“Since when does studying require a halter top?”
One of my roommates, Becca Reese, stood in the doorway to my bedroom, crossing her arms.
“For your information,” I said, and threw on a maroon hoodie over my tight, black, gym top, “I’m working out after I meet Spence.”
“Uh-huh.” Becca waltzed into the room and landed on my bed, propping herself up on my pile of pillows. As she inspected one, I snapped it out of her hands.
“That’s new. You can’t have it,” I said, and threw it to the foot of the bed.
She pouted. Becca, my dear best friend and roommate for almost two years ever since we were paired up as freshman, adored my love for throw pillows and often wandered in and stole as many as she could when she thought I wouldn’t notice. Why she didn’t go out and buy her own was a good question, but I guessed it was because the adrenaline rush of thievery was more satisfying.
“I’ve heard talk of this Spencer,” Becca said, bending to retrieve the tossed pillow and tucking it behind her head. Her blond ringlets cascaded around and down her shoulders like a damned Sleeping Beauty. She ticked off her fingers. “A senior to our junior, meaning he’s had plenty of years to collect co-ed’s hearts. Hot, intelligent, charming but aloof, often scoped for conquest, including mine, but impossible to obtain.”
“You’re only saying that because you couldn’t land him.” I pulled on black leggings, hopping around the room because there was nowhere to sit on my twin bed while she was sprawled out on it.
“Uh, yeah.” She motioned down her body. “Nobody resists this. Especially while in my Friday night finest, and that bastard did.”
I didn’t argue. Becca usually got what she wanted, especially when her hair was perfectly curled and her pale eyes, appearing green in artificial lighting and an almost colorless blue in the natural sun, darkly accentuated. She was tall like me, but fair. Most nights we were each other’s yin and yang—me cloaked in the shadow hue to her blaze. But we emitted alluring luster in our own ways. My long ebony hair, winter blue eyes and olive skin complimented her blond cascade, chameleon stare and light freckled complexion. It worked, because we drew different kinds of men at the same party, and Becca had quick dreams about us becoming the wing-women to each other’s prey of the night. That was until Becca met Trevor, a horror Becca still didn’t like talking about. Those two didn’t get along, and by that I meant Becca’s preferred method of communication to Trevor was showing him one butt cheek and smacking it. But when I confided to her about Trev hooking up with Laurie, Becca didn’t celebrate. She pulled me closer, caught my tears, and promised me boatloads of ice cream and vodka, because when it came down to it, Becca was my girl.
“Well, the universe has put you two within degrees again, so maybe you can try one more time.” I hooked my tote from off the floor, heavy with books on Dante and papers with a C-minus.
“I don’t do second chances.” Becca rose up off the pillows. “He’s all yours.”
I laughed. “Thank you so much for your sloppy rejection seconds, but I’ll pass.”
She seemed genuinely confused. “Why? He’s the strong and silent type, the exact opposite of that little pissant you called Trev, and frankly you need a good bang. How long has it been?”
I pretended she wasn’t still talking and left my room, but she clipped at my heels. “Seriously, Emme, you need to ask yourself this. You go any longer and I’m actually gonna think you’re heartbroken over that douche canoe and—”
“A month,” I tossed over my shoulder as I pulled the front door open. “Soon to be a month and a day because I am not sleeping with Spencer Rolfe.”
“Says the woman in pants that show off her round, taut ass.”
“I’m going to the gym after!” I said, then gave up and descended the stairs when she responded behind me, “Burn calories the right way, baby!”
One of the best things about New York City is that as soon as you exit your apartment, you’re right in the thick of it. Honks, bleats, motor and foot traffic fell upon me, immersing my senses in the city in daylight—a place hiving with activity no matter the time of afternoon. Dozens of bodies surrounded my trek as I stepped into the fray on the sidewalk. Anyone and everyone took these streets same as I, thoughts colliding and intersecting like footsteps, the influential and everyday mixing into a singular dream of success. It was what lured me here, the idea of possibility, and kept me standing, the reality of waking up in the heart of New York. To some, it was an overwhelming stimulus of noise, rudeness and danger, but to others it housed the best parts of humanity. One just had to understand that Manhattan gave as much as she took, and a balance of humility had to be struck to ever thrive under the captivating grip of her claws.
I stopped at a coffee house on the way and wondered if I should also pick something up for Spence, but had no idea what his caffeine vice was, or any other vices for that matter. When put on the spot by the very polite but bored barista, I blurted out one of the specials, some hazelnut-peppermint February thing. With a triple espresso and seasonal sweetness in hand, I made it up to the steps of the library fifteen minutes past our scheduled meet time. I hoped Spence wasn’t a stickler for such things.
