Page 21 of I Still Love You (Citation Needed)

“Thank you for meeting with us, Dr. Wang,” Cooper said, extending his hand for the older woman to shake.

She ignored Nadia, the other search committee member, and me as she walked out. I sank back into my chair, feeling defeated by a day full of interviews. There were three of us trying to make a decision about who would run WikiAcademia for the next few years. Nadia was one of the staff members and I was supposed to be the outside perspective. All three candidates were people I knew. I couldn’t blame Dr. Wang for her attitude toward me. She had been one of the other candidates for my job leading the World Foundation. When you travel in the same circles and compete with the same people for jobs, it was hard not to resent people who got jobs you wanted. I was irritated at her attitude to Nadia, but after this interview, I could see why she had lost out on other jobs. She had experience running major non-profits, but she looked down on the work being done by EncycloWiki.

“None of the candidates make me feel good,” Nadia said after a few moments of silence. “Is it wrong that I’m irritated because they hadn’t planned on coming to this conference until invited for the interview?”

I gave her a smile and scrunched up my nose. I agreed with her. All three had been irritated to have to fly to London for a final interview. I had been shocked that they weren’t interested in attending the conference. WikiAcademia was one of the conference sponsors and all of their team was here. Only one was staying for the conference. I didn’t ask what the others were going to do since they didn’t offer the information themselves. Now Cooper flipped through his notes and nodded. I didn’t bother reacting. I didn’t need to look at my notes to feel discouraged.

“Is it the way we wrote the job description?” Cooper asked, his shoulders slumped and his head in his hands. “We got so many people who ran non-profits, but so few in the education sector and many criticized the very work we were created to do.”

I reached out and squeezed his arms. “You wrote this job description for one specific person,” I reminded him. It had been clear from the moment I saw the posted description. I didn’t have a problem with the ethics of writing a job description to entice a specific person, but in this case, that person had withdrawn his application and hadn’t been convinced to resubmit it. Nobody was going to meet all their expectations.

“You think we self-sabotaged?” Nadia asked, her face getting red.

I let her feel angry at the idea because it was true, at least a little true. “I’m just as guilty of that. Sure, we picked the best three from the pool we had, but you know who you want. We can go back to the pool we had, we can re-open the search for new resumes, or we can ask Mason directly,” I said as I ticked the list on my fingers.

Nadia and Cooper exchanged a look. “I agree that we picked the best three from the pool,” Cooper eventually said, looking down at the table we sat at. “It took us nearly six months to find three we wanted to interview. I don’t want to re-open the search, but what will people say if we go right to Mason? What if Mason says no?”

Nadia let out a deep sigh. Her job in the organization was to work with professors to put assignments together and teach students to edit EncycloWiki. She worked with Mason each semester. Cooper had done everything he could to show Mason that this job was his for the taking. Denise and Grace had both tried to convince him to re-apply. We all knew he wanted it, but nothing made him reconsider. I hadn’t told anyone what Heather had shared in February. I had hoped that their insistence and urging would overcome Lois’s influence. We needed a new approach, so it was time to tell them what Heather had told me.

I let out a deep sigh. I had to tell them everything. “I’m the real problem,” I said. “Well, Lois Fairfax and me together. She’s convinced Mason that I’ll sabotage his chances.”

Both Nadia and Cooper looked at me with drawn eyebrows. “What?” Cooper asked. “Why would she do that?”

I shut my eyes. “Because we were going to get married, and I didn’t want the life she offered him. She convinced him, then, that marrying me would ruin his career. I just didn’t want to stay in Lacock, but I was so angry that I proved her right. I could have done that easily if I wanted. Even the fear of what I can do to him is impacting his decision making.”

I was still leaving out key details, but I was still struggling with all of this myself. The February conference had unlocked a lot of feelings I had kept hidden from myself for years. I knew I was still in love with him but had no chance. It was more difficult to feel than my anger had been. I wanted to reach out and tell him how I still felt, but I knew I didn’t have the right. Maybe he had flirted with me in February, but it wasn’t like it had continued after we all went home. I wasn’t ready to reveal more to anyone.

“Why does Lois Fairfax care so much?” Nadia said, narrowing her eyes. “She’s the president of a university. This seems beneath her.”

Cooper nodded in agreement. “She claims to be a feminist. Tearing down another woman seems like the opposite of what she’d do.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Right!? She was Mason’s advisor and mentor in grad school. That’s why she cares so much about what happens to him. She told me, back then, that I wasn’t going to succeed if I didn’t take a job in academia. She believes people with PhDs belong in academia and there’s only job security there.”

Cooper and Nadia sat in silence for a moment, mouths agape.

“What?” Cooper asked.

I had to laugh. “These were the things he threw back at me when we were breaking up.”

“Didn’t he want to create a foundation just like WikiAcademia?” Nadia asked. “He’s told me about it so many times.”

I nodded, realizing how little I had shared about this with others. Yes, my friends knew most of the story, but I had kept it all to myself in the professional circles Mason and I shared. “It was going to be something we did together.”

Cooper narrowed his eyes. “He wanted the job security of tenure, but now he hasn’t done enough to get it?”

I nodded, pursing my lips as if I was fighting to keep it all from spilling out. “I’m sure there are plenty of political games happening at Lacock State. When I was there, it was a small school with a handful of PhD programs. Faculty got tenure based on being effective teachers and campus involvement. Mason excelled at that. It seems that changed this past year, and he hasn’t done enough research for their current expectations.”

Nadia tapped her finger to her lip. “You know, I always assumed he already had tenure when we collaborated. He has so little interest in taking all the glory. Most pre-tenure academics want all the credit.”

I laughed. “That’s never been Mason. He rarely accepts the credit he deserves. He’d rather lift up the people he cares about.”

Cooper looked at me with a smirk. “Literally and metaphorically?”

I blushed and tried to hide my smile. Cooper didn’t know how many times, in the last six months, I had fallen asleep to the fantasy of Mason lifting me out of my chair and carrying me to bed. It hadn’t been something he did every night when we were together. It was usually the start of something sexier, both in reality and in my fantasies. Even now the mere suggestion made the heat spread from my face to the rest of my body.

“Do you want to talk directly to Mason about interviewing for the job?” I asked once I cooled off.

Cooper and Nadia nodded at the same time.