said. Jane held it up to the light, then draped it back over my coat on the chair. The colors shone more brightly in this light than the dim desk lamp of Billy’s office.

  “Good thing you picked up a second job,” Jane said as she turned to leave.

  I wanted to tell her to stop so I could tell her everything. I wanted someone else to know of my joy, and yes, my confusion over my feelings. I wanted to tell her that my second job was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and that the scarf wasn’t a purchase of my own, but a gift from the man I’d loved for five years. To tell her that he’d thought of me while skiing in Switzerland and had held the scarf against my quivering skin only hours ago.

  But of course I couldn’t tell Jane any of that. Nor Lily. And certainly not my mother, or anyone else back in Queens.

  Montrose was mine, at least for the semester. But he was also a secret.

  “Yeah, good thing,” I said quietly as Jane walked out of my room.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Syd

  It was, one hundred percent, the best month of my life. We fell into a comfortable routine. But unlike before when our routine consisted of avoiding each other’s presence, now it was built upon being near each other any chance we got.

  I would nearly run to Snyder Hall when I was done with either classes or my shift at the admin building, depending on the day. I’d work on the many boxes he’d bring over from his apartment while he was either still teaching or reading his students’ papers.

  If I was sorting piles of notes, he’d sit behind his desk to read. If I was transcribing, he’d read on the couch and I’d take his desk.

  We’d keep the office door open when we were both working to ward off any gossip and in case students wanted to consult with him. He had standard office hours, but Montrose liked to be accessible to students. Not for the first time, I thought he made a good teacher, and that it was too bad that this gig was only for one year. I thought about that part, about him only here for a year, a lot.

  Most days, I’d leave and meet Lily at the caf for dinner. Jane was still MIA most afternoons and evenings, though I guess she could have been in the room all the time and I wouldn’t have known it. There seemed to be an air of secrecy about her, when I did see her.

  I didn’t try to break through it, having my own secret to protect.

  Billy and I had decided to keep the boxes coming here and not to have me work out of his apartment. For one, we knew we’d probably be a topic of rumors for just me working for Billy, we didn’t want to add any fuel to that possible fire by having someone see me coming or going to his home. Bribury was a small school, and there wasn’t one female on campus who didn’t know who Billy Montrose was, whether they’d had his class or not.

  For another thing, the old leather couch was temptation enough to quit early each day, we didn’t need the added risk of a full-sized bed nearby. We’d never get any work done.

  Not that the couch was the only surface in his office that we’d take advantage of as soon as I’d get back from dinner with Lily. The desk, his chair, the guest chair, the credenza… They all saw their fair share of action.

  And the floor. Oh, the floor. One evening I had piles of his notes all around me, when I heard him leaving his chair. Brushing past me, he quickly closed and locked the door, turning off the overhead light, leaving just the soft glow of his desk lamp.

  I looked up at him, a question in my eyes. My body always heated up the instant he shut the
door and locked it, because I knew that soon he would be touching me, making me melt, making me feel special, making me…his.

  But usually he’d wait until I’d packed up for the day, or was done with a particular box, not when I had notes scattered in various piles all around me.

  He stood with his back against the door, staring down at me. The lamp seemed to reflect off his eyes and it was easy to see the desire there. The desire I saw every time we were in this office.

  “Ever since that first time we talked on the phone and you said you were working on the floor. And then you stretched out. It was before we FaceTimed, and I only heard your voice, but I imagined you stretched out here, my work, my characters, my thoughts spread around you… It was just such an awesome vision.”

  “I remember,” I said, my voice rough and deeper than normal.

  He pushed away from the door and went down to his haunches.

  “I never forgot,” he whispered and crawled to me, papers crinkling under his knees, skittering away under his hands as he made his way to me. “Do it,” he said. “Lie back.”

  I did. And it was crazy erotic having Billy Montrose make love to me on his office floor with the sound of his life’s work crunching around—beneath—us.

