Professed

by Nicola Rendell

  “Good morning,” I say.

  He looks sleepy and has his hair off to one side of his head. There are sheet marks on his face. “Naomi…”

  “I left my purse.” Has anybody, ever, looked more handsome in a 2011 Los Angeles Turkey Trot Fun-Run T-shirt? But I am determined to stay professional. Regret or no regret, this is an impossible situation.

  “I know,” he says, and produces it instantly from the hook by the door. “I didn’t go through it.”

  “Thanks,” I say. I try desperately not to look at the growing hard-on tenting his boxers.

  His eyes dart around, bedroomy and so freaking sexy I just cannot even… “I meant what I said. I don’t know what this thing is between us.”

  “It’s insanity.”

  “Naomi…” Now his voice is gravelly.

  My defenses are weakening. Retreat, retreat! “Thank you, Master Beck,” I tell him, and turn around to go.

  But he grabs my hand. “I’m here. I want you. You need to know that.”

  Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh my Lord, it would be so easy to step right inside. But I cannot. Bad plan, bad ending, bad everything. He’s a riptide. I have to stay away from that current.

  “Have a good day, Master,” I say.

  He actually groans right out loud and lets go of my hand.

  And then I turn around to go.

  But as I walk through the dining hall with my tray, pouring whole milk over my Raisin Bran because I’m that girl, I don’t feel like a responsible adult. No. I feel like a coward.

  I shove a cinnamon bun in my mouth. It’s a day old and almost inedible.

  A total, terrified coward. I want him. And I have no idea what the hell to do.

  At my second job on campus, I try to focus on what I’m doing, which is proving really, really difficult. I work in acquisitions in the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, which sounds a lot more romantic than it is.

  Usually.

  Usually, we acquire strange things in fairly musty books that I don’t understand. I photograph them, index them, and hand them on to a specialized librarian. Usually, the stuff I see doesn’t mean anything.

  Except today, of course, because our newest manuscript is The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis.

  Further proof of my ongoing theory that God, if there is one, is an utter and complete jerk.

  I've got Spotify playing in my ears, Discover Weekly. I don’t know how their algorithm knows I’m heartbroken and aching, but it does. They hit me with Billie Eilish’s “Ocean Eyes.”

  “Oh come on!” I whisper at my earbuds.

  I am a stream of alternating thoughts: Focus, Ben. Focus, Ben. Right now, I try to focus hard on these magical documents, a smattering of A4 and legal paper, tiny notes stuck to the edges with brittle and ancient Scotch tape.

  With my white gloves, I touch C.S. Lewis’ words on the page. “Need-pleasures, like water for the thirsty…”

  And I’m looking at C.S. Lewis’ words and thinking, Hole in one, my friend, hole in one.

  I feel my phone buzz in my back pocket, not just once but the long buzzes of a ring, as Spotify goes silent, replaced by my ringer. It’s going to be my dad. He’s the only person I know who refuses to text and who calls at absolutely the most inopportune times.

  A big sneeze bursts from me, and I narrowly avoid a C.S.-Lewis-snot catastrophe. Sneezy allergic people can’t work down here. I can’t even remember if I took my Claritin this morning, that’s how mixed up I am.

  For two rings, I consider not answering. But if I don’t, he’ll just keep calling and calling until he convinces himself that someone murdered me on the Green and threw my body in Long Island Sound. We almost got there once. He’d been about to file a police report. Not a nightmare I want to repeat.

  So I press the little button on my headphones and answer. “Hi, Dad.”

  “Just checking on you.” In the background, I can hear the clanking and seagulls. He must be out working. It’s the start of lobster season, after all.

  “How’s everything?” I ask, tucking my chin close to the mic and speaking softly. “Tired. How about you? How’s…business?”

  That’s a jab. He’s hates me being here. Thinks I’m overstepping and leaving my people behind. “Going through some papers,” I say, as if it’s nothing. As if I’m not looking at treasure chest, full of gold and pearls, while I feel my heart getting zipped open like my black dress.

  “Just renewed the registration on the boat.” That’s him saying he’s got papers of his own. Papers of struggle and real life. He wouldn’t know about C.S. Lewis if I told him, and wouldn’t care even if he did. Philosophy and manuscripts and all the rest make shit for difference when you spend your entire life hauling angry crustaceans out of the Atlantic and your labor is valued by the pound.

