19.
Tessa
I kept waiting to wake up, like I’d open my eyes and realize I was still in bed and that the day hadn’t started yet and the whole thing with Mom walking in on Leo and me was just a nightmare that hadn’t just taken place. But there didn’t seem to be any waking up from this, because it wasn’t a dream.
There was also a part of me that really didn’t want Leo to leave, that wanted him to stay, and maybe we could just pretend like that whole thing with my mother had never happened. But it had, and her expression was basically seared onto the inside of my eyelids, so every time I shut my eyes, that’s all I saw.
She hadn’t given me a direct answer when I had asked if she was going to tell my father, but she didn’t need to—of course she was going to tell him. All she’d need to say was she had walked in on me with one of my professors in a compromising position and he’d hold his hand up, tell her he’d heard all he needed to hear, and say that I obviously wasn’t taking him seriously at all, and to cut me off.
I got dressed and then started to pace. I didn’t know what to do. I called Lindsey.
“My mother just walked in on me giving Leo a blowjob,” I said when she answered. She started laughing, thinking that it was a joke. “No, I’m serious,” I said. “I’m not joking.”
She stopped laughing. “Oh, shit. Are you serious? She just walked in on you guys together?”
“Yeah, it wasn’t good. Not just walked in on us together, but I was literally sucking on his cock when she came in. I don’t even know how long she was standing there watching. And she wouldn’t give me a straight answer about whether or not she was going to tell my dad, but obviously, she is. Do you think I should try to call him first? And tell him myself?”
“Um, no!” Lindsey exclaimed. “Definitely not! Because what if she doesn’t tell him? What if she decides to just keep it to herself, and then you call him up and confess to something that you really didn’t need to in the first place? I absolutely do not think you should call him first!”
“You’re right,” I said, even though I knew there was no way in hell that my mother wasn’t going to tell my dad. But on the total off chance that she didn’t, I certainly didn’t want to be the one to confess that sort of thing to him if I didn’t have to.
“What did Leo say?”
“I don’t know, not much. He offered to stay, but I told him it’d be better if he didn’t right now. I don’t know if—” My phone beeped. Incoming call. I pulled it away from my ear and looked at the screen. “Shit,” I said, bringing the phone back to my ear. “It’s my dad calling.” My stomach twisted. “I better answer it.”
“You’re going to be fine,” Lindsey said, with much more optimism than I felt. “Call me when you’re done on the phone.”
“Okay.” I switched over and said hello, trying to make my voice not shake.
“Tessa. It’s your father.”
“Yes, I know, hi, Dad.”
“I just got off the phone with your mother,” he said. “I could barely understand a word she was saying, she was so upset. So you probably know what this call was about. This is really something that should be talked about in person, but you’ve made the situation so uncomfortable, Tessa, that the phone will have to do.”
“Dad,” I said, “I know you’re disappointed, and you have every right to be—”
“You’re damn right I do,” he said. “This is not what your mother and I meant when we said we wanted you to get your grades back up. What you’re doing is morally wrong, Tessa. Didn’t we teach you better than that? Don’t you just know better than that?”
“Of course I do, and this isn’t any reflection on you guys at all. I wasn’t trying to disrespect you guys or anything like that. And I’m sorry. I’ll . . . I’ll call Mom when we’re done on the phone, and I’ll apologize to her. I know she’s probably really upset.”
“I think it might be best if you gave her some space right now.”
“Okay, fine. I’ll call her tomorrow or something. Whenever it is I end up talking to her, I’ll tell her that I’m sorry. I didn’t realize she was coming over right then.”
“Your mother wanted to hold onto the second set of keys, not because she was trying to spy on you, but because she liked to stop by sometimes and surprise you. The sort of surprise that you gave her just now was definitely NOT what she had in mind.”
“It’ll never happen again.”
“You’re right—it won’t. At least not in a place that I’m paying the rent on. You’re cut off,” he said. “I’m not going to support someone who is simply unable to tell right from wrong. This isn’t just some mistake, Tessa. This was a decision you made, and that you’ve probably been carrying out for quite some time now—is that correct? How long has this been going on for?”
“A little while,” I said.
“A little while. I don’t need to know exactly how long ‘a little while’ is, but it’s long enough. You’re on your own now. There’s nothing more I can say about that, other than you’ve embarrassed yourself, you’ve embarrassed our family.”
