In Too Hard (Freshman Roommates Trilogy, Book 3) Read online

A strangled sound came out of him, part laugh and part…I wasn’t really sure. His strong chest heaved with a huge breath and he put his head down. I admired his body in the dim light. The way his muscles bunched in his shoulders, the long sinewy arms that held me so tight. The hands on his knees, which had done indescribable things to my body all afternoon.

  “Gangster’s Folly saved my life, Billy,” I said only loudly enough for him to hear me. Scrubbing his hand across his chin he looked up at me, and the look on his face made me flinch.

  Pain. There was such…pain. It was almost as if someone had hit him. Or hurt him very, very badly.

  “What…?” I whispered, but he held up a hand to stop me.

  “One question,” he said, and I nodded. “Did you come to Bribury because I was going to be here?”

  It was complicated, and I tried to parse my thoughts on the best way to word it, but my pause, momentary as it was, was too much for him.

  “You did, didn’t you?” he said, the pain from his face now clearly in his voice. “Syd,” he whispered, but it wasn’t directed at me. Instead, my name floated in the air like some kind of smoke signal. But I wasn’t sure what it meant. It was like I didn’t know the code. There was something missing here, that I wasn’t getting.

  “That’s not exactly how it happened,” I said, about to explain that Bribury was in my final three, and that his being here seemed like more of a tipping point than a sign from above.

  Although, that wouldn’t be totally truthful—I had taken Billy being at Bribury for a year as a sign that it was the place for me.

  But not in the creepy stalker way that I now realized he was imagining.

  He was shaking his head as I opened my mouth, so I stopped. “I think…I think we might have found the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said with such sweetness, such melancholy in his voice, that I instantly knew that I was going to walk out of this office no longer having Billy Montrose as my Valentine.

  The pain wracked through my body, almost physically pushing me back so that I had to put my hand on the back of the couch to steady myself. But I kept my voice firm and unemotional as I said, “Explain that, please.”

  He didn’t look at me as he rattled off points that I’d thought we’d come to terms with long ago. “You’re a student. You were my student. You are my employee.” He looked back at me, then hung his head and said softly, “And you’re a Folly Dolly.” There was such sadness in his voice that I had to stop myself from crawling across the couch and comforting him.

  Yeah, comfort him, when I was the one getting dumped. And for what? Being a fan of his writing?

  “What’s a Folly Dolly?” I asked.

  He waved a hand of dismissal, which then dropped to his thigh. The thigh I’d rested my head against a couple of hours ago after I’d taken him in my mouth. “Nothing,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  As he continued, I looked away from him, toward the pile of papers I’d laid out earlier. Could this be about them? Had he held his peace at the time, but the more he thought about it, the more pissed he’d become thinking that a lowly college freshman deigned to tell him how to structure his story?

  While I’d been drifting asleep in his arms, had he been silently stewing?

  “I mean, it’s just not healthy—you and I. And I might have overlooked that in the beginning because I, selfish bastard that I am, desperately wanted you. But, knowing your history, what you’ve been through, you deserve to be in a good, solid relationship. One that—”

  “Are you comparing what we have with what Steven did to me?” I snapped at him, my head coming up from looking at my handiwork to meet his stunned face.

  “No. No. Jesus, no.” He was shaking his head. He raised a hand, as if he wanted to reach out to me, but instead he dropped it and rose from the couch, stepping to the other side of the arm, as if to distance himself even further from me.

  Like just breaking up with me wasn’t distance enough.

  “I just think that maybe we need to end things now. There are only a couple of months left before I leave anyway. I want you to be happy, Syd, but I don’t think I can give you what you need.”

  My mind was whirling with trying to figure out just what exactly was freaking him out. Was it me taking it upon myself to basically re-write his work in progress? The fact that I’d been a fan of his book before I knew him? Or the fact that I’d been raped? Or that I’d dealt with that for a time by sleeping around?

  Christ, piled together like that, it was a wonder he’d want to be with me at all.

  The shame I’d felt all those years ago came creeping back. I tried to stuff it down, but it wrapped itself around the insecurity I had about even being here at Bribury, about being where I didn’t belong, and together they stood arm in arm and attempted to destroy me.

  But I wasn’t the person I was at thirteen. And I wasn’t even the same scared, insecure girl who stood in front of a rack of combat boots only months ago.

  In the end, it didn’t matter which of the facts was the silver bullet in my relationship with Billy. The truth was I didn’t even care.

  He didn’t want to be with me anymore.

  Some semblance of courage and strength, which I hadn’t even realized I possessed, bubbled up in me.

  “Okay. If you don’t want to be with me, I’m not going to beg,” I said. I slid off the couch (that glorious old, creaky couch where I had learned what sex with someone you love could be) and started packing up my stuff, getting my socks and shoes on.

  “It’s just that I—” He thankfully stopped when I held up my hand, very Queens talk-to-the-hand style.

  I had my stuff packed and my coat halfway on when I turned to him. Pointing at the box on the credenza I said, “How many more are at your apartment?”