  It was later that same night, as he was helping me clean up the mess we’d made (and had no guilt whatsoever about) that I came across notes about Aidan Colly for a book just named GP in his notes. I recalled a GP folder from the day I’d opened all his docs, but it was one I hadn’t gotten to before he came in and blew a nut.

  “Aidan Colly?” I asked him. “You’re doing a sequel?”

  His face, so clear and at peace moments ago when he’d been inside me and looking down into my eyes, turned troubled, and I instantly regretted the enthusiasm that must have been in my voice. “I didn’t think I’d seen any notes on a sequel before,” I added, looking around, putting a no-nonsense tone into my voice. Like my heart wasn’t pounding with the thought that my author lover was going to continue on with my favorite literary character ever.

  “There aren’t many,” he said. His hands stilled on the papers he was collecting and he placed them on the carpet, then stood up, zipping up his cargo pants as he did. He crossed to his desk and sat down as I continued on with the reorganizing. I didn’t like that he’d pulled away, but honestly, I wanted to put the papers back in the order I wanted. This was my giant jigsaw puzzle after all.

  I waited for Billy to come to terms with whatever ghost Aidan Colly represented to him. And to talk about it with me.

  “It seemed the easiest route to go at the time. It wasn’t what I necessarily wanted to write next.”

  “No?” I said, but kept my attention on the work, not looking back at him.

  “No. In fact, I think I started Skylark first. But then Folly hit and everybody loved Colly, and I knew I could clean up with a sequel. I didn’t know at the time how much money I would end up seeing with Folly, so that was foremost in my mind. I wanted to be able to support myself as a writer.”

  “Well, you’ve accomplished that,” I said lightly.

  “Yeah, I have. So far.”

  I thought I’d lost him, but I kept on working, letting him sift through his demons like I sifted through his notes.

  “When we sold Folly, my agent insisted on a one-book deal, even though we got offers for two, and even three books. She said because of the price that Folly went for at auction, that the publisher would put so much promo behind it that it couldn’t help but do well. And then we could negotiate for a killer deal for the next book.”

  “Sounds like she was right,” I said, my back still to him.

  “She was. It’s not her fault that I haven’t been able to cash in on that by completing a second book.”

  “Is that when you switched from Skylark to the sequel?” The piles were all straightened and I turned to face him, though I stayed seated on the floor. I had put my clothes back to rights, but I knew my hair and swollen lips showed the past hour we’d spent in each other’s arms.

  But he wasn’t looking at me. His gaze was fixed out the window, even though the shades were down.

  Slowly, he began to nod. Still looking at the window he said, “Yes. We weren’t counting on Folly doing so well with the critics. We knew it would do well the first few weeks out because of what the publisher was putting behind it, but then…once more and more big-hitter reviews came in…”

  “You moved to the sequel. GP?”

  “Gangster’s Providence. But I didn’t get very far.”

  “No?” I asked, though his number of files on his computer was answer enough.

  He shrugged, and his gaze finally fell to me. “Folly was a coming-of-age story. How many times does someone come of age?”

  “I don’t know. It seems like it could be once. Or for other people, it could be all the time. People change. What they grow into changes.” I looked away from him, his gaze was too intense. It felt like he knew more secrets than I had revealed.

  Would ever reveal.

  “Yeah, that’s true. But, I didn’t want to do that to Aidan. I left him in a good place at the end of Folly. And yes, other challenges will most certainly come his way, but I didn’t want to manufacture them just to cash in on him. It sounds crazy, but it kind of felt like I was…betraying him, you know?”

  I nodded. Yeah, I did know. Though I—and any other Billy Montrose fan—would love to read a Gangster’s Folly sequel, I did kind of like the idea of Aidan Colly staying forever as we left him.

  “Anyway, I knew it didn’t feel right, and I never came up with much. I put the idea away for a while, and tried to go back to Skylark, but by then… I don’t know. I lost the thread or something.”

