Page 38 of Any Port in a Storm

My heart flip-flops uncomfortably. The idea of Nick teaching a lecture while perched atop my bed is…a lot to take in.

But it’s 9:53, and I know I’m going to be all sorts of flustered when I start class if I try to resituate my own things on my bed right now, so I nod quickly. “Yeah, of course. No problem.”

“Thanks.” He swipes a notebook off the coffee table and rushes off. “I’ll just close the door,” he shouts back over his shoulder. “I don’t want snippets of my enthralling presentation on Renaissance scientists to distract from what I’m sure is an equally evocative lecture on girly books.”

I burst out laughing before it hits that he’s mocking me. “Watch it, O’Connor. I can kick you out of here anytime.”

He throws me a shit-eating grin and pulls the door shut behind him. I don’t think he found his flash drive, but Nick’s basically a walking encyclopedia. I’ve no doubt he’ll keep his class enthralled without any supporting material whatsoever.

In sharp contrast, only half my class shows up to our Zoom meeting, and I’m much more flustered than usual without my lecture notebook. I had the entire semester planned out, and the quick loose-leaf facsimile I attempted while Nick taught his Revolutions of 1848 class yesterday is nowhere near as good as what I had.

Fortunately, most of my students seem distracted, so I’m not sure my subpar lecture is all that noticeable.

And who could blame them, really? The world is going to hell all around us. The news is growing scarier by the day, with warnings about dwindling stock of toilet paper and supply chain interruptions that might make food hard to come by. People are dying, and no one knows how to stop it, other than to lock down if you get exposed. It’s basically a big game of Stratego, and we don’t know where the bombs are hidden—to avoid disease vectors, you just have to stay put.

It hits me, after I end the Zoom meeting and bury my head in my hands, that looking for a job is going to be even harder than I’d planned if this continues. I’ve already been stressing in a big way about what I’ll do after I officially graduate at the end of the semester. The English department chairs were kind enough to offer a full slate of classes for the summer session, but they don’t have any post-doc positions open at the moment, so I’m on my own once fall hits. I’d planned on using this post-dissertation window of time to start applying and interviewing so I’d have something lined up.

It was bad enough before, even with that plan in place, because I actually have no idea whatsoever what I want to do next. I’ve only ever been a student. Even my work as a teacher is tied to my status as a student here.

I’m really not sure who I am outside of that. And now, with everything that’s changed, I don’t know how I’ll find the space to figure it out.

Between the sense that my future is turning into a hazy disaster and the cloying claustrophobia that’s starting to set in from being stuck in my apartment with someone I have incredibly complicated feelings for, I’m worried I’m not going to make it out of this mess with my sanity intact at all.

“How are you guys doing?” I ask my mother on the phone later that afternoon. I’ve retreated to the balcony, but I can still see Nick inside. He’s video chatting with his family for the first time since we’ve gotten stuck here. I assume he’s eager to tell them he’s okay and make sure that they are, too.

“Oh, we’re fine. Your father’s a little worried,” Mom explains. My dad’s a Type 1 diabetic, so he has to be pretty careful about getting sick. “We’re planning to hang out at home as much as possible.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“Yes. I gave the grocery drive-up service a try for the first time yesterday. That was quite the experience.”

For all of her forward thinking, my mom’s never been particularly tech-savvy. Imagining her trying to navigate Instacart is more than a little amusing. “Well, that’s probably a smarter way to shop for the time being,” I tell her.

“Agreed. How are you? Has it been lonely at all?”

I haven’t told my parents about Nick. Either his presence here today or what happened last summer. They’ve met him—he came home with me for Thanksgiving a few times—but, to the best of my knowledge, they have no idea about our fraught subtext.

“No, I’ve been fine,” I say. “Just focused on classes. Things are a bit of a mess right now. The university didn’t do a great job transitioning us to remote learning, so that’s been more than enough to keep me occupied.”

“Well, that’s good, I suppose.” My mother pauses, then asks tentatively, “Have you heard from Ivy?”

My breath catches in my throat. I haven’t talked to Ivy a whole lot since last summer. Things at the beach got very tense, thanks to my cousin’s insistence on digging up family secrets that I would have been okay never learning. We eventually came to a tentative truce, but we haven’t texted quite as much as we used to in the time since.

“I haven’t really talked to her,” I admit. “Though I’ve wanted to call her several times. I’m worried about her and Oliver. Being customer-facing, they’re much more likely to get sick.”

“You really haven’t talked to Ivy.”

“What do you mean?”

“They shut down the store,” Mom says. “Just until things blow over. Your Aunt Rachel was telling me that they’re just too concerned about Maisie contracting something, and you know she can’t stay away when Shoreline is open.”

I chuckle. “That does sound like Maisie.” Even though she’s in her mid-seventies, Maisie has the energy of a much younger woman. Hell, she was managing Shoreline Books basically on her own up until last fall, when Ivy and Oliver bought out the majority shares in the business. Still, to hear Ivy talk, Maisie comes into the shop nearly every day and sits in the new lounge area they added, chatting with customers and serving café drinks. She can’t seem to stay away.

“You should call her,” my mom says gently. “I think she could really use a friend right now.”

Guilt zings through me. Because even though Ivy’s the one who paved the way for our fight last year, I know she did it with wholly pure intentions. She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. And besides, we grew up together, and I’ve always kind of thought of her as the big sister I never had.

She deserves better from me than this distance I’ve artificially enforced, even after she apologized.