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

  This is going to feel like the longest break ever, Jane texted.

  I would be spending part of mine in Billy Montrose’s office going through the notes of his next great novel.

  To me, the break couldn’t last long enough.

  Chapter Four

  My last final went okay. Probably not four-point good, but good enough to keep my GPA in the range needed to keep my scholarship.

  I made my way to Montrose’s office in Snyder Hall.

  He opened the door after I knocked, and stepped back, waving me in.

  I took a couple of steps into his office and stopped.

  “I know. It’s bad, right?” he said, indicating the plethora of boxes lined and stacked…well, all over the place. Some were large, like the kind apples were shipped in. Some others were shoebox size.

  “It’s a lot, that’s for sure,” I said, trying not to sound daunted. I wanted this job, badly. And not just for the money and what it would mean to me.

  It was likely as close as I would get to crawling inside the mind of a literary genius (okay, wunderkind, at least, if not genius) and I wanted that.

  But, yeah, there were a lot of boxes, and this was going to take a lot of time.

  “So, you decided to bring the boxes from your apartment over after all,” I said.

  He looked a little embarrassed as he said, “No. They’re still there.”

  I nodded. “About the same amount as here?”

  He looked around, taking stock. “Hmmm…maybe more. Probably more.”

  “Okay. Well, let me get a start on the boxes here while you’re gone. I won’t need keys to your apartment. Unless you think they should be worked on simultaneously, or something?”

  He let out an exasperated sigh. “I have no idea how they should be worked on.” He moved to his desk, the only uncluttered surface in the small room, and picked up a sheet of paper that he held out to me.

  I walked the few feet to him and took the piece of paper. “What’s this?”

  “I put it together last night. It’s a broad—like side of the barn, broad—breakdown of the characters’ names and basic plot points of each of the different book ideas I have. Some even have working titles.”

  “Great,” I said, scanning down the rather long list. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he’d had a lot of different ideas for novels. “This will be really helpful.” I meant it. Already my mind was thinking of ways to organize his notes, how the different puzzle pieces might fit together.

  “I’m sure once you dig in, you’ll find a lot of rogue notes. Some that don’t belong to any of the book ideas on this.” He tapped the back of the paper I still held, and it rippled in my hands. He sat on the edge of his desk. I wanted to look at his outline, but his guest chair had two boxes on it, so I leaned against the edge of his desk next to him.

  We were close to each other, though not touching. His hand was on the desk, not far from my thigh.

  He was wearing a black fleece pullover, with a hint of red tee showing at the neck. Blue jeans and pure white running shoes.

  And he smelled like…sex. No, like intelligence. Like sexy intelligence.

  It was good he was going to be gone for three weeks—there was no way I’d be able to concentrate on his pile of boxes if he was here in this small room with me.

  “Like Esme,” he said, pointing to the name at the top of the paper I held. “I know before I decided on the name Esme, I called her something else in some of my notes, but I’m not really sure what.”

  “Esme. Got it.” I looked around the room again. “Well, you’ve certainly got the squalor covered.”

  A laugh escaped him. It sounded like it almost hurt, like maybe he didn’t do it very often. He chuckled along with us in class, but this was different.

  “Yeah, the squalor for sure.” He shook his head and gave an exaggerated puppy dog-eye look at me. “But not the love.”

  I put my head down pretending to read his list. But I was really trying to hide the smile that came across my face because he got my Salinger reference, and for the playful look he gave me.

  He’d always been somewhat jovial—if distracted—in class, but I would never say he’d been playful with us.

  Guess I wasn’t his student anymore in truth.

  I looked back at him and he was staring down at me with humor and warmth. I couldn’t hide my smile any longer, though I tried to damper it a bit from how happy this whole situation made me.

  “Wow,” he said, in almost a whisper. “You’re a pretty girl, but when you smile…beautiful.”

  I started to look away, but didn’t. This was not some Bribury boy to play flirty games with. Billy Montrose was a man, and if he wanted to tell me he liked my smile, I was going to look him in the eye as he did.

  “Thanks,” I said, trying to keep my voice light and breezy. Like men I’d been obsessed with for five years told me I was beautiful all the time.

  My frankness seemed to take him a little aback. He straightened, moving away from me just a tiny bit, as he studied me. “You didn’t smile a lot in class,” he said.

  “Funny, when you laughed at my Esme joke, I was thinking you didn’t do that in class…ever.”

  “I didn’t?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Never an out-and-out laugh.”

  He turned his head straight ahead, looking toward the door. “Huh. I thought you guys cracked me up all the time.”

  “Well you, I don’t know, chuckled with us. But never a big laugh like you just did.”

  Still looking at the door and not at me he said, “Was I a total dick? You can tell me. Your grades have already been submitted.” There was a hint of joking in his voice, but I thought it sounded forced.

  “No, not a dick at all. Just not a big wisecracker. Most profs aren’t.”

  He shook his head, then looked back at me. “No I suppose not.” Keeping his gaze steady on mine, he asked, “But was I pretentious as hell?”

