Chapter 11

Naomi tried to focus on the grading in front of her, but she kept sneaking glances at Sebastian as he sat back in his chair, one hand holding the tip of his glasses to his mouth as the other held a hardback. He epitomized the professor cliché, and she hated herself for being drawn in by it. How the man managed to pull off a look typically reserved for white-haired sixty-year-olds, Naomi didn’t know.

Picking up her mug and taking a generous gulp of the still-scalding tea had her gasping and slamming the cup on her desk. She quickly reached for a napkin to wipe her chin, where some of the offending liquid had dribbled.

“Still haven’t mastered the skill of drinking from a big-girl cup, I see.” Sebastian’s smooth voice coasted across the divide even though his eyes never strayed from his book. Despite the fact that he’d offered to help her, everything else about their interactions had been business as usual. He made smartass comments, and she responded in kind. But there wasn’t necessarily the same heat behind it. At least on her end. It was almost as if they conversed in jabs because they didn’t know any other way to communicate. There was comfort in the routine now that she knew it didn’t stem from a malicious place.

The smugness in his voice grated on her, but she didn’t have a good retort so she ignored him, which she figured was enough punishment for a pompous narcissist. She quietly mopped up the ring her mug had left on her desk and turned back to her work.

As much as Naomi loved poetry, sometimes teaching it was like hammering nails into her skull. It was difficult to give feedback on someone’s creativity—or lack thereof. Crafting poetry was a gift. It was something that could be enhanced with study, but true talent couldn’t be manufactured, no matter how hard one worked for it. And students’ preoccupation with wanting all of their poems to rhyme was migraine-inducing. It inevitably made their work sound trite because they often grew desperate as they fell back on tired words like “you” and “true.” Someone shoot me.

“I volunteer.” Sebastian’s reply let her know she’d actually said her thought out loud. Why had he chosen that exact moment to get more coffee, putting him close enough to her to hear her?

“You wish.”

“I do. Almost daily.”

Naomi looked at him in a way that she hoped conveyed annoyance with his entire existence. “Your doctor must think you’re a medical anomaly. I’ve never seen someone survive on only coffee and sarcasm before.”

“Well, you’re pretty much a medical doctor now that you’ve started that gynecology club you’re pretending is a literary magazine, so I’ll have to take your word for it.”

“You should take more than one word from me. Maybe then you’d have gotten better reviews on your last book.”

Sebastian stiffened at that, and Naomi felt an unwelcome pang of regret lance through her. Though she wasn’t sure why she cared. He said nasty things to her all the time without any regard for her feelings, so why should she care about his? But she did, dammit. The desire to apologize warred with her pride. There was also the glaring fact that he now knew about her latest publishing rejections. She’d set Sebastian up for a slam-dunk. All he had to do was grab the ball. Thankfully—and for a reason she couldn’t identify—he chose not to mention it. At least directly.

“Considering your work has never seen a bestseller list, and never will, I think I’ll pass.” He walked back to his office, his gait hitched.

Naomi had noticed the change in his walk more often lately. He usually walked as if he was trying to hide his limp, but he seemed unable to do so recently. Her pondering was interrupted by the ding of her work email. Seeing a message from Ron, Naomi opened and scanned it. Ron wanted the department to host a Literary Day to entice more students to an English major, something he was asking a member of the department to spearhead. She cast a surreptitious glance at Sebastian, whose eyes were locked on her.

She wasn’t sure who moved first, but they were both speed-walking out of their cubicles and around the table, hitting the small hallway leading to Ron’s office at the same time, causing them to jostle one another. They both pushed into Ron’s office simultaneously, which caused Naomi’s shoulder to squish against Sebastian’s arm.

Naomi said, “I’d love to organize a literary day,” at the same time Sebastian said, “I’ll take care of the event.”

Sebastian turned so he was facing her and scoffed. “This isn’t a poetry reading for the campus hippies.”

“Nor is it an excuse for you to pretentiously read excerpts from your books,” Naomi shot back.

“My readings draw hundreds of people. Unlike yours, which have to include food to get people in the door.”

“The fact that I have actual food at my events rather than chucking a pack of Oreos on a table shows how better equipped I am to handle an event of this magnitude.”

Sebastian smiled down at her. God, she hated how much taller he was than her. “Oreos. How pedestrian. I’m an Entenmann’s man all the way.”

Jesus, this man is infuriating! If there hadn’t been a witness present, she would’ve killed him and spared the rest of the world his surly attitude.

