The Reality O

by Candy Sloane

  I bit my lip. Professor Dylan could be as irritating as a thong made out of sandpaper.

  As irritating as realizing I was wearing a thong made out of sandpaper and that I had forgotten to do laundry and had no other thongs to wear.

  “Compared to what?” I asked, sitting up straighter in the impossible-to-be-comfortable-in slick wood chairs the university chose to adorn the other side of his desk.

  The class was Contemporary Fiction 201 and, fine, maybe I did choose to teach more female writers, but I was a female writer. And I was also pissed off at how underrepresented we were everywhere else.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t say any of that as a lowly teaching assistant, so while I waited for him to answer my question, I thought back to the day everything between us changed. It was the start-of-the-semester Department Mixer a week ago. Seeing him play sand volleyball on the beach with the male grad students, his shirt off and army-style swim trunks hugging his hips, was all it took.

  I was done.

  Pile on the fact that, as the sun was setting, he and I were sitting on an ocean-worn log drinking beer and laughing as we tried to one up each other with terrible watercolor-sky-inspired similes.

  I was winning. “As pink and perfect as a baby’s bottom.”

  “As pink and perfect as a baby’s bottom rife with diaper rash,” he added.

  I laughed and our eyes connected—a sharp, soft jolt. A pause that clearly could either push his lips forward into a kiss or rewind them back.

  Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on which side of the desk you’re on—one of the graduate students he’d been playing volleyball with interrupted us. When the guy’d ambled over during his survey of whether we wanted a hot dog or hamburger, he also put a pause on whatever might have happened.

  With our almost-kiss floating between us like a bubble we were both afraid to pop, all those clichés lodged in my taught-to-hate-cliché brain. They floated up like Professor Dylan’s trunks would have if they’d come off him as we’d bobbed in the ocean together that day…which I also sometimes pictured.

  It was all I could do to keep my chest from heaving when I thought about him.

  Yes, I know, another cliché.

  “It should be balanced,” he said, waking me from my fantasy. “Don’t you agree?” His wavy, hay-blond hair was slicked back. On the beach it had been loose, flying as he ran to spike the volleyball. I remember thinking that the exact color of his hair was something that sonnets could be written about. Of course, I’d had more than my share of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, so I was feeling poetic—a scary proposition for any fiction writer.

  “If there were more men, would you tell me to add more women?” I asked. I was sure some of the frustration we felt toward each other would have been washed away if we’d been able to finish what we’d started that day on the beach. Of course, who the hell knew what we’d be doing right now if that had happened?

  “I don’t know—give me a new one with the changes I’ve requested and we’ll see.” He passed the paper back to me.

  I didn’t respond at first, allowed him to think I was considering what he’d said. I wasn’t. I was considering his lips. Wondering how they could seem so soft and yet be so off-limits.

  He cleared his throat. I liked to think that I made him more than just nervous, too, or maybe when it came to me, nervous was enough. I mean, he’d seen me in my black bikini top and jean shorts at the Department Mixer, too. Seen my dark brown hair wet and wavy-wild from the ocean water—the kind of hair you can’t get if you’re trying.

  “Are you saying I should add one of your books?” I asked, feeling brave enough to lean toward him—to call his bluff.

  You tried to kiss me. You tried to kiss me; admit it.

  “I don’t think I said that.” He laid his hands on the desk. They were so large I sometimes wondered how he typed his manuscripts. “Though the sales would be nice.” He laughed—a joke.

  “Any other authors heavier on Y-chromosomes you might suggest?” I asked. I considered saying, Authors with bigger balls than mine? but I needed this fellowship. It was the only way I could afford to stay here.

  Even with the desk between us, our bodies were close, his fingers almost touching mine, my face just a neck’s length away from his…

  “You’re smart and talented, Candice. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” …but then he ruined it by being a sandpaper thong again.

  He sat back in his chair. I guess he’d noticed how close we’d been, too.

  Smart and talented—the curse of death for a writer, what someone said when he couldn’t think of anything interesting to say about your work. Something had definitely changed after that day at the beach, and like the daddy-issue cliché I was stuck in, I guess I was still searching for his approval.

  At least he’d taken over for my parents. When I’d decided to become a writer, they hadn’t approved at all. They were surgeons, and that was what they had wanted me to be. Choosing to be a writer, a profession they referred to as indulgent and flighty, had been enough to make them cut me off financially.

  And in every other way, too.

  “Fine,” I said, stuffing the paper back in my messenger bag. He rarely checked the syllabi again after this first meeting. I knew it would stay as is.

  “Are you really going to change it?” he asked, like he could read my mind.

  “You told me to,” I said. “I heard you.”

  “That’s not the same thing as yes.” His teeth waited like he wanted to smile but was waiting to see what I would do first.

  I sighed. “Yes,” I said, and the word was heavy in my throat with thoughts of ocean rendezvous.

  “In time for class this afternoon?” he pushed. He picked up a silver pen from his desk and started clicking it, click, click, click, like he needed to give his hands something to do. I knew the feeling. Sitting in his office, I sometimes had to sit on mine.