Spence was, of course, comfortably seated at one of the group tables along the sides reserved for quiet discussion. His books were laid out as if he’d been there for decades, with glasses perched on his nose and wild hair tangling across his forehead like he’d gouged his fingers in there a time or two. His shoulders appeared broader from this vantage point, almost as if there were a secret athlete in repose under the nerd. He glanced up at my approach, his skin somehow appearing flawless despite the anemic effects of the surrounding halogen lights.
“I’m late,” I said before his mouth could fully form into a frown. “But brought sustenance to make you like me again. Here.” I handed him the sugar bomb, which he accepted politely.
“That’s thoughtful of you,” he said, then took a sip. He cleared his throat, coughed, and said with effort, “It won’t stop me from giving you twenty extra pages of reading, though.” Spence stared at the cup, smacking his lips slowly. “Maybe thirty.”
I took a seat across from him and pulled out my laptop and other accoutrements. “You even sound like a professor.”
“It’s why I’m going to college. To live out the rest of my days in tweed and teach reluctant students like yourself the tenants of men who died in the fourteenth century.”
It took me a minute to tell if he was joking or not.
“And then to apply those ancient principles to their modern lives,” he said, and held up his copy of The Divine Comedy. “Which will obviously help me become a lawyer.”
“Obviously,” I quipped. Or hoped I did. I still wasn’t sure if he was screwing with me.
“You have yours?” he asked.
“Yep.” I plonked it on top of my closed laptop, and it was not lost on me that while his had a broken spine, tabs and notes written in the margins, mine was pristine.
He fanned through the pages until he found what he was looking for. “I figure we’ll start with the basics.”
“Works for me. Hang on—sorry.”
My phone screeched out the receipt of a message and I hastily dug through my bag until I found it and put the phone on silent, but I couldn’t ignore the message, edited with Becca’s new knighthood.
Douche Canoe: Babe, it’s been weeks with your silence and it’s killing me. Please talk to me?
I stared at the text, my expression probably turning as feral as my thoughts. What was Trev expecting, exactly, after he fucked around behind my back?
I aimed my thumbs for some textual warfare.
“What’s The Divine Comedy really about?”
A few seconds passed, and then some more, before I realized Spence had spoken. And was waiting for my reply.
“Sorry,” I said again, and holstered my thumbs. “Uh…honestly? I think it’s a love story.”
Spence’s lips froze a few millimeters apart. “You do?”
“While I appear like I don’t give a shit, I actually give two shits,” I said, “and often understand theories to centuries old teachings. Just maybe not the reasoning behind it.”
He reached over, opening my book to the first canto and giving me a close-up view to his long fingers, calloused and cut at his knuckles. There were even a few white slashes there. Old scars. Hmm. Definitely a hidden sports enthusiast. “You don’t think long-dead theorists can still contribute to society?”
“I think we’re all too often stuck in the past,” I said, too seriously, and recovered enough to add, “or I’m just an airhead. You decide.”
“I don’t think you’re dumb. And I completely agree with you.”
A half-smile escaped me. “I wouldn’t have figured you’d think of me long enough to catalogue me.”
When I placed my hand on the page he’d chosen, our fingertips brushed and the barest of electrodes tickled my skin. But the moment was lost when he pulled away and fell back into his chair. “Why don’t you elaborate on the love story theory and impress me further?”
I licked my lips. “This is Dante’s journey through the afterlife—his version, anyway, and once he and his guide manage to make it through Hell, up the Mountain of Purgatory and to the Forest of Eden, his beloved is there, a woman who died too early. Beatrice.” I skimmed a finger down the page, though the text underneath wasn’t the guiding my thoughts. It was more a loving stroke of the hidden story within the spaces. “She takes over as his guide and they ascend to Paradise. How can that not be taken as a love story?”
Too much silence passed, and I looked up to find Spence regarding me quietly with a host of reflections in his eyes I couldn’t decipher. At last, he said, “You’re right. So why wasn’t that in your paper to Harper?”
I frowned. “How did you know what was in my essay?”
“Because if you had written that, if you’d connected Dante’s writings to a modern love story, you wouldn’t have gotten that C minus.”
I scoffed over the compliment. “I don’t know, it slipped my mind, I guess.”
“Or you thought too deeply about it, didn’t trust yourself.” Spence went back to his notes.
“Are you always this perceptive?” I asked after a beat.
Green rippled through his lashes as he glanced up. I opened my mouth to say more, hopefully something witty so he could look at me the way he did a few minutes ago—like I was smart—but my phone lit up. I grabbed it before Spence could see the lengthy message that was my ex-boyfriend’s last ditch effort at true love.
“Do I have to take away that thing?” Spence asked.
“No, I…” I used precious seconds to type out you got me to agree to dinner. Stop making me regret it before tossing the phone back in my bag. I tried to laugh it off. “Speaking of suffering through an inferno…”
“Right. The boyfriend.”