  He shook his head, bringing his focus back to what I was saying. Just like he used to do in class. My throat tightened as I remembered watching him speak to us three days a week. I’d had so much more than that these past three months.

  And now I wouldn’t even have that much.

  “Umm…two.”

  I nodded as I slid my backpack strap over my shoulder. “Bring them in for Monday. We’ll go back to the old schedule. I’ll come in the evenings after dinner. After you’re gone.”

  He nodded his agreement, and my heart, secretly hoping that he’d balk at that idea, broke a little bit more.

  “I should finish up next week, or the week after. Then my work on the project is done.”

  “I can ask payroll to move up your last payment to coincide—”

  “No. It’s fine for the direct deposits to come on April and May first. Let’s just keep it that way, even though I’m going to finish up early.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  He’d set up my employment with HR and payroll so that my two thousand dollars (what was left after taxes) was deposited directly in my bank just like my paycheck for my admin job.

  It took away any awkwardness of him paying me directly each month. When we weren’t…us, it allowed us to not interact, not see each other. When we were…us, it took away the dynamic of him handing money to the woman he was sleeping with.

  “Syd,” he said as I had my hand on the doorknob. I turned. “I’m sorry. So, sorry. The last thing I want to do is to hurt you. I…” He still stood at the couch, and didn’t move closer to me. Didn’t try to reach out to me, and he certainly didn’t try to get me to stay.

  The work he’d done, the pages he’d so eloquently written, stretched like a white sea of snow between us. As cold and frosty as the remains of Montrose and me.

  Ha. How was that for a goddamned metaphor! I was learning from the best.

  “Goodbye, Billy,” I said and walked out the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Montrose

  A month later I pushed “send” on the email to Nora with Down In Flames attached.

  It had been a tremendous month writing-wise. In every other way I was completely misera
ble.

  I’d freaked when I realized Syd had been a…superfan. I couldn’t call her a Folly Dolly, even though I wasn’t really sure what the difference was between her and the other women who felt they were destined to be with me because of a character I wrote years ago.

  The difference was I was in love with Sydney O’Brien.

  And there were lots of other things, too. For one, she’d never let on that she’d read Folly that many times. I’d played all our conversations over in my mind countless times in the last month and I was fairly certain she had never even mentioned that it was one of her favorite books.

  And for another thing, she never initiated contact with me in any way. And, being in my class, she certainly had every opportunity. Hell, if I had been told I had a zealous fan in that class I would have pegged Jane Winters as it for sure.

  I sat back in my chair at the kitchen table in my apartment and watched as the email to Nora chugged through. Even though Syd was no longer in my office in the evenings (or ever), I continued to work in my apartment, only spending time in the office for my official office hours and to pick up and drop off students’ papers.

  It was just too painful to spend time in a room that reminded me of Syd at every turn.

  She had finished her work a couple of weeks ago, just around the first of April. It felt like a cruel April Fool’s joke to see her note reading “last one” with a flash drive sitting on my desk. But it was no joke, and I realized that, even though Bribury was a small campus, there was a very good chance that I would never see Syd O’Brien again.

  I’d had all the boxes with my original notes shipped to my parents’ place. They were going to put them in storage for me. I didn’t want to trash them altogether, even though Syd had transcribed every bit of them, and I’d backed them up on external drives, flash drives and on Dropbox. I still liked knowing they were there for me somewhere—five years of my life. Five tough years of floundering with ideas that wouldn’t stop coming, and no focus or direction to do anything with them.

  Syd had given me that. Or Bribury. Or time. Or just plain manning up.

  But I knew…it was Syd.

  I’d wanted to call her so many times in the past month. Or leave her a note on the desk. But then I’d look at the calendar and realize we only would have another couple of months anyway (and only a month by now), and I’d crumple up the paper, or put my phone down.

  She was so young, so sharp, and the drive she had…Syd was going to go places. And I didn’t want her making any of those life decisions based on me being in NYC.

  The night we broke up, when she told me about her past… My heart ached for her, for her thirteen-year-old self, for the woman she was becoming. I’d wished I could have taken on her pain myself. I’d also wished that I had half the guts that she did. Does.

  And then I’d gone and caused her more pain. It was for the best, though. Or at least that’s what I’d told myself about forty times a day for the past month.

  My phone rang, jarring me out of my pity party. “Hey, Nora,” I said when I picked up. “I just sent you—”

  “I know. That’s why I’m calling.”

  “That was fast.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve been waiting five years for that email.”

  I laughed. “Hopefully it will have been worth it.”

  “I’m sure it will. Listen, Billy, I want to show this to Adina first as we talked about. I’m prepared to give her a week to make a preempt deal if you’re okay with that. If she doesn’t hit our number, we shop it all over and hope it goes to auction.”

  “Yeah, that sounds good. I’d really like to work with Adina again. So, what should we ask for?”

  We discussed our magic number for a while and finally came to an agreement. I thought Nora was asking for too much, but she assured me she could get it.

