Fail on all counts.
She pushed away her gloomy thoughts. “I thought we’d paint your room this weekend,” she offered brightly. “You pick the color—anything you want. And we can hit Target for some decorations.”
“Okay.”
His despondent tone cut right through her heart. “Can you do me a favor, Luke? I need the honest truth.”
He looked at her with a bit of wariness. “Sure.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how bad is my meatloaf?”
The faint spark of humor lit his brown eyes. “One.”
“Yeah, I thought so. How does a pizza sound?”
He tilted his head and considered. “Can we eat in front of the TV, too?”
Ella laughed. “Sure, why not?”
“No History channel?”
She gave a sigh of surrender. “Fine. You pick.”
He gave a small whoop and fisted his hand in the air. “Nice. I want pepperoni on mine, please.”
“You got it. Luke?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
His face shifted to that half uncomfortable, half pleased look she recognized so well. But he gave her the words. “Love you, too, Mom.”
He bounded out of the kitchen, forgetting to clean up his plate, and Ella didn’t remind him. She went to order the pizza.
Chapter Four
“When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of the joy that kills.”––Kate Chopin, The Story of An Hour
Two weeks later, Connor realized he was in trouble.
Another F stared back at him from his last paper. As Ella lectured to the class on the limitations of creative women in society today, Connor scrolled through his iPad for the picture he’d taken of the syllabus.
Yes, it was only a month into the semester, but he’d lost too much ground. He hadn’t been able to pass one lousy quiz, flunked his paper, and now his short essay she’d handed back had tanked. Even with high grades moving forward and a decent curve, he’d be hovering around a precious C-, a bit too close for comfort.
No way was he letting poetry and angry female authors beat him.
Or Ella Blake.
He made a point to read the awful assignments, though he barely kept awake. This last essay called Death of the Moth should’ve been termed Death From Boredom. Woolf was another writer he struggled to understand, and Ella seemed to think she walked on fucking water. Who watched a moth die for what seemed like hours and decided to write about it? And why on earth would anyone assign a paper on such drivel? No wonder he’d flunked.
Men didn’t do shit like that.
He’d been trying to get on her good side. He was unfailingly polite and charming before and after class. He complimented her and consistently offered to help out if she needed anything. She only gave him that icy stare that froze his balls and clipped out a “no.” He was getting nowhere and now he needed to do something about his grade.
Anything.
He tried to listen to her ramblings on Edith Wharton and how the author used female roles in society to exploit and push readers’ emotional limits. She strolled back and forth in a relaxed, steady pace as she spoke, occasionally nibbling on her lower lip in a thought, her face half hidden by the wide, thick frames of her glasses. Today, she wore her usual brown flat boots, a long wool skirt with no shape, and a green turtleneck sweater that reached all the way up to her jaw. Did she have some type of skin infection that kept her hidden beneath so much material? Were there actual breasts under there? Her fingers were long and tapered, but the short, squared-off, unpolished nails did nothing to accentuate them. This was a woman who didn’t want a man looking. Or maybe she was just lazy and wasn’t into men. Maybe she spent every night reading Wharton and Brontë and lived out fantasies in her head. Hadn’t he read something in the news about the power of romantic novels to give women unrealistic expectations of life? Yeah. It had been in the New York Times, too. So it must be true.
“Mr. Dunkle?”
Ah, crap. Here we go again.
He showed no fear and smiled warmly. “Yes, Professor Blake?”
“I’m interested to hear your thoughts on the story, Roman Fever.”
“I liked it.”
The class tittered. She never lost her smile. If she wasn’t wearing the wrong color lipstick, he may have believed her lips were perfectly bow shaped and lush.
“I’m relieved. What did you think about the ending? Did you feel sympathy for Mrs. Slade when she discovered her friend was unfaithful? Or did it strike you as justice?”
He tried hard not to rub his forehead. A headache threatened. Out of all the damn stories she had to pick to discuss, this was the only one he didn’t read. He’d fallen asleep at his computer and decided to skip the reading for today. Now he was in trouble.