In Too Hard (Freshman Roommates Trilogy, Book 3) (13 page)

“And partying,” Jane added, making Lily and me smile, for which I was grateful.

“No worries,” I said and tweaked Jane’s big toe through her sock. “I will have my priorities well in place. Partying first, for sure.”

“Damn straight,” she said. Lily just rolled her eyes at both of us and turned on to her back, staring up at the ceiling.

Eager to turn the conversation off of me and my new job—let alone my new boss—I said to Lily, “So, how did bringing Lucas home to meet the family go?”

A wide smile crossed her face first, and Jane poked me with her foot to make sure I’d noticed. I had. But then Lily’s smile faded a bit and more of a melancholy look took over her beautiful face. “It went okay. No, I guess better than okay. Or at least better than I’d expected.”

“Lots of covert sneaking into each other’s rooms at night after Mommy and Daddy went to bed?” Jane asked.

Lily took a deep breath, then let it out in a sigh. “Well, no, not really. And not for lack of trying on my part. Lucas got all weirded out about sleeping together in my parents’ house. Said it would be disrespectful or something.”

Jane hooted with laughter and Lily shot her a glare, but then softened and laughed along. “I know. Ridiculous, right? But I couldn’t sway him. He came back to Schoolport on New Year’s Day. I can’t wait to see him.” As if on cue, Lily’s phone buzzed and she smiled as soon as she looked at the screen. She answered in a low voice and looked around the room. I motioned for her to take her love-talk call in my room and she nodded and got off her bed and left the room, closing the adjoining door behind her. Leaving Jane and me alone.

“So, how was your sister’s wedding,” I asked, even though we’d talked about it on the phone already. I kind of wondered if, now that time had passed, and we were together in person and not on the phone, she’d be more forthcoming about the guy she’d danced with. And kissed.

“Half sister,” she clarified. “And like I said on the phone, it was fine.”

I didn’t want to push, because I certainly didn’t want her pushing me for any details, but I couldn’t stop myself. “So, no good guys there? With all of the groom’s friends?”

She snorted. “Those guys couldn’t get away from me soon enough. My…half brother, Joey, took me off the hands of the groomsman assigned to dance with me, and you’ve never seen a look more filled with relief.”

I crossed my legs and turned to face her more fully. “Oh, come on, I’ll bet you looked fantastic. You’re telling me not one guy showed any interest?”

Another snort, but it took a longer time coming and didn’t have quite the…oomph as the one previous. “Does an eighty-year-old geezer with wandering hands count? I told you about him, right?”

“Yes,” I said, studying her carefully. Perhaps a bit
too
carefully, as she narrowed her eyes at me. “Why all the questions about guys at the wedding?”

Did I dare tip my hand? Mention I heard she had danced—and kissed—someone other than the old goat Senator? But that could all lead back to Montrose, and Jane was one sharp cookie.

I waved a hand nonchalantly, as if the question had minimal merit to me. “Just wondering if
anyone
got lucky over break. Sounds like Lily got frozen out by Lucas’ good-guy morals.”

“I kind of don’t blame him, though,” Jane said, surprising me. Jane was always one to rebel against what was expected of her. “I mean, Grayson Spaulding can be a formidable opponent. I think Lucas is smart enough to know that he should stay on Grayson’s good side if he’s going to go long term with Lily.”

“You’ve been around them more than I have. Do you think that’s the play? Long term?”

She looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded her head. “Yeah, I do. They’ve got a lot going against them…but…yeah, I think so. I know
they
think so.”

Wow. Halfway through freshman year and Lily was in deep. A third of our group was basically on the bench.

Jane and I looked at each other, neither one of us willing—or able—to talk about the men that may, or may not, be our equivalent of Lily’s Lucas.

Lily came back into the room then, and it seemed irrelevant to ask her if she wanted to go out tonight, it was obvious by her smile she’d be seeing Lucas later.

We spent the next couple of hours before Lily left just sitting on the beds and shooting the shit.

Lily didn’t stop talking about Lucas.
 

Jane didn’t bring up Ponytail.

I never mentioned Montrose.

Chapter Fourteen

I
won’t be in until after four.
I texted to Montrose Sunday morning. I’d received a call from the people at the admin building. They wanted to do some last minute testing before the new system went live at midnight and asked if I could come in. I initially said I couldn’t, but they must have been desperate because they offered triple-time pay, which I couldn’t pass up.

No problem. Except, I’ll miss you by an hour. I need to leave by three.
Montrose replied to my text. I was already at the admin building, in my little cubicle, going through the list of data that needed to be entered. It was a long list, and I’d be hard-pressed to make it to Snyder Hall by four, but I’d wanted to give Montrose some time to expect me.

My disappointment that I wouldn’t see him at all threatened to pull me under. But then I remembered it was just the beginning of the semester, and we would have a lot of time together.

I knew I needed to be careful with Montrose and not let the intensity of my feelings show through or I was sure he’d be scared off. I also couldn’t let him know that I’d basically been in love with him (at least from afar) for five years.

I definitely needed to follow his lead on this—showing only as much commitment and emotion as he did.

It was kind of like making sure I bought the right kind of boots. I wanted to fit in to Montrose’s life as much as I wanted to look like the Bribury girls.

So of course I didn’t text back asking where he was going this afternoon.
That’s too bad. But lots there to keep me busy.
I replied. Cool. Casual. All business. I had to physically put the phone down so I wouldn’t keep texting.

