Winter Jacket: New Beginnings (27 page)

I glanced once in Hunter’s direction. “I actually don’t remember.”
I did remember though. I remembered because it had been such a painstaking process as I added up the final grade.

Hunter cleared her throat. “I got a B+.”

“No A?” Hunter’s father frowned.

“No A,”
Hunter echoed with a casual shrug.

I caught a glimpse of Hunter’s mother’
s face in my peripheral vision. She looked very invested in our conversation.

“You must be a hard grader,” her dad said as he swirled more spaghetti around on his fork.
“Our Hunter is very smart.”

“She just said students don’t get grades, Dad,” Hunter said, sounding exasperated. “And I didn’t earn the A.”

“Well why not?” he wanted to know.

“
I was…I got distracted in that class,” she mumbled in a low voice that didn’t really want to be heard.

“What would you…” Her father’s words fell off. “Oh.”
Recognition colored his face.

I bit back my laughter.
I should have been embarrassed along with Hunter, but I enjoyed the quiet discomfort that had her squirming in her chair.

Hunter’
s arm was around my waist as we waved goodbye to her family as we stood on the front porch.

“I think that went well,” she observed as her parents and brother
climbed into an SUV parked in front of my house.

“It could have been worse,”
I confirmed.

By the time I
had brought out the apple pie, ice cream, and coffee, the thick tension of the shared meal had abated substantially. I could see it in their expressions and in their body language. Hunter’s family sat more relaxed, even her mother, as I passed out slices of the still warm pie.

“I’m kind of proud of them,” Hunter said with a wistful look, “especially my mom.”

“What about me?” I pouted. “I played nice all night.”

“I’m proud of you too, Ellio.”
Hunter tugged me inside and out of the night. The wind had yet to calm down and random gusts sprayed mist in my face like I was on a boat on a choppy day at sea.

“
So is this going to be a standing date kind of thing?” I worried out loud. “Like we have dinner with your family once a week?”

She smirked. “Maybe we shouldn’t press our luck.”

I locked the front door and turned out the porch light. “I never want you to have to choose between me or your family.”

“I know you’
d never put me in that position,” she said, nodding. “But just so you know, I’d choose you. I’d always choose you.”

My arms went around her waist and I pulled her to me, our hips smashing together.
We didn’t go to sleep for a long time after that.

+++++

I was spending a lot more time at Hunter’s apartment once the school year came to an end. Since she wouldn’t have the apartment for much longer, I wanted us to enjoy this place that had been her home for the past three years for as long as we had access to it. And, I also wanted to nonverbally remind Loryssa that even though I was no longer her professor there were still boundaries to be maintained – mainly that my girlfriend was off-limits.

Hunter was on her laptop, downloading new music while I was on my laptop, catching up on emails. She’d just gotten home from an early shift at the hospital, while I’d spent the morning writing at Del Sol and weeding my flower garden. I deleted a number of mass emails from academic publishers wanting me to adopt their latest textbook in my courses and responded to a few student inquiries, but the email I was hoping for had yet to appear in my Inbox. I shut the lid of my laptop with a dramatic sigh.

“Still no word from the Dean?” Hunter asked, correctly interpreting the source of my disappointment.

I nodded. “Yup.”

It had been over a week since I’d asked for a sabbatical. Dean Merlot had said I would find out by the end of that week, but when her deadline had come and gone, I’d assumed her decision was no.

Hunter shut her own laptop and gave me a quick peck on the lips. “How about this for a plan?” she proposed. “I’ll go grab you a beer and me something that’s not-a-beer and we can spend the rest of the day binging on movies. I’ll even give you first pick.”

“How about you get yourself a beer, too?” I grinned at my girlfriend.

She wrinkled her nose adorably. “How about no.” She hopped up from the bed and skipped out of the room.

“I’m going to convert you one of these days, Hunter Dyson!” I called after her.

I continued to lay on Hunter’s bed for a moment longer, wallowing in my self-pity for just another minute. I couldn’t reasonably be upset with Dean Merlot for denying me a Fall sabbatical. It had been short notice even if finding an adjunct or two to take over my classes would have been easy and inexpensive. But I was more annoyed that she hadn’t at least emailed me to say so; and if I couldn’t get a sabbatical for Fall, she should at least have granted me one for Spring semester.

