Page 5 of Serpentine Valentine
“She shouldn’t have said anything.” His voice was mock sincere, but there were creases beside his eyes as he looked down at me. “I wanted to be the one to tell you that I made my decision.”
“And?”
“And…I would like to formally offer the job to you, Lex.”
My hand trembled with the effort to be professional and not fling myself into his arms. Instead, I lifted my shaking cup to cheers with his. “And I humbly accept.”
We clinked glasses and drank the spiked tea in unison. It burned going down, an acrid taste buried beneath the alcohol.
“I think it’s time for a new tin of jasmine,” I told him, my nose scrunched with distaste.
He chuckled, watching me as he sipped from his own mug. “Ibrewed it too bitter. I’m sorry. But drink, you can’t be warm in that getup after crossing campus.”
“I can’t stay long. I promised my friend I would meet her at a party.”
He grinned. “You don’t seem very enthused. You’re what, twenty? Most kids are here to party, not study.”
“I’m not.”
“No,” he agreed, looking me over again. “No, you’re not. You’d rather curl up here with me, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d rather be most places than at a party,” I admitted with a grimace before taking another sip of tea and doing just as he said, curling my legs up in the chair. “But I do enjoy our chats. It’s not often I get to speak with someone with so many of the same interests.”
“Boys your age don’t like Socrates?” he teased.
“Or most girls,” I reminded him with a flat look.
Even though he knew I was a lesbian, he struggled not to refer to me in relation to men.
I bet you’re popular with the boys in class.
I see the way men on campus look at you.
A girl like you probably has to keep them away with a bat.
Your father must own a shotgun.
It was irritating, and I never let him get away with it without reiterating my preference for female romantic company. But it wasn’t enough to totally put me off, especially when a lot of people seemed to struggle with women liking women. Especially if weonlyliked women. Bisexual women were often unfairly sexualized and objectified by men, but at least they were “understandable” in the male mind. Understandable and still fuckable if the mood struck them.
Pigs, the lot of them.
Morgan frowned at me, crossing his arms. “Really, Lex. You can’t possibly be saying you aren’t interested in men at all?”
I matched his expression, straightening in my chair. “I can, and I am. Men hold no interest for me romantically or sexually. Honestly, you are the only man I’m interested in, even platonically. I love women.”
“Clearly, you have some daddy issues,” he said in that smug way academics were all capable of, like mining texts for meaning had given them license to mine other’s minds in the same fashion.
I bristled, anger sparking low in my gut, warming me better than the bitter tea. “Do I? I think I have parental issues. My fatherandmy mother didn’t believe in education, and I was born with this thirst for it I couldn’t even begin to quench at our farm in the mountains. We owned four books, and two of those were different versions of the Bible. They didn’t get me, so they didn’t like me. After I ran away from home for the fourth time, they didn’t bother looking for me.
“And do you know who took me in, Professor? A woman named Agatha Gorgon with three daughters of her own. They took me into their home and made me one of them. They taught me what nurture felt like and how easy it should be to be loved and accepted. Agatha gave me a mother’s love for the first time in my life, and she gave me three incredible sisters. When she found out that attending Acheron was my life dream, she introduced me to Mina Pallas, her childhood best friend. And now, here I am.”
I opened my arms wide, and Morgan looked me over, every inch, ending with his gaze locked on mine. I met it stubbornly, willfully.Judge me, I thought.I don’t care what you think.
But the truth was, I did.
I loved Agatha, I loved Grace and Effie and Juno.
But I’d never had anyone to replace the love I should have had from my father.