“That’s not what I was trying to do,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter whether that was your intention or not. That’s what happened. And you should frankly be ashamed of yourself, and this professor of yours should also be ashamed. I haven’t entirely ruled it out to go to the school with this, because he shouldn’t be holding a teaching position there if he’s going to use it to take advantage of students like this. It’s not right.”
“It wasn’t just him!” I said, suddenly more afraid for Leo than I was for myself. Even though I knew he said he didn’t care if he got fired from Benton or not, I didn’t want this to turn into some scandal that would be all over the internet. “It was me, too. He didn’t force me into doing anything. I wanted to. But it’s turned into something more than that, we actually really both like each other—”
“Oh for Christ’s sweet sake!” my father roared. “Will you listen to yourself? Have you gone insane? This is college, not a goddamn dating show! Am I paying 40 thousand dollars a year in tuition for you to be finding your soul mate? No, I’m paying for you to get a good education so you can do something worthy and productive with your life. And it sounds like all you’ve been doing is taking advantage of that! Well, no more, Tessa. NO MORE. If you want to spend your time goofing off and falling in love and whatever the hell else it is you’re doing, go right ahead, but it won’t be on my dime!”
He hung up.
I tried to take a deep breath but my whole chest felt tight, my father’s angry words still reverberating through my mind. I blinked, holding the tears back. I didn’t want to start crying like a little girl just because my father had just yelled at me. But there was a part of me that felt as if I’d just been transported back to childhood, like I was 7 years old again or something, and had just gotten into trouble.
I knew Lindsey wanted me to call her after we got off the phone, but instead, I texted and asked if she wanted to meet with me in an hour.
How’d it go? she wrote.
I’ll tell you when I see you, I wrote back. But let’s just say it wasn’t good.
We met up at the Haymarket and sat at a table in the corner, which was good because I didn’t want the whole place to be able to see me if I started to cry. I’d been trying to hold the tears back ever since I got off the phone, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be able to do it.
“So I take it the news didn’t go over that well with your father?” she asked. “Did he freak out?”
“That would be putting it mildly. It went about as good as you’d expect it to,” I said. “He’s cutting me off. He’s so pissed. And I made the mistake of saying that Leo and I actually had feelings for each other. I think that was really the final straw for him. He’s acting like I’ve just been taking advantage of them this whole time and only going to college because I was hoping to meet a guy.”
Lindsey rolled her eyes. “Come on, Tessa. We both know that’s not true.”
“I know, but that’s the way he’s making this sound. And now I just feel completely screwed. I mean, I guess I always knew how much I depended on them, but I’m really realizing it now. I know how much of a spoiled brat I probably sound like.” And I was aware of that. If anyone could overhear us right now, they’d probably be rolling their eyes. Oh, the poor little girl was cut off from her parents and now doesn’t know how she’s going to make it. I knew plenty of my classmates didn’t have rich parents that were footing the bill for them, and they were managing. I didn’t want to feel so stressed out about this; I didn’t want to feel like it was the end of the world, even though there was a part of me that felt exactly like that.
“You don’t sound like a spoiled brat,” Lindsey said. “It’s not like you were demanding this stuff from them. They offered. You never took it for granted. And you never abused it.”
“That’s not how my father is making me feel about it. I just feel completely overwhelmed by everything. I feel like I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.”
“First, you’re going to take a deep breath. Trust me—it’ll help.” I took a deep breath. Lindsey nodded. “Good,” she said. “And second, you’re going to know that everything is going to be okay.”
I didn’t know if everything was going to be okay, but it felt good to have someone else reassuring me that it would be. “I am trying to believe that,” I said, “but I don’t know if it’s just what I’m telling myself to make me feel better and that in reality, I’m totally screwed.”
“You’re not the first person who has ever been suddenly cut off by their parents before,” she said. “And you definitely won’t be the last. It happens to plenty of people. It’s probably happening to someone right now, in fact. Things just have a way of working out.”
“I really want to believe that,” I said. “I mean, more than anything. But how am I going to pay rent? If I have to go out and get a job right now, there’s no way I’ll be able to work enough hours to be able to cover my rent, never mind the rest of the bills, if I’ve got my schoolwork to stay on top of. So it’s one or the other. I completely fucked this up.”
I put my head in my hands. I wasn’t trying to be dramatic—I just felt as though I’d been steamrolled with the reality of my situation and the consequences that had resulted because of my actions. But why had I gone to Leo in the first place about the extra credit? Because I knew my parents would cut me off if my grades weren’t up. So it didn’t seem to matter what I had done; this seemed like an inevitable conclusion.
