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“How?” I ask. I lift my right leg just a little bit to feel his leg rub against mine and before I realize what I’m doing, I hook my ankle around the back of it.
“I can cook. Pretty well. Trust me.” He withdraws an arm and pulls a piece of paper out of his back pocket and tucks it into the front pocket of my jeans. “I can make sure you have the pounding you’ve always wanted.”
I force myself to lower my foot but it’s too late. I’m hard and I can’t adjust myself without calling additional attention to it. I’m grateful at least that I have a magazine in my lap to make me seem more innocent than I am. “How?” My voice sounds strange to my own ears.
“Go home. Go to your kitchen and text me two things. Your street address and a picture of your equipment. You can interpret that last one any way you like.”
I look at his crotch and can see the imprint of his full length clearly. When I look at him, I realize that he’s been checking me out. I blush.
He steps back and smiles at me, casually readjusting his crotch. “See you soon.”
He walks away and I start breathing again. I look at the magazine in my lap, grateful that it at least shielded me. I’ve mauled it. I look around, half expecting Anthony to be staring at me in shock, but there’s nobody in this area. How long did all of this take? Twenty seconds? Thirty? I smooth the magazine in my lap. I’ll have to buy this now. I take the top cookbook, which promises to induct me into the joys of down-home cooking, and stare at the pictures to give myself something to concentrate on that’s not my aching cock.
My colleague was in the bathroom with the water running.
“Any luck?” Anthony says, still drying his hands on his jeans.
I tear my attention away from contemplating what can be done with a beet aside from putting it directly into the trash as it deserves. “I think I’ve found a couple of recipes that will work and my head’s starting to ache. I think I’d better get home and take a pill so that I can read a bit more.”
He looks visibly disappointed. “Oh.”
“Thank you. I don’t have many friends yet in town, but I hope that we’ll work out.”
He tries to brighten, but fails. “Yeah! I’m sure we’ll be friends. You’ll have to tell me how this event went.”
“In lurid detail.”
“Lurid?” He quirks his eyebrows up and sighs. “Delphine’s gotten under your skin. She’s not an example to be followed. She basically destroyed her chances at advancement and for what? An empty protest.” He puts one hand on the arm of my chair and leans down. “Don’t do it. They’re always going to be the ones in power.”
Unlike when Levi was leaning over me, and I felt enveloped in a cocoon of belonging, now I feel annoyed. “Only because people don’t bother to protest.”
He shakes his head and straightens. “You got your first tenure-track job right out of grad school. Do you know how long I was hotfooting it around? Years. Without insurance, without safety. So fuck protesting.”
Even though I know it’s cruel of me to feel so personally enraged, the frustration of the last few minutes peaks and threatens to boil over. “I think we see this differently. I didn’t get my first offer right out of my doctoral program. I got it during. I had to finish it while teaching my first year. The reason I got that offer was because I was bold and daring. I was doing something nobody else would because I believe that research is protest. What I did mattered to people, and what I do matters now to a lot more people than a couple of people gathered at my table. I’m tired of taking one indignity after another just so I can live to fight another day. Aren’t you?”
His jaw drops. “I-I don’t…” he trails off, clearly overwhelmed.
I catch my breath, but the damage is clearly done. “I’m sorry. That was way too personal a question. I apologize. I’m just…overwhelmed and it’s making me start to crack.”
He steps back. “Then if you want to set yourself on fire so that you can be a beacon, be my guest,” he grinds out.
I pick up the books and magazines that I have to pay for and walk away. It’s only when I’m driving home that it hits me that I have every reason to do the safe thing. I might admire Delphine’s bravado, but I can’t mimic it. There’s too much at stake for me. Anthony might have irritated me, but why? If I were in his shoes, I would have given the same advice, albeit in more diplomatic and less dismissive language.
I let myself into my townhouse and go straight to the kitchen, where I deposit my haul from the Book Nook onto the counter.
It doesn’t take a genius to know exactly why his advice enraged me. All he’s doing is asking me to play by the rules. And the truth is that I can’t do it much longer before it breaks me.
I take a deep breath, take the gadgets and knives and kitchen implements out of their drawers and put them onto the counter. Then I take out my phone and snap a picture.
Chapter twenty-two
Levi
Bastien opens the door to his townhouse but clings to it nervously. “You’re early,” he says. “Your text message said forty-five minutes.”
“I was already in the frozen food aisle when you texted.” I lift one of my bags significantly.
He bites his lower lip and swallows hard as he puts it together: I was never even in the slightest bit of doubt that he would send for me. “Come in. Please.” He steps aside. “Kitchen’s in the back.” He steps clear of the door and gives me a wide berth.