I have to meet with the rest of the department to learn the new grading system. Though I suppose you could probably show me that.

I probably could.
I was tasked with ways of breaking the system, so probably not the best person to show you how to use it correctly.

Is that what you’re doing today? Breaking the system I’m taking the time to learn?

Kind of. I’ll be careful not to take down anything you might need later.

Big of ya.

All for the greater good of my fellow Bribury students.

There was a pause, and I put my phone down again, thinking that if the conversation was over, I wasn’t going to be the one typing over and over “Are you still there?”

Sorry.
He finally typed.
You just reminded me you’re a student. As if the faculty event last night wasn’t reminder enough.

I wanted to deflect and distract him from the fact that I was a student, but really, there was no deflecting it. It was a fact. Instead I texted
How was the event last night?

Good, actually. Much as I would have liked to stay exactly where I was.
Which was on his office couch, kissing the crap out of me.
I really enjoyed it. Of course, with that group, the subject of books we’ve read recently came up and so that was a good conversation.

Anybody read the new John Irving and have anything to say? I finished it over break.

You worked two jobs AND had time to read Irving’s latest? He’s not exactly a quick read.

I TOLD you I could handle two jobs and classes.
 

Yeah, if you can handle Irving, what’s a little Advanced Chem?

Haha.

Actually, yeah, I heard someone talking about the new Irving book. It wasn’t in the group I was sitting with, though, so I didn’t catch what they were saying.

Too bad. I’d like to hear someone in the literary world’s thoughts on it.

What are YOUR thoughts on it?

He’d spent the evening amongst Bribury’s strongest literary minds and wanted
my
opinion? Umm…no. I wasn’t going to open myself up like that. I wasn’t about to make him question my suitability for this job by trying to sum up a very complex author’s newest masterpiece.

I probably should get back to work here. Systems to break, after all.

Sure. Of course. But one more thing about last night.

Yes?

There were a bunch of times when I thought to myself, “Syd should be here with me, she’d love this.” And then I would remember that you couldn’t be with me. Not as my plus one or anything. But…well…I thought about you.

That’s nice.
It was more than “nice” to me, but again, I wasn’t going to show my cards this early into the hand.

Did you think about me?

So much for showing my cards. Before I could stop my fingers, I texted back.
I think about you all the time.

A moment of inactivity. I willed the dots showing he was typing to start growing, but nothing.
 

Then, after what seemed like an eternity, a simple,
Me too
.

I
foolishly hoped that Montrose had blown off his training session, or that maybe it had been cancelled and he’d still be in his office when I arrived around four-thirty, but no.

It was obvious he’d been there, though, and also obvious—at least to me—that he’d spent a fair amount of time going through the Esme/Rachel pile. The stack was still neat and tidy, but in a different order than I’d originally organized it.
 

I wondered if there was a reason he’d reordered the pieces of paper, and decided to work on a different stack tonight in case he wanted to clarify something with me first.

I took the pile I’d named
One Mile Trot
with me to the desk, where I saw a note he’d left for me on top of his laptop.

I won’t need my laptop tonight, so if you’d rather work on it, go ahead. At the very least, transfer over the work that you’ve got transcribed to my machine when you’re done. I might get a chance to go over it tomorrow before my first class.

I liked working on my machine, so I pushed his laptop to the side of the desk, pulled the
One Mile Trot
pile to just within reach and began typing.

After I finished transcribing the stack of papers, I spent a fair amount of time cutting and pasting and moving passages about to try and create some kind of cohesiveness to his various trains of thought. When I was pleased with the results, I transferred the files I’d created onto a flash drive that Montrose had left on top of his laptop.

Booting up his laptop, I packed mine away in my backpack. I was a little uncomfortable with poking around on his computer, but I supposed that many literary assistants had this kind of access to the machines of the authors they worked for.

And, he probably wouldn’t have left all his downloaded porn, or sensitive love letters to past girlfriends, out on the desktop and then leave a note for me to use it.

Nope. No porn. On his fairly empty desktop was a folder titled “WIP” which I took for Work In Progress. Opening it, I found five more folders named by the past five years.

His notes had all been dated at the top, but I wasn’t sure if the dates he scribbled the note necessarily coincided with the year from his folders. Probably not, as even with
Trot
there were notes from several different years.

I opened the most distant year’s folder, from five years ago. In it were at least forty Word docs, all named with what looked to be different book titles. And also a corresponding file with the title and “notes.” None of them were titles of the copious piles of notes I’d unpacked and sorted.

Perhaps the notes for these books were in the boxes still at his apartment?

I opened all the years’ folders to find the same thing, only there were progressively more files in the ensuing years. I matched up the names with the piles of notes I had created. They were all accounted for, but there had to be at least an extra two hundred files. Were there
that
many boxes at Montrose’s apartment?
 

Suddenly I was extremely grateful that I’d put so much time in during the holidays and got through all the boxes in his office. I was thinking I was over halfway done with the organizing part of this large project.

Now I realized I probably wasn’t even close.

I opened the files for
Trot
and its notes, intending to see where it would make the most sense to add on the material from the flash drive.

The notes file was empty, but the book file started with the two words every voracious reader loved to see—Chapter One.

Yes, the character introduced on the first page matched the pile of notes I’d just transcribed, and I scrolled down to continue, resigning myself to a long evening ahead, spending time with my favorite author and his next—or possibly his next—book.