“Professor Reardon?” Maya raised a hand to knock on his door when she heard voices inside. She took a seat on the chair outside and waited. It was a feminine voice she heard, along with the professor's.
Maya took out her notebook and started scribbling a few notes about her next story. She had gotten an idea last night at work, watching two freshman girls arguing at one of the cafeteria tables. It was crazy, sometimes, the things that inspired her.
She checked her watch. It was now quarter after two. He had said two, hadn't he? The voices inside were growing louder, and she could make out some of the words now.
“I don't care, James! You said this year!”
James? Was his first name James? For some reason, that thought made Maya feel slightly warm. She could hear him speaking, but his voice was lower than the woman's, so she couldn't make out anything.
“Goddamnit, why don't you quit this dead-end teaching gig, then?”
Maya stared at the door. Quit? Professor Reardon had been there for ten years. He was one of the most well-respected faculty on campus. His classes were almost impossible to get into-she had tried to get into creative writing her freshman year and hadn't made it.
Suddenly the door opened, and something sailed across the hall and hit the opposite wall. Maya ducked instinctively, even though it wasn't aimed at her. It was a book, she saw.
“You know you could make ten times what you do here, if you'd just write some more of that trash! Then maybe my alimony payments would improve!” A tall, dark haired woman stormed out of his office, her high heels clicking on the tile. She slammed the door shut behind her and the force of it shook the whole wall. She glanced down at Maya, who was staring at her, wide-eyed. “What, you didn't know that your dear professor was really Rebecca Winters?”
The woman sneered at her and then turned and stalked off down the hallway. Maya looked at the book on the floor and went to retrieve it, looking back over her shoulder at Professor Reardon's door. She was surprised that no one had even stuck their head out of their office to see what the commotion was.
The book was a paperback, and she recognized it immediately. She'd only read it a hundred times. “Sweet Ecstasy” by Rebecca Winters. It was one of her favorite writers. She carried it back to his office door, standing there for a moment, contemplating. Then she slipped it into her backpack and turned, going down the hallway to the bathroom.
She stood at the basin, her hands shaking as washed her face and took a drink with cupped palms. The cool water felt good, calming somehow. A thousand questions were running through her head. She didn't know what to do. She remembered her conversation out at the pond with him yesterday, and that decided her. She went back to his office door and knocked, softly.
“Come in.”
“Professor Reardon?” Maya poked her head into his office. He was sitting at his desk, his chair turned away from her so he could look out his office window. He had a view of the duck pond, she saw, from the opposite side of campus from her dorm.
“Hello, Maya.” His voice was warm and he turned and indicated that she should sit. She did, perching on the edge of one of the chairs on the other side of his desk. “Thanks for coming.”
“I'm sorry I'm late.” She hadn't been late, of course. Not really.
“That's ok. I got… sidetracked.” His eyes fell to his desk. “So, do you know why I asked you here?”
Maya shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“Have you ever thought about writing a novel?” he asked her. She stared at him. “The William Faulkner writing competition is coming up. They take entries for anything, of course, from poetry to novels. They pay $8000 for the winning novel, and $2000 for the winning short story.”
Maya's eyes widened. “They do?”
“However…” He raised an eyebrow at her. “They don't accept romance as a general rule.” Leaning back in his chair, he looked across his desk at her. “I thought it would be a good opportunity for you. Both financially, and to expand your horizons a bit.”
She nodded, still not able to find the words. She couldn't imagine what she might do with that much money at one time.
Professor Reardon opened his desk drawer and pulled out a slip of paper. “These are the submission guidelines.” He slid them across his desk toward her. “Think you might be interested?”
“I don't…” She looked at the paper but didn't reach for it. “I've never written anything else. I mean, romance is what I read… it's what I write.”
“It can't be all you read.” He smiled. “And I'm sure it's not all you're capable of writing.”
“Maybe.” She touched the paper, but still didn't take it.
“Maya.” He leaned over his desk and put his hand on hers. It reminded her immediately of the feel of his hand pressing hers under the table, and brought the same warmth and tingle. “I don't think you know how good you really are.”
His words made her feel even warmer. “Really?”
“You remind me a lot of me,” he said, nodding. “When I was your age.”
She smiled. “You make it sound like it was a hundred years ago.”
He smiled back, but his was a wry smile. “I think it was.”
“No,” she whispered, turning her hand over under his, pressing her palm upward. The pressure of his hand kept hers on the desk, and the feel if it made her flush. Her eyes moved from their hands back to his eyes, and she saw her own feelings reflected there.
He cleared his throat and moved his hand slowly off of hers. “So, what do you think?”
Maya sat back and looked at him for a minute. “I have one question.”
“What's that?” He opened his desk drawer and took out a small scheduling book and a pen.
“Are you really Rebecca Winters?”
Her question made him drop his pen, and it rolled under the desk toward her and settled against her shoe. He stared at her, opening his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He did that twice more, but still, nothing.
Maya reached into her backpack and pulled out the book, setting it on his desk. There was a picture of a half-naked woman on the cover, her breasts nearly spilling out of her bodice, with a shirtless man leaning over her, kissing her neck. When she looked up at the professor, she saw that he had gone very pale.
“Did you… were you…?” He couldn't seem to finish the question.
“Before,” Maya said. “The woman who left, she threw the book.”
“My ex-wife…” He closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair. He actually looked like he was going to be sick, and Maya was concerned, but she didn't know what to do, what to say. When he opened his eyes again, and he saw her looking at him, he offered her a small smile. He wasn't her professor anymore in that moment-he was the man she had talked to yesterday standing by the duck pond.
“I need to get out of here.” He stood and grabbed his suit coat off the back of his chair. “Do you want to come?” She stared at him. “I know a place we can talk.”