  I didn’t look away, didn’t hesitate as I said, “A little. But most profs are.”

  He laughed. Not the big laugh of earlier, but still a nice sound that let me know he appreciated my honesty. And that it was okay to bust his balls a little.

  When his smile dimmed, he looked around the office, not really at just the numerous boxes, but seeming to take in the office itself. “Prof. I’m a prof—if not in credentials, certainly in duties.”

  “Yes,” I said softly. It didn’t really feel like he’d said it to me.

  “Jesus, how did I get here?”

  I stayed silent. It certainly wasn’t my place to answer him.

  He may not have liked the path which brought him to Bribury—the maze of boxes, and lack of a second novel, indicated that it’d been a frustrating route—but I was happy he was here.

  He stepped away from the desk and immediately I missed the warm presence of his body next to mine. “Okay, Billy, enough self-pity for today,” he said as he walked around the desk. “I’ve got three whole weeks with family that will trigger that particular emotion.”

  A small sound of part laughter and part commiseration escaped from me.

  “You too?” he asked from behind me.

  I turned to find him picking up his phone and scrolling through it. “Doesn’t everybody?” I answered.

  He looked up from his phone to me. “I suppose so, but it’s the self-absorbed, pretentious fools like me that think it only applies to them.”

  He stared at me, almost challenging me.

  “You’re not…” I started. He raised his eyebrow at me. “A fool.”

  For a split second his face didn’t change, and I thought that maybe I’d blown the whole thing. That he’d say it wasn’t going to work out. That I wouldn’t be able to afford staying here for the summer and instead be forced to take care of the boys and not be able to take any kind of paying job.

  But most devastating of all, I wouldn’t get to work so closely to a man I greatly admired—pretentious and self-absorb
ed as he might be.

  Then he burst out laughing and returned to his phone. “Oh, Syd, this is going to work out just fine.”

  As he clicked away, I relaxed, and mentally noted that he liked when I told him what was what. Looking at the boxes around me, I wondered if that would apply to his work as well.

  He held his phone out to me. “Here, put your number in so I have it, okay?”

  “Of course.” I took the phone from him, our fingers not touching at all. He’d already set up a contact page for me and all I did was add my number. I added my email too, although he would have had that on his class roster, but this saved him a step.

  And really, wasn’t that why I was earning a badly needed ten thousand dollars? To save Montrose a major step of sorting through five years of notes? Though by the number of boxes, it looked more like fifty year’s worth.

  I handed the phone back to him and he called me. I took my phone out of my back pocket and started to add the new number to my contacts.

  “Syd,” he said and I looked up. “Say cheese.” He was holding the phone out, in a camera-holding way.

  I automatically smiled. After all the social media my generation had been exposed to, when a phone was pointed at you…you posed.

  “Is that okay?” he said after he took my picture. “I just like keeping photos on my contacts. I tend to forget names sometimes and this helps me.”

  “Sure,” I said. Then held mine up and took a shot of him as he was looking down at his phone. He looked up, startled, when he heard the click. A corner of his mouth quirked up in a half-grin. He tipped his head a little in my direction, as if to say, “touché.”

  “Okay. I’ve got to get going or I’m going to miss my train.” He looked as if maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Then he let out a big sigh and said, “Yeah. I’ve got to go,” as if trying to convince himself.

  He came around to my side of the desk and handed me a key chain with a key card and two keys on it. “This one is for the building. And this one for my office. You have to use the key card if you enter the building when it’s locked and you use the key. When you enter and leave. They need to know who’s in the building in case of a fire or something.”

  I nodded, holding my hand open under his. He placed the keys on my palm. “The building is going to be open during regular office hours. I guess because of all the front end testing stuff?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “But I’m guessing they’ll be locked up on weekends and on actual Christmas and New Year’s days, so…the key and key card.”

  “Got it.” I wrapped my hand around the keys and put them in the front pocket of my jeans.

  “Not that I’m saying you have to work weekends or anything. Again, you make your own schedule, I just want the job done before the end of next semester, so I can start digging in as soon as I’m done and back in New York.”

  “That’s fine. But my next shift at the admin building isn’t until Monday morning, so I had planned on getting started today and working this weekend.”

  “That’s great. Oh, you mean, starting…today?”

  I nodded. “Right after you leave.”

  He looked around at the boxes and it seemed like panic crossed his face. “Umm…yeah…well.”

  I grabbed his bulging satchel from the top of his desk and handed it to him. He numbly took it, looking at it like it was a foreign object.

  “You’re going to miss your train,” I said. I grabbed his leather jacket from the coatrack in the corner by the door, and handed it to him. “You need to go.” I pulled his arm, the warmth of him seeping through the fleece he wore.

  “Right. Right,” he said, moving to the door, but still looking around like he was leaving his newborn baby with a first-time sitter.

  And perhaps that was exactly what he was doing.

  I opened the door and gently pushed him out into the hallway. He was looking beyond me, back into his office, at his boxes. Then he focused on me, his eyes almost pleading.