  “Season starts today…” I hear the strain in his voice, lifting something heavy. God. The guilt. The guilt is crippling. Stay strong, Naomi. Stay strong. You wanted something bigger, something more, and you’ve got to fight to keep it.

  “I've got a lot going on campus. Classes start for me this afternoon.”

  “Sure could use you here,” he says. A lobster pot clanks. “They’ve got an opening in the groundfishery program…”

  That’d be at the community college. That, to my dad, is what is useful. Learning the patterns of crab and lobster movement on the ocean floor. What I do, what I want to learn, that’s useless. That’s thoughts and abstraction and foolishness. And he won’t support foolishness. He’s made that abundantly clear.

  My fingers grace the word Eros, for erotic love.

  “Dad, I don’t want to go through this again. Every fall you do this to me.”

  “Every fall I need your help.”

  The problem is, when I’m anxious or tired or overwhelmed—which is a lot of the time, to be honest—what my dad says sounds logical. But I can’t go back there. I just cannot.

  “I need to go,” I tell him. “Be careful out there.”

  “I’d be safer with you here.”

  “Love you.”

  End call.

  Begin overpowering guilt.

  I blink back some tears. My dad could say five words and crush me. Today he said maybe fifteen and I’m wrecked.

  With my sweatshirt sleeve, I wipe my nose and focus on C.S. Lewis.

  Need love. Gift love. Human happiness.

  I catalog the next page and hit play on Spotify. My phone buzzes again.

  An alert from my bank.

  “You have $3.21 remaining in your checking account. Reply YES for a cash advance from your credit card.”

  Jamming it back in my pocket, my head starts spinning faster than ever about impending bills for tuition and room and board and the little things known as “incidentals” that add up so fast, the small tiny things of life: hairbands, music subscription, phone bill, train ticket home for Thanksgiving, books, drugstore purchases for things like Advil and tampons. When they add up, under a heavy heart, they don’t feel so incidental at all.

  I leave the bowels of the Beinecke to find campus bustling. I get a hot water from Blue State Coffee and use my own tea from my purse, which buoys me a little. Not much, but a little. It’s a nice change, all these people around, all these distractions from the stream of thoughts in my head. On my way back to college, I stop at the bookstore, getting books for my English and History seminars. Walking down the steps towards the registrar, I’m held hostage by an end cap: Copies of The Four Loves. The acquisition was an exciting one, and the bookstore is making the best of it too. I grab one and head for the register, but at the next end cap, there it is: In The Ashes of Planets by Benjamin Beck. I press my fingers to the cover. Matte, black and white. Clean and smart. I can’t afford it, but I can’t help myself and add it to the stack. I put my whole tab on my credit card. At the register, I cross my fingers and just hope like hell I’m not maxed out.

  Miraculously, I’m not, and I lug my books back to college with the plastic bag cutti
ng into my fingers like huge pieces of floss.

  Returning to my room, I sit down on my bed and look out my dormer window. I open his book, my chest thundering as I read his words. “So, while we can never experience the world-in-itself, we seem almost fatalistically drawn to it, perhaps as a limit that defines who we are as human beings.”

  Brilliant and yet heartbreaking. I press the book to my chest and glance out my window.

  Of course, there he is, walking across the quad. It’s nearly lunch, and it makes sense, but seeing him there is like some cosmic hiccup, some impossible coincidence that screams out, “It’s meant to be!” He’s dressed casually, not in a tux or a tweed now, no. Now he’s dressed like himself. Those chinos, that shirt, a simple blue plaid, short-sleeved. The way the muscles in his neck run down into his shoulders. Even wearing flip-flops. Old well-loved flip-flops? Naomi. You have no chance of resisting this. None.

