“That’s why I have an extra stash at the front door,” Kaplan says, and the blonde woman tilts her head back and laughs.

The two walk toward an arts-and-crafts era bungalow with pale yellow plaster and Roman-style roof tiles in a shade of rich green—not that I can appreciate those colors in the dark. But I’ve seen them numerous times. This is Dr. Kaplan’s house, after all. I’ve run and driven past it before. I’m not interested in looking at it now, however. All I want to do is run. Run and snuff out this new burning ember that’s scorching my heart. Some kind of fury I’ve never felt. Maybe the failure from today has triggered a deeper darkness within me. It could become fuel, or I could turn to ash beneath the flame.

I put my headphones in and double back, heading home as fast as my legs and lungs will take me.

OceanofPDF.com

5 ELI

There’s no hiding anything from Kathryn Fletcher.

I can tell she wants to ask what’s bothering me the entire time we stop at my house. We let Duke out and Fletch plays with him as I get changed. Her need to pepper me with questions is palpable, the energy of it permeating my house like the scent of a cooking meal. But she has the good grace to leave it alone, at least until we Uber to The Monarch Restaurant and I have a drink in my hand.

“So are you gonna tell me about your shitty day, Kap? Or are you just going to keep shooting murderous looks at the food all night?” Fletch asks as she scrapes a piece of torn sourdough through the artichoke dip.

I groan, dragging my hand down my face, scratching the stubble on my cheek. My meeting with Bria has been gnawing at my guts like a trapped rat, and I’m anxious to let it out. “I did something dumb.”

Fletch snorts a laugh. “Shocker. The stupidest smart man I know did something stupid. This is about a woman, I presume?”

“Yes…”

“You met someone new?”

“Kind of.”

“And then you fucked it up.”

“Definitely.”

Fletch sighs, her eyebrows climbing before she focuses on tearing another strip of sourdough from the loaf. “You’ve always called me the most epic cockblocker on the planet, but it’s really you. You block your own cock. Any woman that has even the faintest whiff of relationship material and poof, you do something monumentally stupid to push her away so you can stick your dick into someone who is either the antithesis of permanent or downright fucking crazy.” Fletch gives her head a solemn shake and reaches across the table to pat my hand. “I’m afraid I have terrible news, Kap. You have ‘Self-Sabotaging Dick Disorder.’”

“Jesus Christ. Not pulling any punches today, are you?”

“Nope. Punching is the only viable treatment regimen with the severity of your disorder. Blake will back me up. She’s seen a few cases at the hospital. None as bad as yours, though. Maybe she can use you as a case study.”

A huff of a laugh passes my lips, but it does nothing to dispel the guilt and embarrassment and dismay that lie in a tangled knot at the center of my chest. I gulp down a long sip of beer and tear off a strip of sourdough, pushing it through the dip even though I’m suddenly not so hungry. “I might deserve a few punches. It was a multifaceted fuckup.”

“How so?”

“I went to Deja Brew to work on a few things before going to my office for a meeting with a prospective doctoral student. I’d read the summary of her proposal and it seemed like it would be solid work, but I’d been procrastinating from reading the whole thing due to the sabbatical. I guess partly I didn’t want to get too invested, you know?”

Fletcher shrugs. I can tell she doesn’t think it’s a good enough explanation, but she doesn’t call me out. “Okay. So did you read it?”

“No.” Fletcher sighs and opens her mouth to say something, but I keep going. “I was going to, but then this woman came in—”

“Fucking hell, Kaplan. What are you, twelve?”

“—and something about her was just captivating. I couldn’t focus. I was…highly unproductive.”

“Shocker.”

“When I decided to talk to her, she vanished.”

“She’s a magician?”

I groan and run my hand through my hair. “Well, she certainly reappeared in an unlikely place. My office.”

Fletch guffaws, her head tilting back with delight. “She was your appointment? The one whose proposal you didn’t read?”

“Yeah…” I trail off, looking down into the dip as though I can divine some spell from the wilted leaves of warm spinach to alleviate this terrible feeling. “It did not go well. She called me out.”

“As she should. I love her already. Did you ask her on a date?”

“Did you hear the words that just came out of my mouth, Fletcher? The part where I said it didn’t go well, that was not an exaggeration,” I say, then try to drown the rising guilt by draining the rest of my beer. It doesn’t work. “Besides, she’s a student.”

“But not your student,” Fletcher says, her voice rich with amusement. She loves getting into an argument with me about women. She’s the pushy sister I never had, and she scents out my turmoil like a bloodhound.

“I am not hooking up with a student. Any student. I don’t care what department they’re in. And she’s in ours.”

“You won’t even be here in a few months.”

“It’s not like I’m leaving forever, Fletch. I’ll be back before she’s finished her program.”

Fletcher shakes her head and sits back, pushing the decimated artichoke dip to the edge of the table as our server whirls past in a flurry of motion, dropping another two pints of Bozeman Hopzone IPA in front of us before she drifts away with the plate. I raise the glass to my lips and double my efforts with the booze. The knot in my chest will dissolve eventually…right?

“If you’re worried about a nasty breakup resulting in the reputation of “Kinky Kaplan” spreading around campus, don’t be.”

Beer catches in my throat and shoots back up my nose. I hack a cough into a napkin as Fletcher cackles. “What the fuck?”

“What? It’s not that hard to figure out. There’s gotta be some reason you hardly ever date women in the same city as you, let alone the same campus,” Fletcher says with a shrug. Her eyes spark with delight as I continue to cough and sputter. “Plus I totally saw your bed last week when you got me to take Duke out for a walk.”

“Fletcher.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you for liking things a little spicy, Kap.”

“Jesus Christ this is not happening to me,” I moan, dropping my head into my hands as my cheeks burn. When I straighten, I gesture wildly between us. “This? This conversation right here? This is exactly why I follow my own rules.”

“You are so uptight about the most whack stuff, and so not uptight about other shit. How’s the street racing going by the way? Acquired any new bikes lately? I’ll warn Blake if so, for the inevitable day when someone scrapes you off the pavement and brings you in for her to put back together.”

“Don’t start with the bikes, for the love of God. And regarding Bria, it’s not just for my protection. It’s for hers, too.” This is where the full impact of my error and piss-poor judgment really punches me in the guts. “After she left, I read her full proposal. It’s good, Fletcher. It’s really fucking good. How would it look for her if she was dating some professor in her own department? The work wouldn’t stand on its own and you know it. But it should.”

Fletcher taps her finger on the edge of her glass, her gaze drifting across the room as she thinks about it. She knows this is true. Perception can derail an academic career as quickly as shitty data or substandard work.

“And now we arrive at that point in the evening where I ask for a favor,” I say. Fletcher’s eyes dart to mine. Her head tilts as she pins me with a glare.