Page 78 of Bookworm
Ready to leave his home state.
His job.
His family.
All for me.
I loved him. And no matter what road I took from this fork, I knew I wanted to travel it with Adam.
All that was left was choosing the path.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Forty minutes later, the class was over. “If you could fill out the survey in your email, I would so appreciate it!” I called out to the students and they filtered out the room, already half ignoring me and chatting happily with each other while cradling their newly restored books in their arms.
Dr. O’Macklin shut his laptop and crossed to see me in the front of the room. “Nicely done, Harper,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said, packing up my tools and materials. Luckily I’d brought it all over in my rolling suitcase, so I could easily cart everything back to Adam’s apartment without his assistance. He’d already packed up and left for the day, off to do some grading of his own. “I had so much fun teaching.”
“It looked like it. You’re a natural with the students.” Dr. O’Macklin dipped his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels. “Have you considered teaching?”
With a little laugh, I shrugged, tucking the leftover books we didn’t use back into the suitcase. “Hardly. I spent most of my childhood and teenage years hating school… until I met Adam.”
“What about your adult years?”
“I loved college,” I admitted with a smile. “Maybe it’s why I want to continue my work at universities rather than become a librarian like a lot of my colleagues.”
“So you would consider teaching then? At a college level?”
I wrapped the press I’d used for the demo in extra bubble wrap and gently placed it on top of the books. “I guess I would. But I wouldn’t want to give up my personal work of restoring books. And there’s not a lot of restoration programs in the US, so it seems like a moot point.”
Unless I moved back to Europe. But with Adam? That move was the furthest thing from my mind. I picked up the second press that the students used and began to meticulously protect it with my remaining bubble wrap.
Dr. O’Macklin exhaled something that sounded like a mix of a sigh and a chuckle. “I don’t think I’m making myself clear. Let me try again. Would you consider teaching at a college levelhereat Dartmouth?”
I froze, clutching the press in my white-knuckled grip. I couldn’t have heard him right. “But… but you don’t have a restoration program here at Dartmouth.”
“That’s correct. We don’t… yet. But I spoke with the board and based on the amount of interest you had for this class, we thought it might be a good idea to offer a few restoration classes for English and library majors. We wouldn’t jump in adding a major yet. Just a few classes every semester as an introduction for those students who might be considering it as a focus. If that goes well, we would upgrade it to a minor and see how that goes.”
Stunned, I stared blinking at him, dumbfounded. “You’re considering making book restoration a minor because Anna found ten people who wanted this one-day masterclass?”
Dr. O’Macklin tilted his head at me. “Anna had forty-seven signatures… not ten. When you proposed the class to me, youmentioned you wanted a small class so you could be more hands on, so I held a raffle for the remaining nine spaces in your class, obviously giving Anna the first.”
I gently set the press down. I couldn’t be trusted holding expensive equipment with this information being thrown at me. “There were forty-seven people interested in my one-day class?” I asked.
Dr. O’Macklin nodded. “I’m so sorry, I thought you knew that. I assumed Anna told you since you two have been working so closely this week.”
I thought back to my private lessons with Anna this week. How she’d seemed so excited for me, but every time she asked me questions, I would confide in her that I was nervous. That I wanted it to be a small class. That a large class would intimidate me. “I… I think she kept it from me so I wouldn’t get too nervous today.”
“Ahhh. That sounds like Anna,” Dr. O’Macklin said with a smile. It was incredible how well he knew the students in his department despite it being so large.
“Okay, if I was considering this, how many classes would we start with?”
“Initially, it wouldn’t be a minor for the first year. So I’m imagining four classes a week. With at least one masterclass like this each semester.”
I nodded, doing the math in my head of what professors get paid per class. “That’s not enough to make a full living on,” I admitted. I wanted to stay at Dartmouth so badly. “I’ll be honest, I just got offered a full time position at Stanford. It’s going to be hard to beat the salary they’re offering out there.”
In truth, I didn’t know the salary yet since I hadn’t received the email offer yet. But there was no doubt it paid more than four classes a semester.