“This is all because of a guy,” I said. “And I don’t even mean Leo. My grades started to slip in the first place because of Nick. I should just be celibate.”
Lindsey wrinkled her nose. “Now where’s the fun in that?”
“It might not be fun, but at least I wouldn’t be involved with all of this drama. If I didn’t get involved with Nick, I’d just be coasting along, doing my coursework, not worrying about any of this.”
“But you wouldn’t be having all this fun with Leo. And think about it, Tessa. When you look back on all of this, do you think you’re really going to have all these fond memories of sitting in the library or at the Haymarket, studying? Is that what you want to remember?”
“It might not be the most exciting thing in the world to remember, but I wouldn’t necessarily mind that.”
“Now when you think back, you’ll remember Leo. You’ll remember that crazy time you needed to get your grades up, and you actually took your professor—your fucking hot professor, might I add—up on his offer to sleep with him. And had the best sex of your fucking life.”
“What I’ll probably remember is the horrified look on my mother’s face when she walked in on me giving that professor a blowjob!” I cringed. “God, that was awful.”
Lindsey laughed. “But it’s funny! At least to me it is.”
I laughed too, because if I didn’t laugh, I was probably going to cry, and I had cried about this enough.
“So basically you have a choice now,” Lindsey said.
“I do? I don’t feel like I do.”
“You can curl up in a ball and be completely paralyzed by everything, or you can say you’re going to carry on, no matter how that looks. It might not look exactly how you envisioned it, say, at the start of the year, but so what? Things happen, plans change. You are not the sort of person to just give up on something because it’s hard, and I don’t think you’re going to do that now.”
She was right, I knew it. I just needed to focus on one day at a time, and not let myself get completely overwhelmed by the big picture.
“I can lend you some money for rent,” she said.
“You can?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s really my parents’ money, but they don’t keep track of my bank account; I just get an automatic transfer twice a month. They won’t know. And even if they do know, they’re not going to care, because they know you, and they know you’re a good person.”
“Thank you,” I said, feeling a wave of relief wash over me.
After I left the Haymarket, I went back to my apartment and was making some tea when I heard my phone go off. I went over and looked at the screen. It was Leo. “Hey,” he said when I picked up, and even though my whole day had been pretty stressful, just hearing his voice still gave me a fluttering feeling in my stomach. “How’s it going? I’ve been thinking about you.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I talked to my dad, who was about as happy as you’d imagine. But . . . I don’t want to talk about all that right now.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “When and if you do want to talk about it, we can.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I also wanted to put out there, that if you want to stop doing this, we can do that, too. This whole thing ended up being more than I had anticipated. I don’t mean that in a bad way at all, but I didn’t want anything to happen that was going to fuck up your life. Or mine. Honestly, this isn’t the sort of thing that I’d normally do, and I’ve just felt so fucking bored with my life while I’ve been here at Benton. This whole thing with you has really made life more appealing than it’s been in a while.”
I smiled. “That actually makes me really happy to hear that.”
“So I’m not saying that I want to stop this, because I really don’t. Not at all. But if you do, I completely understand. If you think that might help things with your parents, then maybe it would be the best.”
“I don’t know if it would,” I said, “but I can’t keep living my life for my parents. I can’t keep doing things just because they want me to. And I think they’ve thought that because they were paying my rent and everything that they could call the shots, and maybe that’s how it should be. But I’m not going to take their money anymore, and if I’m not doing that, then I can do what I want, on my own terms. And one of the things that I want is to keep seeing you.”
“You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say that. Mmm. I wish I was over there right now.”
“I do too,” I said. “But I’m probably just going to go to bed soon. I think I need a good night’s sleep.”
“I bet you do. Just know that I’m thinking about you. You want to come by tomorrow?”
“I’d love that,” I said. “I’ve got to do some studying and get some stuff written, but I’ll text you when I’m done.”
“Great,” he said. “Sweet dreams, then. I’ll talk to you soon.”
I got off the phone, and after I finished my tea, I went to go take a shower. I stood under the hot water and closed my eyes and tried to imagine washing the whole day off of me. I tried not to let the fear of what the future held in store overwhelm me.
I felt a little better the next day when I got up, mostly because I had to get ready for classes and I was able to focus on that and not dwell on everything else. And the world was continuing on just like it had always been, making me feel as though, regardless of what happened, things would just keep going on. There would still be a ton of traffic on Van Ness, that guy with the dreadlocks and the army jacket I saw every morning would still be panhandling on the corner of 24th and Mission, the student parking lot at Benton would always be full. I managed to find what appeared to be the last spot left and I got out and hurried toward campus.