  “Isn’t that why we’re having our meeting this morning?” I asked. He didn’t believe me and I didn’t care. It was my class, my rules—as long as he never found out, that is.

  “You’re just more agreeable than I expected.”

  “I do what I’m told.” Or at least, I let people think I did.

  “Shame,” he said, “I do love a good argument.” He put down his pen and took a sip from his mug.

  “Anything else?” I asked, suddenly needing to get the hell out of there. Fantasies could only take you so far when you had no idea if you’d ever achieve them—if you even had the chops to.

  Anthony Dylan was a “literary force.” That was what the New York Times said of his debut novel, published last year when he was twenty-five. Only three years older than I was now. It was unimaginable, all he’d done in four years: New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award nominee, tenure-track full professorship.

  The fact that it was everything I wanted for my life and it was sitting right across from me at the impossible age of twenty-six made my stomach hurt.

  “Have you done all the reading needed to lead my discussion section for Modern Lit 301?”

  I wished when he’d given me that syllabus, I could have told him to make it more balanced. It was dripping with penises—a Christmas tree adorned with saggy members instead of garlands: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, and Faulkner, to name a few. It was a semantic sausage-fest.

  “Almost,” I said.

  He cocked his head, waiting for a better answer.

  “I’ll be finished this week,” I said.

  “Good,” he replied. “I have a star student signed up for it, and I want to keep him a star.” His usually minty breath was studded with a hint of cinnamon and coffee.

  Coffee. I couldn’t help but think of James, the barista at Buzzer’s Coffee House I’d been crushing on for the last six weeks. Forget about the sonnets that could be written about Professor Dylan’s hair—James’s deep brown eyes were what the songs played in vans with steamed-up windows were written about. Th
ey were the cause of what happened in those vans.

  I glanced at my phone, wondering if I had time for a latte before class.

  “You still with us, Candice?” Professor Dylan asked.

  I blinked and put my hand to my chin, checking for drool.

  “Yes,” I replied, “star student. Can’t wait.” That meant a guy he hoped to chisel into his literary image. Apparently, I wasn’t eligible because I was a girl. It didn’t matter how much promise he thought I had because I literally lacked the necessary equipment.

  Meeting over, I walked out of his office, then heard the click of his keyboard keys behind his closed door. I hurried out of the department quickly, hoping to avoid Julia. The ex-girlfriend—the ex-girlfriend in a freaking office next door—and ten years his senior. How they could still work together I had no idea. How he could have been with her in the first place, I couldn’t even begin to fathom. She was the classic hard-ass bitch—the kind of professor who, if you were a minute late to class, marked you absent and then made you write a freaking paper about it. People referred to her as the POed Poet.

  She was the last person I needed to deal with today.

  I headed down the hall and into the stairwell toward the basement copy center to make copies of my syllabus as is. There was no way in hell I was changing it. Not that I could tell Professor Dylan that—or anything else I felt about him.

  Why can I only be assertive and sexy in my writing?

  Well, not the writing I shared here, but still.

  It was so much easier to be strong and fearless and free on the page than to say the words.

  Why couldn’t I have told him to stuff his changes to the syllabus? Why couldn’t I have fed it to him piece by piece while he was tied to a bed with my fishnet thigh-highs? Only when I was writing erotic romance as Candy Sloane could I do that. When the two of us were in his wood-paneled office, I wished I could be more like Candy.

  But he could never find out about her. No one at the university could. As much as I loved her, she had the possibility to make everything I was working toward vanish.

  Professor Dylan would be furious. Not because of Candy specifically, but because Candy represented everything he thought was wrong with the publishing industry now. He and his literary brethren weren’t too happy with the success of self-published romance writers like Candy.

  That day at the beach, drunk enough to forget himself, he’d complained about that being the reason his newest book wasn’t making the bestseller lists. Of course, the critics had their own term of endearment for what had happened to him: “sophomore slump.”

  I knew that being an erotic romance author wasn’t an actual offense, but writing popular fiction when I was studying to be a serious literary writer absolutely would be, according to him.

  Candy had to stay my secret.

  If you want to read more by Lisa Burstein be sure to check out her self-publishing debut Again. You can follow her on twitter at @LisaBurstein

  Again

  Eleven years after flunking out of college, Kate has finally hit rock-bottom. Losing her job and boyfriend in one drunken night, she’s determined to fix her life by going back to the moment when she let partying and sex take over. And do things right this time. At twenty-nine, she heads back to freshman year of college, with a catch.

  Pretending she's nineteen with a new roommate and full class schedule is easy. When she meets her shy, sexy and seven-years-younger RA, Carter, following her self-imposed sobriety and celibacy rules is proving to be anything but.

  A senior enduring years of regret, Carter is more than ready to graduate. He’s anxious to move on from the party his freshman year where he witnessed his frat brothers about to commit a sexual assault. Instead of doing the right thing and stepping in, he looked the other way and left. His guilt has made for a lonely four years.

  When he meets the new freshman on his floor, spunky and confident Kate, he wonders if his time as an outcast has finally come to an end.