  He looked away from me with a sad smile. “And thus began what I now call my Years of Starts.” He motioned to the completed boxes in the corner of the office and the remaining ones on the credenza.

  I’m not typically the pep talk kind of girl. That is much more Lily’s area. I kept my voice equal, without any sign of rah-rah, and said, “And this will be your Year of Finish.”

  He looked at me for a long time. I held his gaze, not saying a word. This was on him. I could lead the author to water…

  “Yes,” he finally said. “It will be.”

  We both took deep breaths, like something monumental had just been overcome.

  Montrose pulled his laptop over to him and opened it up. And I pulled the GP notes over, and immersed myself in my other boyfriend—Aidan Colly.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Montrose

  It seemed so weird to be writing without Syd in the office. It was startling to realize just how much I’d become used to hearing her papers rustle, or the soft clack of her keyboard as I read students’ papers or—wait for it—started a new chapter in my work in progress.

  Yeah, I was deep into Down in Flames. I was still on the fence about the whole Esme/Rachel thing, so I was just using Esel as a placeholder knowing it would be an easy find and replace later.

  It wasn’t quite as inspired as Folly, and the writing didn’t flow. It was…work this time. But it felt good to keep going on the same project, and I tentatively held my literary breath that perhaps I was past the big hurdle in my career.

  Something wasn’t quite right with it, though. There was something missing. But, where before my mind would have wandered to other stories, other characters, this time I stuck it out with Esel and crew, and trudged through. I trusted myself as a writer enough (okay, almost enough) to know I could figure out what was missing by the time I finished the first draft and could go back and fix it in edits.

  My phone rang and at first I got excited thinking maybe Syd’s roommate’s birthday party got over early, but realized it wasn’t her ring tone.

  “Hi Nora,” I said to my agent.

  “Hi Billy, sorry to call you on a Friday night.”

  “That’s okay, I’m actually still in the office.”

  “Great. So, how�
�s the writing going?” she asked, just like she had every time she’d called me in the past five years. First it had been weekly, wanting to cash in on the post-Folly buzz. Then it had dropped to every other week, then monthly. Now I heard from Nora about four or five times a year with a “I’m ready anytime you are, Billy. People will be jumping to get your next book…they just won’t be jumping as high next year.”

  I could only imagine how much money I’d left on the table by not having a second book finished in the first year or two after Folly came out.

  Those thoughts will only impede your journey forward. My shrink’s voice played in my head as I gauged how much to share with Nora.

  “Well, Nora, it’s early, but I think I’m on to something.”

  There was a long pause on the other end. I’d said stuff like that to Nora early on, but after a while I had figured there was no sense fudging the truth—or outright lying—to the woman who had a stake in my career.

  “Billy…that’s…that’s great,” she said, genuine enthusiasm, and surprise, in her voice. “How far along are you?” the businesswoman in her asked. No “What’s it about?” or “Are you liking it?” Nope, those were questions from an editor, or a fan. My agent was one of the best in the business and I valued her greatly. But she was not a cheerleader or a hand-holder. Something that appealed to me when I signed with her.

  I did a quick look at my word count, something I had refused to do thus far. “I’m at…” (holy shit) “a little over eighty-thousand words.” Folly had been right around a hundred thousand words. And though Down in Flames would probably be a bit longer, it wouldn’t be a lot over that. I wasn’t far from being done with the first draft. (Holy shit!)

  Another long pause. Nora was probably quickly trying to process this news. I’d never given her anything more than “I’m a couple of chapters in,” and even that had been a lie.

  “Billy, that’s great,” she said, her voice still unsteady, as if she was sailing in uncharted waters. I’m sure she got “almost there” type of news from her authors all the time, but in the six years I’d been with her, she’d never heard it from me. Folly was complete before I submitted to agents way back when. I’d done some polishing based on Nora’s notes before she’d shopped it, but this was new territory for the two of us together.