  I placed my hand on top of his, still clutching his jacket. “I’ll take care of it,” I said. He just stared at me, his face unreadable.

  “I’ll take care of them,” I added, meaning his precious characters.

  He took a deep breath and nodded, sensing I got how important the little people in the boxes were to him.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, then turned and walked down the hall.

  I watched him walk away (who wouldn’t enjoy that view!), waiting for him to turn around and come back to look at his babies once more.

  But he didn’t. He kept walking down the hall, turning at the stairwell.

  I returned to his office, shut and locked the door, pulled off my North Face, and set about organizing Billy Montrose’s next great novel.

  Chapter Five

  My phone dinged with a text, pulling me out of my Montrose’s notes-induced haze. I was sitting on the floor of his office, one box’s contents forming a circle around my crossed legs. Reaching for my phone, which was in the pocket of my jacket, I tried not to mess up my various piles.

  You still there? A text from Montrose.

  I looked at the time—nine at night. God, I’d been here working for almost nine hours. I vaguely remembered going down the hall to the ladies’ room once, and pulling a Diet Coke from my backpack, but other than that, I hadn’t moved much from my spot on the floor.

  Yes, I texted back.

  Have you gone back to your room and come back, or have you been there the entire time?

  The entire time.

  Jesus. You’ve got five months, you know.

  I thought I’d just get a start on organizing the different boxes. Putting the boxes in order by the dates on your notes.

  And? That should have taken you a few hours, tops. He texted when I didn’t type anything further.

  And…I got sucked in.

  Tell me about it, he responded.

  My thumbs were poised over my phone, but I wasn’t sure what to say next. Did I tell him how much I enjoyed this job, even though it was only my first day? (Would that sound like sucking up?) Did I relay how much more solidified my idea of him as a great author was, by just reading notes he’d scribbled? (That would definitely sound like sucking up.)

  Before I could decide what to text, my phone rang with a call from Montrose.

  “Hi,” I said, then put the phone on speaker and rested it on my thigh as I carefully unbent my legs and stretched them out, bending forward to touch my toes.

  “Hi,” he said, his voice low and throaty. It instantly conjured up how good he’d smelled when he sat next to me on the ledge of his desk earlier. Seemed like I could almost still smell his spicy scent. “I forgot to tell you, there are a bunch of delivery menus and an envelope with some cash for you in the middle top drawer of my desk.”

  “Cash?” I asked. My first payment for this job was to come January first, ten days away, and I hadn’t expected cash—though that would be great.

  “For food for when you’re working there and want something to eat.”

  “You didn’t have to do that. I can bring or buy my own food,” I said with a bit of defensiveness in my voice. A prickle of what Jane called my Chip (it was a proper noun to her) rose to the back of my neck.

  “I know you can. But with the hours you’ll be working for admin, and then in my office, my guess is you won’t get to the caf a lot during their limited hours over break.”

  He was right, and I’d thought about that. All the cafs but one were closed for break, and the one that would feed the students here over the holidays had limited hours. I figured I’d be making a lot of pit stops at the convenience store just off campus. And of course, delivery. But I tried to keep both those options at a minimum because of my tight budget, preferring to get most of my meals at the caf, which was included in my scholarship program.

  “Well…I…”

  “Listen, it’s not charity. I know this is your second job, and you’ll be doing it at
odd hours. And I know from experience how easy it is to let time get away from you when immersed in a project. This was just an employer making allowances for his employee’s diligence.”

  “Wow, that sounds so…corporate.”

  He laughed. “Hardly. My guess is you’re camped out on the floor with my crap piled all around you. Not real executive of a setting.”

  “Do you have a camera in here?” I said, kind of teasing, but dang his description was spot on.

  “Like a nanny cam?” He chuckled, and I envisioned the corner of his mouth lifting slightly as it had when I’d seen him earlier today. “What would we even call that? A literary assistant cam?”

  “Is that what I am? A literary assistant?”

  I could almost see him shrug. Strange that I’d so quickly become attuned to his body language after so short of a time. Though, I had been watching him—closely—three times a week for the past four months.

  “I thought it had a more prestigious ring than box unpacker. It might look good on a résumé, depending on what types of jobs you’ll be looking for in three and a half years.”

  “God, I so don’t want to think about that yet.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, and when he did respond, it was with a quiet, low voice. “But you do think about it, don’t you, Syd? You think about your future all the time. Just so you don’t have to think about where you come from.”

  I slowly eased my body out of my stretch, the phone moving slightly on my thigh. Reaching out to hold it in place, I felt another prickle on my neck. Not Chip this time, but something much deeper. Much darker.

  “Yes,” I answered, not wanting to admit the truth.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to get all heavy on you.”

  “That’s okay,” I replied, even though his insight was a bit unnerving.

  There was a pause, and then he switched tone and topic with, “Have you ever thought about being a writer? Your stuff is so…honest. I know they were just papers for a freshman class, but, still.”

  I’d never in my life thought about becoming a writer, even though I loved to read. But when he said that…yeah, the prickles again. Prickle city.