The thought of a witness brought back the reality that she was arguing like a teenager in front of her department head. She felt a blush creep up her neck as she turned toward Ron.

She also felt Sebastian shift and cross his arms over his chest in her periphery.

Ron stared them down for a few seconds before turning back to his computer. “You can both do it.”

They began to interject, but Ron’s hand silenced them. “Save your inane arguments and go start planning. I’ve already discussed it with Dean Morgan, and he agreed that we should host it the Friday before Thanksgiving break, giving you over a month to get this thing together.” When neither of them moved, he looked over at them with raised eyebrows. “Was there something else you needed?” His tone made it clear that the answer to his question should be “no,” there had better not be anything else.

Which was what she replied with as Sebastian gave a subtle shake of his head.

They both turned to leave at the same time, causing them to bump into one another again. “After you,” Sebastian said, gesturing in front of him. Naomi scrunched her face up at his fake display of politeness but began to walk so they wouldn’t have another argument in front of Ron. It was bad enough that there was likely going to be a murder-suicide once they started working together.

But Naomi was surprised when Sebastian silently went into his cubicle to retrieve a notepad and dropped it onto the conference table before taking a seat and looking up at her. She eyed him suspiciously for a moment before grabbing her notebook and tea and taking a seat across from him.

They played a game of chicken with their eyes for a moment before Sebastian picked up his pen. “So I’m shit at the intricacies of party planning, but I do have a lot of contacts in the industry I can probably convince to speak at the event. I have no idea how to publicize this, but I can talk to the other members of the department to see who wants to be involved.”

Naomi was struck dumb. Was he trying to…compromise?

“Look,” he said, as he set down his pen and laid his arms on the table. “We’re not going to get out of working this thing together, so we may as well play to our strengths. So let’s do what we can to split up the responsibilities on this and then we can retire to our respective ivory towers.”

Naomi wanted to call him out for basically giving her an ultimatum, but the offer sounded too good to pass up right then. They couldn’t be bickering constantly and pull off the Literary Day. “Okay, sounds good.”

So that’s what they did. Naomi wanted to alert the school paper to document the monumental hour during which she and Sebastian coexisted in near harmony. They divided up responsibilities like people who’d spent substantial time working together. He’d been self-deprecating a number of times, admitting when a particular task wouldn’t suit his skill set—a nice way of saying he wasn’t someone who should deal with the masses, so could she please hire a caterer and contact the campus events crew who would set up for them? Naomi likewise acquiesced that his contacts would be more of a draw than hers, so she didn’t argue with his desire to plan the lineup of speakers, both guest and faculty, under the condition that he reserve space for her to invite a few people from her genre. He’d even added her name to the list, which almost caused her to fall out of her chair.

By the time they were done, they each had their to-do lists and were confident that they’d be able to pull this thing off with minimal interaction from that moment on.

Ron walked into the main office area just as they were packing up their things. “Did you guys set up a time for your meeting yet?” he asked.

“Meeting?” Sebastian asked.

“Yes. To iron out the expectations with the student volunteers.”

“Student volunteers?” Naomi repeated.

“Is there a reason you two keep repeating me?” Ron asked.

“No. It’s just that we don’t have a need for volunteers. Price and I can handle everything.”

Naomi nodded her agreement, her brain briefly registering that it was perhaps the first time she’d ever agreed with Sebastian in front of another human being.

“How sweet,” Ron said with a patronizing smile that vanished before he spoke the next words. “But no can do. The Dean’s office already put out an email blast asking for volunteers. All of this was in the original email, which it appears you didn’t read in its entirety. We figured getting students involved would increase overall participation. I told his assistant to forward the names to the two of you, and then you can choose a time and place for your first meeting.”

“First meeting?” Sebastian asked.

“Yes, I’m sure you’ll need to meet with them a number of times in order to keep them organized.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sebastian mumbled.

“What was that?” Ron asked, his stance squaring as he shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Nothing,” Naomi said in a rush as she glared at Sebastian, who glared back. “We understand. No problem.”

Ron looked back and forth between them for a pregnant moment before nodding and striding out of the office.

Sebastian and Naomi stood in stunned silence until Sebastian pointed at her. “The volunteers go on your list,” he barked before walking into his cubicle, grabbing his messenger bag, and stalking out of the office.

Naomi didn’t move right away, but she soon slowly walked into her cubicle and gathered her things. She had a feeling it was going to be a long haul to Thanksgiving.