Teach Me(43)

“Yes, thirty years old, a professor at Oxford, on tenure track in the discipline I’ve always wanted to study, in which you were convinced I could never possibly find work. I’m a real failure, Dad. I see what you mean.”

He waves a hand dismissively. The heart rate monitor remains as steady as ever, though. Further proof how little he cares about anything I have to say about my own damn life. “Sooner or later you’ll realize what really matters in life. Kids. Family. The kind of job that makes a difference, the kind of job men do, not boys still trapped in university mindsets. And a wife. You keep going through these poor women, leading them on for a year here, two years there. Any one of them would be decent for you. The last one would’ve been perfect. But you’re too stuck in your own head to even see what’s right in front of you.”

I shove my chair back so hard it hits the wall as I stand. “Thanks for this chat, Dad. Been a real pleasure. Thanks as usual for the enlightened insults to my livelihood, masculinity, and life in general.”

“I’m serious, son. You’ll regret it if you don’t listen now. Sooner or later, these women are going to wise up about you. You’ve got yourself a regular track record now—Hannah is probably the last one left who will give you a real shot at making a home. You should take it now, while you still have the option. Before she realizes you’re not good enough for her.”

Right. Because he’s a regular expert on building a great life. Retired from construction work when he finally wore out both knees, still living in the same cramped two-bedroom townhouse where he and Mum raised two kids tripping over each other, hasn’t left the country since the single time he took a weekend honeymoon to France with her forty years ago.

He lucked out. He met someone he wanted in college, when he was only eighteen years old. That’s not me, and it never will be.

So I do the only thing I can at this point. I stalk out of the room, letting the door shut hard behind me.

“You’ll wake him!” Mum protests from the waiting room, already on her feet, a full contingent of aunts scowling at me from behind her.

“He’s already up,” I say, making a beeline straight for the exit. Mum ignores me to rush into the hospital room, along with half of said aunts. Only Kat follows me, and only long enough to grab my shoulder, squeeze it once.

Nobody but siblings really understands what your parents do to you. “I can’t stay,” I tell her.

“I know. I’ll make something up. Just . . . try to make it back again. Maybe next weekend?” Her eyes are huge, her hands clasped. “You’ll regret leaving it like this when he goes. It’s not going to be too long now. Couple months.”

“I’ll think about it,” I promise. Then I’m gone.





Harper




Give the git a taste of his own medicine. I stand on Jack’s porch, hand poised over the knocker, debating this for the dozenth time since I started walking over here.

It’s been three days since we talked. Three days of trying to catch his eye in class while he avoids even looking in my general direction. Three days of me sending him uber-professional emails to his work account asking when we should meet to discuss next steps on the Eliot papers. Three days of him saying Would tomorrow be okay? And then emailing me a few hours later to push it back yet another day.

I don’t want to be that girl. The stalkery, clingy one who can’t leave her relatively new lover alone for even a couple days at a time. But this shit has gone on long enough. He can’t leave me hanging like this for days on end, and not give one iota of help back from his end.

If nothing else, we still have a paper to write together.

I let the knocker fall on the door. Once. Twice. Three times. A shift in light catches my eye, and I look up, fast. Not fast enough—all I catch a glimpse of is a curtain swaying in the dim light from the bedroom. But as I stand there glaring up at the window, a shadow crosses the curtain and disappears.

I knock one more time, then kick the door. “I know you’re in there, you coward!” I shout in the window’s general direction, before I storm back to my dorm room.

But I can’t sleep. Not with all this hanging over my head. I flip open my computer and open a new email from my personal account. To J. Kingston.

I don’t know what I did to deserve this kind of treatment, but we still have to work together, you know. I leave the rest unsaid, out of deference for it being his work account I’m emailing. Then I shut down the computer and collapse face-first into my bed.

It’s a bad habit, but I refresh my email first thing the next morning, and there’s a new message waiting. From an email account I don’t recognize: JK85. I open it, despite the no subject line, and skim the message.