“Hey, Tessa!”
I stopped and turned when I heard someone calling my name, even though I knew exactly who it was. Nick ambled over, backpack slung casually over one shoulder, a smile on his face.
“Hey,” he said. “Where you headed off to in such a rush?”
I could see twin reflections of myself in his Oakley sunglasses. “I’ve got class,” I said. “I’m actually going to be late if I don’t get going.”
“Yeah? Which class?”
“Feminist fiction.”
“I’ll walk you there.”
“Um, okay.”
He fell into step next to me, and we made our way toward Baker Hall. “So,” he said, “you think you’re available to hang out anytime soon? And when are you going to wear that little leopard print number that you wore before? That was a good one.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t realize that you were looking forward to it so much.”
He chuckled. “It was pretty great.”
I stopped walking and turned to face him. “Why, all of the sudden, do you want to hang out with me again?”
“I just think there’s some unfinished business between us, and it’d be cool to hang out. You can’t hold that against me, can you?”
Did he have some sort of sixth sense about this? I had the distinct feeling that if I wasn’t involved with Leo, Nick wouldn’t be having this conversation with me, wouldn’t be interested at all.
“I’m seeing someone,” I said. “And no, I’m not going to tell you who it is. No offense or anything, Nick, but if I remember correctly, you were the one who decided to end things with me. I was kind of bothered by it, because I had actually enjoyed hanging out with you.”
I started walking again. It felt good to say it out loud, though I knew the reason that I was able to was because I no longer had feelings for him.
“I’ll bet we could still have an enjoyable time together,” he said. “Especially if you wore that leopard print getup of yours.”
“Sorry, not going to happen.”
Seth was coming out of Baker Hall as we approached. He held the door open for me. “What’s up?” he said to Nick. “Where you headed? I thought you had Abbott’s lecture now.”
“I do. I was just walking Tessa to her class.”
“Thanks,” I said, more to Seth for holding the door than to Nick for walking with me. “I think Nick might like it if you walked him across campus to his lecture.”
“I can manage that,” Seth said. He punched Nick lightly on the shoulder. “Come on, bro,” he said, an easy smile on his face. Nick looked like he was going to say something else to me, but then changed his mind, which I was glad about. The two of them walked off together, and for a second, I wondered what it must be like to be either of them, to have everything come so easy.
Later that day, after I got home from my classes, I checked the mail. There were a couple bills, which suddenly made me feel more anxious than they ever had before. Before, getting the bills was really nothing more than a formality because my parents had set up automatic withdrawals for electricity, internet, rent. My phone was on their plan. Would they take me off of that? Deactivate the number? I sighed and tried to push the thought out of my mind.
And then, underneath the bills and the coupons for the local grocery store, I saw an envelope, my address typed out on it, no return address.
You’ve done well on the first two papers. Good work.
The final assignment that you will be required to complete is for submission
to the first issue of the Benton Daily Journal, which, you may be aware, is
going to be relaunched. While there are no specific guidelines in regards
to what people are allowed to submit, you will need to write an article
that is interesting and readable, ideally something that is a new take
on a familiar topic.
Great, I thought sarcastically. This was really what I needed right now. I stuffed the letter into my purse and squeezed my eyes shut, pressing my fingers up to my temples. Whoever the hell was sending this obviously had no idea about all the other shit that was happening in my life. And what would they do if I simply refused? If I didn’t do the assignment? They’d go to the dean with whatever proof they had; I’d probably be disciplined, maybe expelled. Leo would most certainly get fired. My parents would probably never speak to me again. So despite how tempting it sounded to just not do the assignment, I knew I had to. And it seemed like whoever was sending me these letters knew that, too. The only good part about it was this would be the last one. And then hopefully I would never get another letter from this person again.
I went over to Leo’s that evening, eager to see him, if for no other reason than I felt less stressed out just being around him. Sex with him was amazing, but I would’ve been happy just watching him do laundry or going to the grocery store or something. It wasn’t so much the activity that we were doing; rather, it was just getting to be near him. There was a part of me that I thought I should just stay in, but when he texted and asked what I was up to, I immediately replied that I wasn’t doing anything. Besides, I’d been working since I’d gotten back home. My eyes were starting to glaze over just looking at the laptop screen.
When I got there, he gave me a hug, and I inhaled, still able to smell the faint traces of whatever aftershave he had used that morning.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Better now,” I said. “Though things are still totally stressful.”
