Page 93 of Beautiful Place By the Sea

“Possibly a few weeks. Maybe more.”

Her head whips toward me then, a wicked grin on her face. “Something happened with Oliver, didn’t it?”

I curse whatever bond we share for making me so transparent. “Yes, something happened.” Narrowing my eyes at the “I told you so” reflected in her smirk, I add, “But I would help Maisie out regardless.”

Laurel nods slowly, still much more amused than I’d prefer. “Well, that’s very noble of you.”

“I guess. It seemed like a nice way to test the idea of not going back to Farnsworth, too.”

A serious expression moves in. “Have you told your parents?”

Shaking my head, I plop down on her bed. “Not yet. I need to call my boss first to see how long they’ll let me take leave.”

“Gotcha. My lips are sealed.” She throws several shirts into her dresser.

“So, what happened with Spillinger?”

Laurel sighs deeply. “We chatted. It wasn’t great, at first. She didn’t want to admit that her feedback had been colored by her feelings toward me. I eventually dragged a half-confession out of her. Then I tried the whole, ‘an evil man broke my heart’ technique that you suggested, and she seemed to buy that. She even started offering genuine feedback about my paper, most of which was fairly positive.”

“That’s great, Laur!”

“Yeah,” her voice is quiet. “It was. Until she happened upon Nick and I in the quad almost immediately afterward.”

“Wait, what?”

“After my meeting, I was headed to grab coffee with some friends. I ran into Nick on the way.”

“When you say ran into him, you mean…?” I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Laurel embarrassed before, but she’s definitely most of the way there now.

“He hugged me, and we sat down and started talking. He told me that he misses me, and he wanted to take me out to dinner.”

“Okay, so Spillinger came upon you while you were discussing dinner plans. So what?”

Laurel shakes her head. “Nick kissed me. And I…I more than kissed him back. A lot.”

My eyes are definitely bulging out of my head now. “I’m sorry, what? I thought things with Nick were over? And what about Porter?”

She slaps her hand to her forehead as if beside herself. “I know, I know! I mean, Porter and I left things very open. He’s seeing other people, too. And there’s just something about Nick. I’d come to terms with everything being over, especially because of all the drama surrounding my dissertation, but…I can’t help myself when he’s around.”

“Okay,” I begin slowly. “So, what happened then? Spillinger got pissed?”

“Yeah, she started screaming at me in the middle of the quad.”

My brows shoot all the way up to my widow’s peak. “She did not.”

Laurel nods emphatically. “She did. Then she and Nick got into it.”

“Oh my GOD, Laurel. This is the stuff of bad rom-coms! So melodramatic!”

“Believe me, I know. Anyway, they yelled at each other for a few minutes, then she told me she thinks it would be best if she recuses herself from my dissertation defense. She said she’ll go to the dean and request that they find me a new advisor. So at least that’s dealt with.”

“At least.” I’m not trying to sound like I’m mocking her, but come on.

Now it’s her turn to shoot me an evil glare. “I think you’re just jealous that you don’t have this kind of drama in your life.”

My mind flashes over the last school year: keeping my eyes down every time I walked down the hallway, hearing snickers and catching sympathetic looks when I entered faculty meetings. The charming grin Kyle would give me every time we were forced to share airspace, like nothing had ever happened; the way I wanted to punch him directly in the face whenever he did.

“No, I think I’ve had enough drama for a lifetime,” I assure her. “How did you leave things with Nick?”