“Ex,” I enunciated, though for whose benefit I wasn’t sure. “Trev won’t get the hint. Or more likely chooses to ignore it.”
“So give the phone to me.”
My book plopped shut as my fingers slipped from the pages. “What?”
Spence held out his hand. “Trust me.”
I swallowed a guffaw. “I’m sorry, but we literally just met. I can’t give over all my electronic secrets to you.”
“I promise to stay away from your coveted Candy Crush score. That’s what you play during class, right?” His teeth flashed, a quick movement transforming his studious features into utter confident male. “And your photos. Give it here.”
“Creep.” But I threw him the phone anyway, intrigued.
Spence caught it and a few finger taps later he slid the phone over the table then went back to his computer like he’d never had my phone in the first place. I opened his message.
Sorry Trev, Emme’s ascended to the spheres of Paradise. Bye.
“I feel like a guy like you would’ve been a lot more wordy,” I said after reading the short script.
“Sometimes the blank spaces between words add a lot more to the imagination,” he said without glancing away from his laptop screen. “Whether it be a happy result…or pure panic.”
I covered my smile with my hand. “Dante would be horrified. But you spelled my name right.”
“Like the awards statue, but with an E at the end instead of a Y.” He smiled, this time catching my eye, and warm pleasure rippled down my spine.
“So,” Spence said and flipped through the notes written within the margins of his book. “Read through the first and second canto, summarize it, and I’ll tell you how much of an uphill battle we have in getting you that A.”
I groaned, but went to the pages he’d assigned. “Can I at least do it with yours? You have all those helpful notations in there.”
Spence laughed. “Try to come to your own conclusions. I believe in you.”
Pen at the ready, I delved into the readings, but snuck a few glances at him and caught him looking a few times. Because I was an asshole, I exploited that fact when I unzipped my hoodie to give my suddenly overheated self some air. But after a somewhat startled, seconds-too-long gaze, Spence never looked my way again, considering his laptop to be more interesting than the woman in form-fitting yoga gear across from him.
But as we ran through the Inferno, his voice a buttery background to the narrated sins of another, I couldn’t help but contemplate this man in front of me. He was the exact opposite of what I normally went for—no tattoos or piercings (that I could see), a good student, attentive, focused. But there was a flow underneath, a hint of a player, or maybe that was just confidence. Every time he smiled, so did I, and his unabashed surprise at my candor with Dante’s meanings gave my stomach a minor tadpole flip.
I found myself wondering what else Spence did with his hands, and if he held his girlfriends with the same delicacy he touched his books, with light finger brushings and a steady grip.
I snapped myself out of such inquisitiveness right when I was starting to imagine myself in the textbook’s place. This was my tutor. Who I was paying. A guy who was sitting across from me because I was giving him money.
“When do you think you’ll have fifteen hundred words for me to read?” Spence asked.
“How’s tomorrow evening?” I replied without missing a beat.
“You want to see me that soon?” Spence scratched at the scruff on his chin, a maneuver I figured was well timed to make me think he was cute.
“Correction, I want to enthrall you that soon,” I said as I packed up my things, then amended as soon as I saw his lips twitch, “with my words. My intellectual, mind-blowing opinions on infernos.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” he said. Spence made no effort to close his books or do anything else to exit the library for the night, which meant he was planning to stay here for a little bit longer. I felt him noticing me, my movements, how I tucked my hair behind my ears when the strands were getting caught in my hoodie’s zipper. He had the lazy gaze of a wildcat, though I couldn’t sense when he’d pounce—or if he even wanted to. I thought he was flirting, or at the very least appreciating—this was Spencer Rolfe after all—but then I second-guessed and dropped Dante’s book on the floor.
“Here.” Spencer bent down and picked it up, our skin connecting as soon as he handed it over.
Flash. Bang. Boom. All the things that occur when sexual chemistry ignites.
“Sorry, I have to—my roommates. Plans. See you tomorrow,” I said.
“I thought you were going to work out?”
“That too. With them. We gym together.”
Gym together?
My pens and paper were at risk of clattering out of my bag as I rushed out of the library, but I couldn’t look back for fear of how he’d be witnessing my departure. Sad? Eager? Relieved?
I clobbered down the steps, frustrated that I couldn’t make sense of my own feelings. I was acting like a high school freshman with the hots for her tutor. Or a college sophomore batting her eyes at a TA. Or a ridiculous person who didn’t know that the best way to figure out sexy feelings is to simply ask the object of her affection out on a date.
I pushed through the wave of commuters on the streets and descended into the subway, unsure who was more afraid of this sudden, stupid connection that was only supposed to happen to fairy princesses or to people who didn’t understand how much work love took. Was it Spence who wanted nothing to do with it?
Or me?