I shook my head as if to rouse myself out of this self-depreciating funk and refocused my attentions to pick out a movie.
Hunter’s DVD collection was modest compared to my own. I was a bit of a movie junkie; I loved getting lost in cinematic storytelling. I scanned the list of the titles feeling uninspired until the spine of a familiar DVD case stuck out at me.

“Find anything good?”
Hunter asked upon re-entering the room. As promised, she had a bottle of craft beer for me and something non-beer for herself. Her face was scrubbed clean and her hair was pulled back in a high ponytail with any loose tendrils held back with an elastic headband. She looked completely edible in her tank top and short sleep shorts. Her legs seemed to go on forever and I imagined them wrapped around me. Normally I would have abandoned the movie idea for more physically demanding activities, but the DVD I held in my hand was distracting me.

“Is this my copy?” I asked.
Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan grinned at us from the cover of the DVD case.

Hunter looked pleased. “No, I picked one up. I figured you should have a copy of it at my apartment, too. You know, kind of an In Case of Emergency situation.”

I swallowed hard at the lump in my throat.

“Baby, are you
crying
?” Hunter’s face crumpled with concern.

I hastily wiped at my eyes. “What? No. Maybe.” My voice cracked. “I don’t know.”

Hunter had only really seen me cry two times until this semester from hell. Once, when I couldn’t find the remote quick enough during one of those ASPCA commercials – because I’m human, after all, and the only other time was when I’d finished my tenure committee meeting, convinced that I’d bombed it.

Hunter shut her bedroom door and lowered her voice. “What’s wrong?” She set our drinks down at her desk and came to sit next to me on the bed.

I wiped at my eyes again, sloughing away the warm tears. “Everything has just been falling apart. But not you. Not us. You’re so wonderful and I love you and I can’t imagine not being with you.”

She smiled warmly. “I don’t understand these tears, Ellio.” She rested her hand on my forearm. “Are they
happy tears?”

“No, not really,” I admitted. “I just feel like everything is so up in the air with my job. Part of me wants to keep teaching because it’s familiar and it’s the safe choice, but another part of me wants to go to California. But Dean Merlot won’t let me know what’s going on with my sabbatical, and I’m just so
frustrated.”

“Why don’t you go see her, face-to-face?”

My chin trembled. “Because I’m scared. What if she says yes?”

Hunter’s eyes seemed to widen. “You’re worried she’ll award you the sabbatical?”

I nodded somberly. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.” I sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t know if I can take the job.”

“Why not?”

I worried my bottom lip. “I-I trust you. Unfailingly,” I emphasized. “I just…I don’t trust anyone else.”

Hunter’s head drooped. “Oh.
That.
”

“I’m sorry
,” I sighed, hanging my head a little. “It just still feels so fresh, you know? And every time I think about that girl and what she did, I get angry all over again.” I hazarded a glance in the direction of Hunter’s closed bedroom door.

The
ir apartment lease would be up soon, but Hunter hadn’t talked about what Loryssa would be doing – if she was going to continue living in the apartment or not after Hunter was gone. Hunter didn’t talk about Loryssa often. It wasn’t a noticeable change from before, but I’m sure she was mindful not to bring up the topic of her roommate around me for obvious reasons.

“You’
re allowed to be angry,” Hunter conceded. “Just don’t punish me or push me away, okay? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I know. I’
m sorry,” I breathed out another apology. “I’m doing my best to stop dwelling on it.” I laughed without amusement. “God, I can’t believe I ever suggested to Troi that you should just sleep with Loryssa and get it over with.”

Hunter’s eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. “My intensely possessive girlfriend wants me to have sex with someone else?”

“No, of course I don’t want that,” I scowled.

“Then why would you ever consider…”

“Because how do you know you really want to be with me when you have nothing to compare our relationship to?”

Hunter looked at me as if I’d grown a third eyeball. “
Are you suggesting that I go out and experience horrible dates and relationships to justify what I know is already great?”

I rested my head in my hands. It suddenly felt too heavy, too filled with self-doubt. “I just don’
t want to hold you back from life experiences.”

“
The idea that I have to fail a million times to validate being with you is ridiculous,” Hunter scoffed beside me.

“
Well maybe not a
million
dates,” I grumbled, casting my eyes to the ground.

“If I’
m always hunting for better, I risk losing the best person there is for me. Being with you isn’t settling, Ellio.” I felt her hand on my knee. “Hey.”

I looked up at the prompt.

“I’m trusting my instincts.”

I sighed, feeling lighter at her words. “How do you always know the exact words to say?”

“I had a really great English professor, once upon a time,” Hunter smiled back.