“Come sit down.”
I followed him into the living room and sat next to him on the couch. He put his hand on my leg and squeezed lightly.
“Have you heard anything from your parents?” he asked.
“Not since the other day. So they haven’t changed their minds about cutting me off.”
“I was wondering if it had come to that.”
“Yeah. That’s basically what my father had told me when he called. And then I got this today, on top of everything else.” I dug through my purse and handed him the letter, which he skimmed, his brow furrowing.
“This is such bullshit, Tessa,” he said. He crumpled the paper up and tossed it onto the floor. “You don’t need to be doing this. Fuck this person. I mean seriously. Whoever the fuck is sending this shit to you needs to fucking stop.”
“Well, I was already planning on writing an article of my own for it, so this shouldn’t be too much harder. Oh, except I actually need to go out and find a job.”
“A job? Right now?”
“Maybe not this very second, but soon. I’ve got bills I need to pay. Lindsey offered to lend me the money for rent,” I said. “I probably would take her up on that offer, except I have other expenses besides rent, and I’m not going to ask her for more money.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“That’s why I have to find a job. Maybe I’ll need to drop a couple classes. Next year, I’ll have to apply for financial aid and all that, and probably take out some loans. Start living in the dorms.” I could feel tears threatening to escape, but I gritted my teeth and took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to cry about this anymore. So maybe my plans had changed a little, maybe I wasn’t going to graduate when I thought I was, maybe I’d have to start living in a dorm with a roommate and eating in the cafeteria—big deal. It would be an adjustment, but I could do it. What was my other choice? Just stop going to school completely? No. I wasn’t going to let myself fail just because my parents had suddenly stopped supporting me. I could do it without them. It might be harder, and it might take longer, but I could still do it, and I was determined not to let anything stop me.
“It’s not exactly how I thought things were going to work out, but that’s okay,” I said. I hated the quiver in my voice. But I just needed to keep saying the words until I could finally believe them. Maybe I’d never totally believe them, but that’s the way it was going to have to be, if I wanted to finish college. And I’d come too far to just give up on it now.
“I imagine it’s not,” Leo said. He brought his hand up and rubbed his chin, looking off into the distance. Then he focused on me. “I have an idea,” he said. “Why don’t you come live with me.”
“I—what?” I asked, certain I had heard him wrong.
He nodded. “Yeah, I know. Not the most orthodox thing. But we’re already sleeping together, so why not? The semester will be over soon enough. And that way you won’t have to worry about paying rent or put college on hold or something ridiculous like that.”
He was kidding, wasn’t he? Living together? I had never lived with anyone before, except for my parents, and I had certainly never lived with another guy.
He smiled. “I know you’re probably thinking this is moving waaayyy too fast. And trust me—I’m not the sort of person who is just going around extending this sort of offer. But . . . I think we can both agree with is a special circumstance, right?”
“It’s definitely something,” I said, still trying to wrap my head around the idea of living with him, what the reality of that might be like.
“If you want, we can give it a try. That way you won’t have to worry about how you’re going to pay your bills and complete all of your schoolwork.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want you to pay all my bills.”
His smile turned a little coy. “I’ll bet we could work something out.”
“Isn’t that what got me into this mess in the first place?”
“It is. And I’m mostly joking about that last part. I’m offering because I want to help out, because I care about you as a person. Not because I want to get anything from you in exchange. It might have originally started out as that, but . . . it’s definitely changed. So, if I can help you out, I want to do that. And if you decide to move in and it doesn’t work out, then we tried, and we’ll figure some other arrangement out.”
I’d been realizing lately just how precarious life was. I’d spent so much time thinking about all the possible scenarios for what I was going to do, how I was going to do it, if it would all work out. I had never considered moving in with Leo, but not that he was sitting here making that offer, it seemed like the best choice.
“Okay,” I said. “I will. If you’re really all right with that.”
“I am.”
“If you want to have a little more time to think about it, though, I totally understand—”
He cut me off by leaning over and kissing me, his hand moving up my leg to my waist. He slid his hand underneath my shirt, his palm warm and smooth against my skin. I turned so I was leaning into him, and when I felt the tip of his tongue lightly against my lips, I opened my mouth and touched my own tongue to his. He moved his hand higher, bringing it around my back, unhooking my bra easily with one hand. He ran his fingers down the column of my spine, then traced his hand back around, pushing my bra out of the way, cupping my breast. He squeezed lightly, and I felt tingles overtake my whole body, my groin aching as I rocked my pelvis against him. I reached down and put my hand in his lap, feeling his erection through the front of his jeans. I undid his pants and pushed them down far enough so his cock sprang out, and I pulled back from the kiss and climbed down off the couch, repositioning myself on my knees in front of him, between his legs. I pulled my shirt off, shrugged my shoulders out of the bra, and then pulled my hair back from my face.
