Page 52 of Undercover
But he’d nodded along as I haltingly, embarrassedly told him about my shitty boyfriend, bad habits, and late nights.
“It happens,” he’d said with a shrug. “I was an undergrad in the seventies, myself.” And then he’d grinned, winked, and ordered dessert.
Aside from wanting to bow down and worship him as the savior of my academic career, I genuinely liked Dr. Wilson as a person. I could see why he’d been such a popular professor, though I hadn’t credited the Moo U board of governors with the good taste to nominate someone like him into their august body. Who knew.
He’d also pointed out that being kidnapped, even if only briefly, would give me some sympathy with the rest of the board. I’d pointed out in turn that I hadn’t been kidnapped before I got expelled, and he’d shrugged again and said it was all about perception. And then he’d told me we’d have one more meeting with his colleague, and he’d put my petition before the board in a few weeks.
I had no idea what I’d do to fill the time, except for biting my nails and missing my lab and my old grad school routine with renewed fervor.
I looked around my condo. I’d gone on a cleaning spree over the past couple of weeks, leaving my weekly cleaner with hardly anything to do. I’d scrubbed every inch of my bedroom, washed the bedding ten times, and flipped the mattress.
It didn’t take a psychologist to figure that one out.
Wash that man right out of my hair, and all that—or the comforter, as the case might be.
Except that it hadn’t worked. I’d even gone the literal route, re-dyeing my hair from purple and teal to all-over cotton-candy pink. I’d put new jewelry in my nipple, too.
And I felt exactly the same, only down a few hundred dollars and the hours of time spent inhaling bleach fumes, not to mention however many IQ points I’d lost to said fumes.
I still woke up every morning with an ache behind my breastbone I couldn’t ever seem to soothe, and went to sleep every night trying not to jerk off thinking about Alec.
But now my floor sparkled, and my countertops gleamed, and my bedroom looked like a particularly fussy monk lived in it. And it should’ve made me happy. Going the self-improvement route instead of the drunken slut route after a bad breakup—and this one, despite how briefly Alec and I had been together, had skyrocketed right to the top of my breakup list—had to be a good thing, right?
Yeah. Right. Tell that to the hollow feeling in my gut and the cloud of self-doubt hovering over my head, shooting down little lightning bolts like in a comic strip.
Maybe I’d been too hard on Alec. Maybe he really had cared. Dave had told me he thought Alec really liked me, shrugged, and added, “The guy was just doing his job. And anyway, he saved our lives. So he gets my vote, even if he was kind of a jerk about the champagne.”
Dave got ten points for practicality and minus a million for brotherly empathy, but I saw his point.
And I kept going back to how Alec had acted the one night we’d spent together. Not what he’d said, but what he’ddone. I could see going out of his way to be a decent lover to assuage his guilt over taking me to bed in the first place, maybe, but—he’d done more than that. Way more. He’d spent so much more time and effort on my pleasure than his. And he’d already gotten his in with the company. He hadn’t needed anything more from me.
I couldn’t spend one more minute hanging around my condo. I’d start polishing the silverware, or something, and my silverware was stainless steel.
I found all my bits and pieces, making extra sure to have my phone in my pocket, a paranoid tic I wouldn’t be losing anytime soon, stuffed my feet in a new pair of pink-checkered Chucks that matched my hair (retail therapy at its finest), and headed out.
Time for some tough self-love. I’d been avoiding V and V ever since…ever since. But it was time to reclaim some of my old habits, the healthy ones, anyway. Books had to fall into that category, right? As long as I avoided the boozy side of the business, I’d be golden.
It was a perfect day for a walk. Seventy degrees, sunny with a few puffy clouds drifting through the sky, and a fresh breeze. My route took me by an elementary school, where the kids had just run outside for their lunchtime recess. They ran in circles, shrieking and laughing and bouncing around like pinballs, and my spirits lifted a little. Kids at close range kind of freaked me out, but at a healthy distance…yeah, they were pretty cool. They didn’t brood over lying FBI agents or scrub kitchen tile grout with a toothbrush while they worried about whether they’d made too many typos in their grad-school reinstatement petitions. They just ran around and screamed.
Too bad I’d end up in the drunk tank if I did the same thing.
The Church Street marketplace wasn’t too crowded on a weekday morning, but a few college students wandered around, drinking coffee and killing time, and a stream of mom-looking ladies were heading out of a yoga studio and into a coffee shop.
My heart gave a lurch as I pulled open the door to the bookstore. I half expected to see Alec’s tall figure leaning against the true crime shelf, shaking his head and scowling.
Now I knew why he thought that section was so annoying and so funny, of course.
Because he’d lied to me. I hardened my heart and headed for the sci-fi shelves. No popular science today. It was my version of true crime, and I didn’t have the heart for being annoyed by misinterpretations of theories the authors didn’t understand half the time.
“Excuse me!” I turned back to the counter, where a female clerk stood smiling at me. A friendly, flirty smile, at that. I returned it. She and I both had to know I wouldn’t be flirting with her for more than the fun of it, and she had the air of someone who might have enough interest in girls for the both of us. “Are you Gabe, maybe?”
I blinked at her. “Yeah, I am. Did…why?”
Only Alec knew both my name and that I came in here often. The tingly, lightheaded feeling creeping over me had to be irritation, right? I wouldn’t be feeling anything else at the thought of Alec coming in the bookstore and asking after me.
“A guy bought you some books.” She reached under the counter and pulled out a large V and V shopping bag. “A lot of books, actually. He spent two hours in here on Saturday right before closing. I wanted to close the register, but he gave me…like, puppy-dog eyes, even though he was scowling. It was hilarious. I stayed open an extra ten minutes.”
The lightheadedness intensified, and I grabbed onto the edge of the counter. “Books?”