She didn't know why, but she said the first thing that came into her head. “Okay.”
He stood, leaning over to open the door, and she followed him out of his office to his car.
“You can call me James.” He ordered them Heineken's at the bar and Maya helped him carry them to a spot by the window.
“I won't be twenty-one for another six months,” Maya said in a low voice as they sat down in two small booth seats, facing each other across the table.
He smiled. “Live dangerously.” He tipped his beer, clinking the bottleneck with hers before drinking half of it in one long, continuous swallow.
“So is it true?” Maya sipped at her beer. They had been quiet on the drive over. She didn't quite know what to say.
He frowned out the window. “I have to know something.” His eyes skipped back to her and then out the window again. “Who do you intend to tell?”
Maya opened her mouth to reply and then closed it again, watching him tip his beer up, the sun glinting off the dark green glass. He had never looked so human to her before, the lines around his eyes a little deeper, his mouth drawn down, instead of pulled into his usual lopsided, sarcastic smile.
“So it is true,” she breathed, lifting her beer and taking another drink. Her English professor, the winner of not one, but two, O. Henry Awards, as well as a National Book Award for his one and only novel, “The Unsung,” (or so everyone had believed)-he was one of America's best-selling romance writers of all time?
“I'm asking you again…” He leaned forward over the table toward her. “Who do you intend to tell?”
Maya set her bottle down. “No one.”
He raised his eyebrows, but his face relaxed a little. “It would ruin me.”
“I know.” She turned her beer bottle around on the paper coaster.
He chuckled, shaking his head. “And after everything I said to you…”
Maya smiled. “You mean about my writing fairy stories?”
He groaned, putting his head in his hands. “Maya, you really are talented.”
“Coming from Rebecca Winters, that's quite a compliment.”
He snorted, picking his beer up and downing the rest. He called the waitress over and ordered two more, although Maya hadn't made it halfway through her first.
“I started just for the money,” he explained when the waitress returned and he paid for their beers. “I had no intention of writing romance novels for a living. It was a way to make some quick cash.”
“It worked,” Maya said, still working on her first beer. It was two-thirds gone now.
He sighed. “I'll say. The publisher wanted more. The fans wanted more. And once I started the ‘Misty’ series…”
“I love the Misty series!” Maya broke in, leaning forward in her seat.
He groaned, cradling his head in his hand again as if it hurt. “Everyone loves her. I can't get rid of the bitch. She reminds me of my ex-wife.”
“The woman who threw the book?” Maya inquired. He nodded, picking up his beer. “I bet she's got Misty's expensive tastes, too, huh?”
“You have no idea.” He stared out the window and Maya studied his face.
He wasn't a traditionally handsome man-his nose was a little too long, his face too round, almost boyish, his dark hair, slivered with silver in the light, was an unruly mess, like he had just rolled out of bed.
Yet to Maya, he had always been her picture-perfect dream professor. She had fantasized about being in his class for a year before finally getting to experience him first hand, but her fantasy had crumbled after his first review of her work. Now that she saw him this way, exposed, vulnerable to her, she discovered that he was even more attractive than her fantasy had been, by far.
“Professor Reardon-”
“James,” he corrected her with a smile.
“James…” She tried it out in her mouth and found it felt good. “I don't understand.”
“What don't you understand?” He leaned back.
“Why were you so hard on me?” Maya found she could barely get the words out. She had spent months longing for, looking for, his approval. “I mean… it can't be that I write romance, which is what I thought it was, what it had to be… because now I know that you write it, too.”
James shook his head, frowning, but didn't interrupt her.
“It must… it must just be me, then?” She heard how small her voice was and tried to hide it behind the lip of her bottle. “Am I so awful?”
“No.” He sat up and reached across the table, grabbing her beer and setting it aside, grasping her hands in his. They were large and warm and everything Maya thought a man's hands should feel like. “Don't you get it?”
She was shaking her head, willing her tears not to fall.
“I discouraged you from writing romance…” He leaned in to capture her eyes with his and she felt her lower lip trembling. “Not because I think you're a bad writer, but because I think you're a good writer. You have an exceptional talent.”
The words made her feel warm, or maybe it was the alcohol working its way through her system. His hands, cupping hers, were a point of human contact that she hadn't allowed in for a long time. She found herself craving more.
“I don't want you to get stuck doing what I'm doing.” His eyes pleaded with her. “You have no idea what it's like, being stuck doing something you hate. And believe me, as fun as the fantasy is now, you will eventually grow to hate it.”
“Why do you think so?” She shook her head. She didn't understand people when they said things like this to her. The fantasy and the romance, they were something she lived for, something she craved. Real life had plenty of sad endings and ambiguous situations-in a romance, everyone finally lived happily ever after. For once.
James touched her cheek, brushing a stray hair away and tucking it behind her ear. “Because, you beautiful girl… there is a great deal of depth in you-that even you have yet to touch.” His eyes were following his fingers, down the soft skin of her cheek, over the line of her jaw. “A depth that most people in your life don't even see.”
Maya felt like she couldn't breathe. “You see that?”
“I do.” The hand still holding hers squeezed gently.
She opened her palm to him, like she had in his office. “You've touched it.”
“Have I?” He smiled at her, and for a moment, he was her teacher again with that same sarcastic little smile. “I've seen it perhaps, but touched it? No.” He shook his head.
Maya bit her lip, looking over at him, and asked, “Do you want to?”
His eyes flew up to hers, searching, that electric charge passing between them like a pulse. “Is that an offer?”
“Yes, it's most definitely an invitation…” Her palm pushed up against his, feeling faint at the tension of his hand pressing hers back down to the table top.
He nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, I very much want that.”
“Then, let's go.”
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