“I don’t think I got to finish this the last time,” I said, lowering my face toward his lap, slowly taking the head of his cock into my mouth. I held onto the shaft with one hand as I worked my mouth up and down, and when he was slick enough with my saliva, I moved my hand, too. I varied the speed and the force with which I was sucking him, and he groaned and ran his fingers through my hair.
I could feel him get bigger in my mouth, could tell that he was close, but then he pulled me up, pushing my pants and underwear down. I stepped out of them and climbed onto his lap, and he held my hips while I slowly eased myself down. I was so wet that he easily slid right in, and we both let out sighs as I lowered myself all the way down.
He kept his hands on my hips and rocked me back and forth, and I made an undulating motion that made it feel as though his cock was further inside me than it ever had before. He let go of my hips with one hand and reached up and pinched my nipple and I closed my eyes and bit my lower lip, seeing a kaleidoscope of colors explode behind my eyelids.
It felt as though we had both dissolved into something else, that we weren’t these separate entities but had somehow connected and were the same thing. He brought his hand down and started rubbing my clit as we moved, and I put my palm down on his chest to brace myself so I could really grind into him.
The sensation felt as though it was going to overtake my entire body. It was concentrated in my groin, but everywhere—from the tips of my toes to the top of my head—was engulfed in this tingling, overwhelmingly delicious feeling. It was so strong that it felt like my brain had ceased to work, other than to register this feeling of pleasure, and I had to cry out, otherwise I was certain that I was going to end up exploding.
When the climax happened, my whole body went rigid, as if it was trying to capture that feeling and keep it there forever, though of course no one could go around feeling that intensely amazing all the time. As it peaked, it felt almost like I was about to black out, but then there were Leo’s hands, gripping my hips, grounding me, pulling me back just enough that I was able to stay fully coherent.
I collapsed down on top of him, and he wrapped his arms around me, our bodies slick with sweat, both of us breathing heavily, skin still tingling.
“Holy fucking shit,” he said. “I don’t even know what to say about that. Worth the wait.”
I smiled and closed my eyes and let myself wish that we could stay just like that forever.
I met up with Lindsey for coffee, and because I wanted to talk to her about my new living situation. “Thank you so much for offering to lend me the money,” I said, “but I’m not going to take it.”
She stirred a sugar packet into her latte. “Really? Why not? My parents would be totally cool about it if they found out. So don’t worry about that.”
“It’s not that. I just don’t know how and when I’ll be able to pay you back, and let’s just say they did happen to find out and they weren’t okay with it . . . I don’t want you to get in trouble over it. I had originally thought that I’d be able to get a job and keep up with my coursework and everything, but there’s no way that’s going to happen unless I cut back on how many classes I’m taking and end up enrolled in college for like six years or something.”
“Are you sure?” Lindsey asked. “I really don’t mind. That’s what friends are for.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “And I got another letter, and they want another assignment. So on top of all my own work, I’ve got to do this, too.”
“They sent you another letter?”
“Yeah. Supposedly this is the last one, but it’s like the worst timing ever, just because the end of the semester always feels like a huge scramble.”
“That’s such bullshit. What do they want it to be about this time?”
“I’m supposed to write an article to submit to the Daily Journal.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t think you should do it.”
“Yeah, but I have to. Especially now.”
“Why?”
“Well . . . I’m going to stay with Leo for the time being.”
Her eyes widened. “Seriously? Like, live with him?”
I nodded. “He offered, and it seems like the best thing to do for right now. Of course, there’d be no way to deny anything if the person comes forward about it, so I need to just do this last assignment. And then hopefully they’ll be happy and leave me alone.”
“Wow,” Lindsey said.
“I know; it seems kind of crazy. This whole semester has been a shitshow,” I said.
“But you’ve been handling it,” she said. “I actually really admire how well you’ve been handling everything. I know it might sound kind of cheesy, but if I were in your position, Tessa, I’d be freaking out and completely failing on every level. You should be proud of yourself.” She picked up her mug and toasted mine with it.
I didn’t know if I felt proud, exactly, but it was nice to think I was at least an inspiration to someone.