Cain

“We’re glad to have you on board, Doctor,” Dean Armstrong says to me, reaching over her enormous desk to shake my hand. “We’ve looked long and hard to find someone with such excellent qualifications as yours. We’re sure you’ll be a tremendous asset to the English department.”

I nod curtly at her. Tremendous asset? Well, I wouldn’t go so far.

The diminutive woman in a graying shag haircut smiles at me and checks her watch. “Well, better leave you to it. Your first class is today. You need anything from me, you just ask, all right?”

“Thank you,” I say to her, standing. “I won’t let you down.”

I don’t intend to. Even if teaching wasn’t my first choice of profession, it feels like my last. My only remaining option.

After I leave the Marysville administration building, I follow the map the dean has given me to find Miller Hall. Most of the buildings on the large campus look the same—brick and stately, covered in ivy. Only one—the McBride Applied Sciences building, is sparkling white and windowed, with piles of construction dirt surrounding it. Brand new. Miller, though, might have been here for centuries. It’s narrow and crumbling. I step inside a door made of frosted glass and navigate down a flight to the ground floor offices.

When I open the door to my “office” and look around, I can’t help it. I break out in laughter. Dean Armstrong had said it wasn’t much, and she wasn’t kidding. Miller Hall’s cleaning supplies probably have a better arrangement.

The shabby wooden desk and two chairs are the only pieces of furniture in the room. They are the only pieces of furniture that can fit in the room, incidentally. Closing the door behind me, I find a J hook on the back of it and manage to maneuver out of my jacket with the walls closing in on me, scraping my knuckles on either wall as I do. I hang the jacket, then squeeze narrowly between the back of the desk and the cinderblock wall. It’s so close, I can’t even pull the chair out properly. I bang my knee on the drawer pulls as I do, cursing from the pain that shoots up my leg.

Well, I think. It could be worse. I could be a stockbroker.

When I’m seated, I set my coffee and sandwich on the desk and undo the straps on my satchel. I pull out my phone.

Another text from Anna.

I delete it without reading it. I know what it says, anyway. Something to the effect of, Where are the chapters you promised me?

Anna Mowery. She’s a gorgeous, alluring woman, but no idiot. I can tell by the increasing terseness of her texts that she’s getting fed up with me. I’d promised I’d have those chapters a month ago, while she was in the throes of her third orgasm, when I’d gotten what I’d wanted and needed to get some shut-eye.

I look around the office again. This is what happened to those chapters. This fucking job.

They always tell you it’s tough to break into publishing. But here’s a little known fact about it: Breaking in is easy, especially when you’re giving one of New York’s finest agents the best fucks she’s had in years.

It’s the staying in the game that’s hard.

A year ago, I accepted a high-six-figure advance from St. Martin’s Press for my debut novel. I’d only written three chapters of the manuscript, but they were the most stunning three chapters in existence. I don’t need to be humble about it. Dozens of agents had said as much. I’d slaved away on them during my undergraduate years, before Layla screwed with my head and I’d gotten the Big Block. I’d shopped them around on a whim, not expecting much. I was surprised when Anna agreed to submit them to editors. I’d wanted to be an author since I was a kid, so it was a dream when I got the call St. Martin’s wanted to put in a pre-empt to publish it.

I signed the contract, got half the money. The second half would only come when I turned in the rest of the book.

And then . . . it became a nightmare.

There I was, officially living my dream, and I couldn’t get it back. Whatever “it” was. The mojo. The nerve. The inspiration. Every word I wrote, I erased. Anna Mowery, agent extraordinaire and on-off fuck-buddy, thinks I’m putting the finishing touches on the manuscript and will submit my masterpiece in the next few days.

I haven’t had the balls to tell her I haven’t written a single word.

Six months ago, she might have thought that when I took her to bed, it meant the beginning of something. She may have even considered leaving her husband for me. But she’s on to me, now. I haven’t done a relationship since Layla, and after the thorough excoriation I’d received from that deal, that isn’t about to change. She has to know that all the sex we’ve been having—and there’s been a lot of it—is for one thing only: to buy myself time.

And time, like the money, has just about run out. When the advance had dwindled down to my last month’s rent, I applied for the only job I knew I had the qualifications for: teaching creative writing to a bunch of goddamn starry-eyed English majors.

Those who can’t do, teach.

But I don’t even know if I can do that.

Never wanted to, truthfully.

I unwrap my soggy sandwich and take a bite. As I do, I reach into my pocket and pull out the ID, then put on my glasses and gaze at the small photo. I’d found it on the ground near the refrigerated case after she and her friend had left.

Damn, even in a state-issued photo ID, the girl manages to look hot. Long, wavy blonde hair and wide eyes. Innocent eyes, pleading eyes, begging me to defile her.

I groan, remembering I’m going to be teaching girls her age.

I’m now the responsible grown-up. Shit.

I scan the rest of the information on the card. Addison McBride. Twenty-one years old. Blue eyes, blonde hair. Lives off-campus. On the back, it says she’s an organ donor. Of course she is. Judging from the way she’d tripped over her words and averted my eyes when I met her, she’s a good girl. She probably has cartoon animals following her everywhere.

I lean back, thinking I could probably write volumes about the color of the blush on her cheeks, or the way that blonde hair fell over those full, perky breasts of hers. My cock strains against my pants as I think about sucking on those sweet, pink tits. It occurs to me that I’m not cut out to be a teacher of anything if these are the thoughts that are going to assail me every time I’m in front of the class, but hell, this isn’t what I want.

I want to write.

But then I remember I have my first class to prepare for.

Fuck. It’s the way my life works. I always end up inspired when I can least afford to be.

I settle into the groove and get the lesson plan done after an hour. Then I gather my things, close the door to my office, and step out into the hallway packed with young adults. It brings me back to how I’d been, then. Back then, plans could be twisted and changed. It felt like I had all the time in the world to figure my life out.

Layla would laugh at me, if she could see me now. If I’d stayed on the path she’d wanted me on, I’d probably be on my private jet, heading off to some remote island by now.

I’d told myself it was worth it. After all, what good is it being rich, if you’re miserable?

Now, I’m not rich, but I’m not exactly happy, either. Not like Layla, who has everything she set out for—the wealth, the stockbroker husband, the status. Had I not gotten derailed by her, maybe I would have what I’d set out for, too. But I let my head, and my heart get in the way.

My fault, for letting a woman matter.

It’s a mistake I will never make again.