  He looks like some surfer out of place. I will him to look over at me, like my thoughts could cut through air. He doesn’t. He can’t know that this is my window, this little funny slate dormer in the corner that looks like some craftsman tacked it on for a laugh. Completely rapt, I watch him walk across the quad, every single step making my heart beat faster. He strolls along. He looks at the trees. He pauses to look up at the sun, and I see him sigh. Halfway across, he runs into one of the admins from Dean’s Office. It’s old Mrs. Hillyard with blue-black hair, who carries all the keys to everywhere in her purse and is roughly a thousand years old. She’s impossible to talk to because she whispers and yet can’t hear anything anybody says. Talking to her, Ben is so easy in his body. He shakes her hand, and I can see her big smile from four floors away. She’s undoubtedly saying something about how nice it is to have a handsome new Master in college.

  Oh, Mrs. Hillyard. You don’t even know!

  She says something to him, and he leans in, not understanding, with one finger to his ear, and one hand gently on her arm. God. A sweetheart too. Patient with the odd little old lady who talks and talks. They make their goodbyes and he’s off. Finally, he vanishes through the big oak door, into the dining hall.

  I slump down onto my bed. If this goes on, I’m done. I'll never make through my classes. I'll never finish an assignment, I'll never write another paper. If I did? It’d be 2500 repetitions of the word Ben.

  Opening up C.S. Lewis, I turn to the chapter on Eros. I see him telling me that those in the throes of erotic Eros-driven love are the swoony-devout.

  God. Exactly. That’s how I feel exactly. Swoony-devout.

  C.S. Lewis fails to offer any remedy though. Which also makes sense to me right now. There is no logic of wanting. Only feelings that ache and ache.

  My mask from the ball is hanging on the edge of my bed. I take the ostrich feather and put it inside the book to mark my place. Somehow, that just seems right. Somehow, it’s the thing I need to do.

  My laptop is somewhere under the covers, and I find it and boot it up. The old girl is dying a slow spinning-beach-ball death, but I coax her back to life. What I need to do now is pick the last class for my schedule. Registration for my Philosophy seminar has been locked until today. Majors only in Philosophy 3321: Mystics.

  It occurs to me that possibly, just possibly, I’m in for another cosmic hiccup. My stomach kind of goes inside out. I widen my browser to reveal, letter by agonizing letter, that my suspicion was exactly right.

  Instructor: Prof. Beck.

  Frantically, I search for any other option. I mean, I’d be willing to take a seminar in Latin if it fit the bill. Virgil’s farming manuals? An obscure class on ancient fish? Something, anything. Anything at all.

  Except there isn’t anything else. That’s the class I've got to take. Without it, I can’t move on to the next seminar. All the seminars are lined up like that in Philosophy. Like dominos. One after the other, logical and clean.

  Which means that if I don’t take Professor Beck’s class, I can’t graduate. I can see it’s filling up fast, right before my eyes.

  So I do it. I hit Register. And flop back on my bed. He’s just become Dr. Benjamin Beck, Professor and Master.

  Are you there, God? It’s me, Naomi. Tips? Got any?

  I put my own pillow over my face.

  I’m drowning here. It’s an awful sinking feeling. But then the truth of it all gets pretty simple: If I have to go back to Maine, if I can’t hack it here, I'll kick myself forever for not taking a chance with him. For not seeing him, for not working my hardest, for not fighting as hard as I can for what I want. Because you only live once. And you never know what tomorrow will bring. A wave from astern that you didn’t see coming.

  If it’s him I want, it’s him I want.

  I pull the pillow off my face and open my eyes wide.

  His class. Me. I’ll tell him then.

  We’re doing this thing. Yes, we are.

  I look at my phone.

  Class starts in 20 minutes.

  In a frenzy, I leap out of bed and look at myself in the mirror. If I’m going to have to see him out in the world, I want to look good. He’s not in his Turkey Trot T-shirt anymore, and I want to look my best. I flip through my bare closet. Aside from repurposing my waiting uniform, I’m short on college-girl chic.

  I fling open my door and pound on Lucy’s, which comes open under my fist.

  She’s in the middle of scrolling through Facebook. “Hello, lover,” she says.

  “I need clothes.” Now her room is like Fashion Week exploded all over everything. She’s walking with her toes up in the air to let her polish dry.

  “Set the scene. Are we…what? Yachting? Attending a ceremony? Horse riding? Going to court?”

  She’s only half teasing. “Going to class, like you should be. But today a hoodie and yoga pants is just not going to cut it.”