I picked up the forgotten DVD case. “Are you still okay to watch this? Or do you want to do something else?”

Hunter laughed. “I don’t know. Are
you
?” she countered. “Are you going to transform into a quivering pile of a girlfriend?”

I smiled sheepishly. “I make no promises. Nora Ephron
just gets me.”

Hunter gave me a coy smile. “I’ll try to curb my jealousy.”

We crawled under the blankets and I slid the DVD into my laptop and pressed play
.

“Comfy?”
Hunter asked. She reached across my body and retrieved our drinks.

I nodded
and snuggled deeper beside her. The opening credits, graphics, and the familiar song at the start of the movie flooded me with a warm, happy feeling. But those feelings were short-lived.

A pop-up box flas
hed on the screen, indicating I’d received a message to my school email. I wanted to ignore it and enjoy the movie and this moment with my girlfriend, but I couldn’t.

I sat up and pressed the spacebar to pause the movie.

“What’s wrong?”

My throat was constricted.
I’d seen in that brief pop-up who the email was from, and I knew what it meant. Dean Merlot had made her decision regarding my sabbatical.

“I can’t open it,” I choked out.
“I’m too nervous.”

Hunter sat up next to me, sudd
enly alert. “That email. You think it’s about your sabbatical?”

I nodded.

“Do you want me to read it for you?” Hunter offered. She didn’t tease me for being ridiculous. She knew the importance of this email.

“Would you?”
My voice wavered, but I was too distracted by anxiety to be embarrassed about it.

A gh
ost of a smile played on Hunter’s lips. She took the laptop from me and set in on her own lap, positioning it so I could no longer see the screen. “Here goes nothing,” she murmured.

I clo
sed my eyes and held my breath. This decision could change everything.

“‘Dear Professor Graft.’ She’s awfully formal, isn’t she?” Hunter
grinned, but I was too strung-out to return the smile.

“‘Dear Professor Graft,’” she began again. “‘
I have taken your request for a sabbatical under advisement. As we discussed in our meeting, your desire for a sabbatical this Fall is rather short notice as well as a challenge to replace an excellent educator such as yourself.’ Wow,” Hunter paused again. “She’s really buttering you up. Are you sure she hates your guts?”

I looked at
Hunter with a pained expression. I couldn’t handle the distractions and tangential questions.

Hunter raised her hands. “Sorry. I’ll just read.”

“Thank you.”

Hunter’
s eyes scanned the computer screen briefly, looking for the spot where she’d last read. “‘In light of recent circumstances,’” she resumed, “‘I find it would be of mutual benefit to grant you this request.’”

Hunter paused.
The goofy grin slipped off her face. “‘I hope you find this time off intellectually rewarding. I look forward to welcoming you back on campus to resume your teaching and service responsibilities in the Spring at the completion of your sabbatical. Congratulations. Sincerely, Jessica Merlot.’”

I pushed my hair away from my face
and released a long breath. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. Maybe both. It felt like the first victory I’d had in a very long time – probably the first since getting tenure.

“What did she mean ‘
in light of recent circumstances?’” Hunter asked. Her face was scrunched up as she re-read the email.

“Who knows.”
I shook my head. “Maybe she’s worried I’m going to Out her, so she’s getting me off campus before I can ruin her career.”

“Your Dean is gay?”

I shrugged. “I think so, but it’s just a guess. Either that or she heard that you and I got married.”

An eyebrow arched. “We did?”

“Just another campus rumor,” I dismissed.

Hunter shut the lid on my laptop. She
was noticeably quiet. We hadn’t talked about what would happen if I did get the sabbatical since our original discussion where I’d all but forbade her from coming to California with me. I wondered if maybe she had hoped I wouldn’t get this semester break because it meant me leaving for four months.

It wasn’t that I didn’
t want her there with me; I missed her every moment we weren’t together even when she was just at work or I was on campus. But having her come to California would put too much pressure on our still-new relationship. I could practically anticipate fights about the sacrifices she’d have made, like leaving her family and stalling her career. I didn’t want to have that shadow looming over us when we hadn’t even celebrated a year of being together.

But I knew it was her decision ultimately, and not something I could command her to do either way.
If she decided to come to California, I’d trust her instincts that we were doing the right thing.

Her silence rattl
ed me, but finally, she spoke: “You got what you wanted, Elle. So what are you going to do?”

I got momentarily lost in those pale blue eyes that now regarded me with a wounded ferocity.