  It wasn’t about the money for me, it never had been. I just wanted to be able to write. But the way publishing worked, the bigger the advance, the bigger the push a publisher made, protecting their investment. And I wanted this book to do well. Ego. Pride. Professional preservation. Whatever. It was very important to me that Down in Flames be read.

  “Okay, I’m going to call Adina tomorrow morning and tell her we’re sending it to her. And that we’re offering her the chance at a preempt.”

  “You’re not going to read it first?”

  “Normally, yes, but I’ve had her salivating since we had lunch weeks ago, so I’ll read it while she does.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “It’s good, right? Strong? Do you think I should read it before I send it to her?”

  I thought for a second. Thought about the hours I spent deconstructing Syd’s flower of ideas. Everything had clicked after that. Her combination of Gangster’s Providence into Flames was startling with how well it fit. It had been there all along, I realized, I’d just been too close to see it.

  But Syd saw it. And had the guts to show it to me, even after getting involved before had turned me into a complete asshole and cost us a valuable month of our time together.

  “Yes,” I said to Nora, no doubt in my voice. “It’s strong. It’s good.”

  “Okay then, I’ll let you know what I hear in a few days.”

  “Okay. And hey, if she passes on it completely she’ll be discreet right? I mean, word won’t get out that my Folly editor passed on my second book?”

  “I thought you said it was good? Strong. Why would she pass? I can see not meeting our number, but passing completely? Not going to happen.”

  “Okay…”

  “Jesus, you authors. So talented and yet so…” She caught herself. We had a good relationship, Nora and I, but she probably knew better than to call me out on my bullshit.

  “Insecure? Neurotic? Completely self-absorbed?” I offered up the choices for her. All being completely accurate. At least for me.

  “Yeah, that,” she said laughing. “Okay, more later.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “And Billy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Have some champagne chilling.”

  I hung up and thought about maybe taking her advice and getting a bottle of bubbly in case good news came. At the very least I could toast typing “The End” for the first time in a long time.

  And then I thought about not being able to celebrate with Syd. And about the fact that she hadn’t even read the completed manuscript, made possible by her brilliant ideas.

  It wouldn’t be the same. Nothing would be the same for a long time.

  I crossed champagne off my mental grocery list, pushed my laptop aside and pulled over a pile of papers to grade.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Syd

  I was standing in front of Billy as he sat behind his desk. I’d received notification from my bank that morning that a direct deposit had been made. May first. My last paycheck, even though I’d finished the work a month ago.

  And had finished with Billy six weeks ago.

  At first it had been torturous. Never having told Lily and Jane about Billy in the first place, I couldn’t turn to them to help me heal. So, I did what healed me all those years ago. I read. And read. And read some more. Basically anytime I wasn’t in class, working or studying, I escaped into different fictional worlds, until I was finally able to see that spring had fully arrived on the Bribury campus, and that life would go on.

  But I needed to wrap things up with Billy. I didn’t want to leave it as we had. I’d texted him that I’d like to stop by his office for a quick word and he’d agreed.

  Now, he waved me to sit in the guest chair and I did. I took a deep breath and tried to articulate the thoughts and conclusions I’d come to.

  “This needs to be said. And it’s not that I’m trying to get you back. Because, what the hell, you’re going to be gone in a few weeks anyway. But…I need you to hear me. I’d like you to understand me, but I need you to at least hear me.”

  “Okay,” he said. He came from behind
his desk to stand in front of me, leaning against the front of his desk, his legs crossed at the ankles, his arms behind him. A casual look, but I could tell by the grey of his eyes that he was nervous.

  He wasn’t the only one.

  But, I channeled my inner Celtic goddess of strength and got off my chest what had been weighing me down for the past six weeks. For the past four months, really.

  “Yes, I fell in love with you…the writer, before I ever met you. But you must have had some feelings for me because of the papers I’d written for your class. You told me yourself that those papers were part of the reason you hired me.”

  “Yes, hired you. I had no preconceived notion of you…as a woman. As someone I would come to—” He stopped, ran his hand across his chin. His voice was lower, softer when he finished, “be involved with.”

  The words stung, mostly because I knew they weren’t completely true. But what stung most was the word unsaid, the thought unfinished, changed.

  Remembering those early days on the phone, even before we started FaceTiming, I challenged him, like he used to enjoy then. “Oh, come on. You probably had a hundred students last semester. You’re telling me it was only my papers that showed you I could put five sentences together? I’ll bet I didn’t even get the highest grade in your class.”

  From the look of chagrin on his face, I knew I’d made a hit. “Grades don’t matter with something like writing, you know that.”

  I tilted my head. “Says the man who has hidden for five years out of fear of being judged.”

  He waved a hand and his face turned hard, his cheekbones, usually so touchable, became edgy and sharp, and the grey of his eyes turned dark, as if they were storm clouds about to burst. “It was the combination of your writing and the fact that you referenced a lot of good literature. It was obvious you were very well read.” His voice was low, controlled. His tone said he was done talking about this.

  But I wasn’t through. “Well, the same could be said about everyone with an office in this building, and the administrative staff to go along with them. I would just bet that Corrine Patterson would have loved doing this for you.”