  Lucy looks suspicious for one instant and then flies into action. She’s flinging skirts and boots and cardigans through the air. God, what is that, a white strapless prom dress? It’s all sorts coming from the closet, in streaks of color and fluttering fabric. A pair of red capri jeans thunks on her bed on top of the pile, followed by a striped boatneck tee. She pauses and points.

  “More flirty!” I tell her. “Less clambake.”

  Rummage, rummage, rummage. She’s so focused, she even lets her toes touch the ground. Then she emerges holding a lovely little sundress, dark blue with tiny pink flowers all over.

  “You’re the best,” I say, taking it from its puffy hanger.

  She waves that off. “Whoever you’re after, they’re damned lucky. Tell them not to forget it, or I’ll come remind them.”

  My face flushes, I can feel my skin get hot, and I think, If only she knew.

  I run back to my room and slip it on. It’s a little snug in the waist but otherwise perfect. As fast as I can, I put on my eye shadow and my eyeliner—I wasn’t born with it, it’s definitely Maybelline—curl my eyelashes, and moisten my fingers to rub away any specks of make-up that landed on my cheeks in all this rushing around. As I do, the remnants of shadow on my skin make deep streaks under my eyes, making me look like a linebacker for the Patriots. Classy! What a hot mess. But I get it all cleaned up, give my legs a quick rub with my lotion, grab The Four Loves with the feather peeking from the pages, and run down the 72 steps.

  13

  I haven’t prepared at all for my first lecture because of Naomi Goddamned Costa.

  Last night, once the fellows’ dinner ended, things should have gone like this: Go for jog. Shower. Sit down with whiskey. Open books. Write notes. Open more books, write more notes. Close books because fuck that noise, and write new notes. Go back to old lecture from last term. Realize I can just use old notes. More whiskey. Make new syllabus. Fight with Word over formatting, the asshole. Finish syllabus. Bed.

  Instead, last night went like this: Whiskey. Think of her belly button. Think of that soft skin. Think of being inside her. Think of needing to be inside her again. Think of that scar, that lau
gh, that hair. Think of her coming. Put face in hands. Adjust pants. Go to registrar’s portal. Begin typing in Naomi’s name. Realize that’s fucking suspicious because I’m on the campus wireless and that might be as bad as the NSA. Type in different Durham student’s name. Pretend to be looking at different student. Type in another Durham student’s name. Pretend to read about other student. More whiskey. Repeat ten times. Eat twelve Oreos. Finally, type in “Naomi Costa,” and find out the following:

  Full name: Naomi Francesca Costa (God. Even that middle name.)

  Cell phone: 509-591-9517 (Thump, thump.)

  College: Durham (Heart pounds in spite of knowing this already.)

  Year: Junior (See above.)

  Declared major, Philosophy. (Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! Yes! No! I don’t know! And also fuck all those assholes who say it’s not useful.)

  From Cutler, Maine. (Tiny fishing village, pop. 507.)

  Father, alive. Profession: lobsterman. (Holy shit. Best profession ever.)

  Mother, deceased. (Oh God, no. Anything but that. Anything at all but that.)

  Print above. Save above, hide above in sock drawer. Advil. Shower. Bed.

  Then this morning, I find her purse and she comes by, like magic. I could barely choke down my coffee after that.

  So now here I am, completely unprepared for what’s coming. Literally, zero idea what I’m going to talk about for my first lecture at Yale. Then it hits me, as well, as I unpack my stuff on the table in front of the whiteboard, that this isn’t UCLA. These kids, there has to be 200 of them, are staring at me like small carnivorous animals who want to eat whatever I have to say, and then chew and chew it until it’s gone. Digest it. Pick it over. Tear it up. They’re like little predatory walking brains, the way they’re looking at me. At UCLA, it was so chill. These Yale kids? They’re on the hunt. And one of them is even wearing the shirt with my book jacket on it.

  I’ll never live that shit down, ever.

  I checked the roster early this morning before breakfast and didn’t see Naomi’s name on it. Believe me, I looked. But now, as I get ready to speak, I see her. In the last seat, front row, in a little summer dress. Pink flowers, navy blue. I can see the tan lines on her shoulders. Simple black flip-flops. Hair down. Just enough cleavage to make me forget every fucking thing I've ever known.