  Kate and Carter’s growing friendship and undeniable attraction make it harder to hide the demons from their respective pasts. But when their secrets are finally revealed, will their chance at starting over together still be there?

  Chapter One

  Kate

  College-take-two started with me hiding in the dorm lobby men’s bathroom. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice the urinals until after I ran inside.

  I stood with my back tight against the door gulping air like it was Riesling and I was at an all you can drink happy hour.

  How the hell did I think I’d ever pull this off? Pretend to be a nineteen-year-old freshman at twenty-nine years old?

  Going back to college might not have been one of my best ideas—but it was the only one that might finally change my life. I wanted to change my life. I needed to. It was just hard to convince myself of that once I was actually on campus with tons of real freshman all around me.

  I guess it’s a lot easier to fantasize about living your life over again than to actually go through with it.

  “Are you lost?”

  I turned and found a built, blond-haired hottie washing his hands. He dried them quickly, crossed his arms over his broad chest, and leaned against the sink.

  That was the moment I realized I was in the men’s bathroom. The moment my breathing switched from gulping Riesling at an all you can drink happy hour to puking it up into the disgusting toilet at the back of the bar when drinks went back to full price.

  My knees went wobbly. My mouth was dry; my head seemingly floating on top of my neck. I couldn’t tell if I was suddenly unbalanced because of how handsome he was, or the realization that I clearly was lost.

  Minus a penis lost.

  “Shit,” I reached for the door handle with sweaty palms. At least I was making the kind of stupid mistake a real freshman would.

  My wide, wild eyes probably made me look as confused by my surroundings as any other student arriving, but honestly, I was terrified and not because I’d almost caught this guy with his pants down, but because this whole idea was insane.

  “It’s okay,” he said, walking toward me, waving his large hands to calm me. “This is definitely not the worst thing I’ve seen someone do the first day back.” He smiled, showing teeth that reminded me of toothpaste commercials. It brought out the sweetest dimple the size of an M&M on his chin.

  Fuck me. I smiled back.

  He paused, eyeing me up and down, perhaps noticing the tight body I was showing off in a desperate attempt to appear nineteen.

  “What makes you an expert?” I asked, hoping to change his focus. Maybe he wasn’t regarding me for the reason I thought; tight body or not, I wasn’t nineteen. I was twenty-nine.

  Why the hell would anyone believe any different?

  He pointed to his red polo shirt.

  Turns out he was doing his job.

  The area above his right pectoral muscle read Resident Advisor, Hudson University. There was something I couldn’t identify in his sea-glass blue eyes—almost like he was holding back, putting up a good front.

  I knew his look well. It was one I’d mastered. When it got too hard to wear my own everything-is-fine mask I doused it in alcohol and sex and bad choices, but that wasn’t a solution anymore.

  And clearly, everything wasn’t fine.

  “I need to get out of here.” I grasped for the door latch again, trying to put out the fire blazing in my neck and face.

  He reached from behind me and also went for the latch. His hand brushed against mine, blistering enough to brand my skin.

  My pulse popped like the last minute of popcorn in a microwave. I needed to get away from him. I would have usually chastised myself for even glancing in his direction. Not that I had much choice considering I’d been the one who put us in such close and uncomfortable quarters.

  Twenty-nine-year-olds didn’t spontaneously combust from a college kid’s accidental touch. But damn, this guy was fine. My RA back in college-take-one was nothing like
this. If he had been I might have made it past the first semester.

  I might have passed my actual college-take-one classes.

  Of course, I also might have spent it studying what was under his khakis.

  “Let me help you,” he said, pushing on the latch as I continued to pull. His voice was a deep vibrato, as deep as his blue eyes seemed.

  “I can open a door,” I said, pulling as hard as I could. Nothing happened.

  Apparently I couldn’t.

  He lifted his arms I-surrender-style and stood back, stifling a laugh. “It’s a push.”

  “I knew that,” I looked down as I finally pushed the door open and we exited the bathroom. Not because I was embarrassed, though who was I kidding?

  I kept my eyes down. I didn’t want to show him my face. Have him laugh and say, what the hell are you doing here, old lady? Or even worse, are you here helping your daughter or son move in?

  It was one thing to be told you had a baby face your entire life. It was another to put it to the test next to actual babies!

  That was why I’d run into the bathroom. Too bad my early-onset cataracts had obscured the mammoth M and stick figure dude.

  We stood in front of the door, the dorm lobby brimming with students and their parents. I should have just walked away, but I liked the way he was checking me out, his gaze sliding from my just purchased Uggs to my just purchased white winter hat with cat ears smashed over my recently highlighted blond hair. I had been doing my best to look student-like.

  But I was pretty sure I looked like Hannah Montana.

  It had been easy to photoshop my high school transcript so it seemed like I graduated a year ago. Simple to change my one semester of F’s to A’s, to take the SATs again, to get a fake ID, to dress like any other nineteen-year-old. It took an hour to sublet my rent-controlled New York City apartment.

  Being here and acting like a college freshman would clearly be a lot harder.

  I took a deep breath, focusing on the chaos of the lobby. The bulletin board on the far wall was adorned with rainbow-colored construction paper that read “Welcome Back.”