Mostly MyBoss

by Doyle, S.

  “No,” he said gruffly. “I don’t give a fuck about that.”

  I stiffened. Our working relationship was the glue that had held us together. And he didn’t give a fuck about it? Fuck him!

  Fortunately, I was able to avoid the shouting this time.

  “And Julia?”

  Why had I come? Why couldn’t I just walk away? Once and for all just leave Ethan behind me and start a new life without him as the center of it?

  Why couldn’t I do that?

  The silence stretched out for a few moments.

  “Let’s try another approach,” Carol said, leaning back in her chair. “Usually the first question I ask of any of my couples is—how long have you been together? Easy enough to answer. But for you two, I think I have to ask something else entirely. Ethan, Julia, how long have you two been in love?”

  Well, I suppose that was the question.

  Neither one of us had anything to say, of course.

  “Okay,” she said, smiling. “That’s a hard one. How about something easier? How did you two meet?”

  That, at least, we could answer.

  * * *

  Then

  Harvard

  Julia

  You belong here. You’ve earned your place here. You can do this.

  I sat in the lecture hall and tried to control my breathing. Third row from the front, one seat in. Not too aggressive, not too far in the background. Not immediately on the aisle, where I might be seen, but not so far in that I would be trampled if people arrived late.

  I had my laptop open and ready. It didn’t matter that it was a used, refurbished MacBook Air, because everyone would think it was just my old one. Which was fine. Because no one ever let go of a MacBook Air, once they had one.

  I was wearing jeans and a light sweater. My shoes were embarrassingly Keds, but no one was going to see them tucked under the seat the way I had them. I took another deep breath. This was it. I was here. I’d made it.

  Fucking Harvard.

  The irrational fear that someone was going to tell me my acceptance letter had been a massive joke was starting to ebb.

  People were milling in around me. I could hear the hushed helloes of people who must already know each other. I wondered how that was. It was only the first day of class. Four days into the semester if you counted orientation.

  Shit. Had everyone made friends already during orientation? I hadn’t really. I’d been too nervous. Then there was the way my brother acted. The second he’d moved me into my dorm he’d left to go get drunk. Fine. Whatever. But did he have to come back and make a scene?

  Thank God, he’d ended up passing out in his car. Campus security found him the next morning and told him to leave.

  I pushed that out of my mind. I was here, on my first day of class. At Harvard. And I was studying economics. This was the beginning. The first real chapter in my life. John getting drunk after dropping me off was not my problem. It was his.

  There was no professor yet. I glanced at the clock on my computer and it was still five minutes until noon so no reason to panic.

  I felt someone approach my row but didn’t worry about it because there was still the open seat to my left on the aisle.

  “You’re in my seat.”

  I turned to the person standing on the aisle. A guy. Tall, thin, angled cheekbones and jaw. Eyebrows that could use a trim. I looked around me as if searching for the person he must be talking to.

  “You,” he said, pointing to me. “You’re in my seat.”

  I blinked and thought, Here we go. My first hazing episode. He was probably some rich legacy student and somehow he’d already picked me out as The Girl Who Did Not Belong.

  Options:

  a) Move and don’t cause a fuss.

  b) Call him out on his shit.

  I was feeling sassy enough to opt for b.

  “It’s the first day of class, how can this be your seat?”

  This time it was his turn to blink. “Right, sorry. It’s my thing. I always sit in that seat. Doesn’t matter where. Third row back from the front, right side of the room, one seat in. I don’t like to be on the aisle because I don’t like getting up, but one seat in and people are less likely to move over you. My seat.”

  “You’re whacked,” I said, still not sure if I was ready to move, although at least I could appreciate his logic. And it didn’t seem targeted toward me.

  He sighed. “Okay. Imagine I’m like an athlete…”

  I snorted. He was not an athlete.

  “Yeah, I know, it’s the lankiness, but trust me, I’m sneakily athletic. But that’s not the point. Let’s say I’m this super athlete and I’ve just been traded to a new team. I’m number twelve. I’m always twelve. That’s like…my number. So I get to this new team and I need to be number twelve in order to stay on my game, but someone else is wearing it. That’s you. That seat you’re sitting in is my number twelve. Do you really want to wear Michael Jordan’s number when Michael is on the team?”

  That made laugh. “And you’re Michael Jordan in this story?”

  “I need to be twelve.”

  I shook my head. Whatever was happening, I didn’t think I was being played by some rich douche who thought he could mess with me. Instead, I was being shoved over by a guy who clearly had OCD issues. Picking up my stuff, I stood to shift one seat when I saw he was still looking at me with some expectation that I’d keep moving.

  “To make room for our stuff,” he said, putting his laptop case on the seat next to the infamous number twelve.

  In my new seat, two down from where he was now sitting, I resettled myself. Laptop open, blank Word doc on the page. A few more mental reminders that I’d earned my place here. That’s when an older man walked down the center aisle and put a briefcase on the desk situated in front of a large white board that took up almost the entire wall.

  Turner. Economics 10A.

  It was all he’d written. His name and the class.

  “Everyone go to the following website and download the syllabus,” he said even as he jotted down the web address under his name.

  A few clicks on the school’s free Wi-Fi and I had the syllabus on my laptop. My excitement was nearly uncontainable. This was it. I was learning. I was about to be taught by a professor at Harvard University. My mind was about to be blown up and challenged in ways no teacher I’d had in high school had ever come close to doing.

  I held my breath.

  “Everyone see the first assignment listed?” he asked the room.

  I nodded even as I was typing in everything he was saying as he was saying it. My keyboard skills were exceptional.

  “Good.” He opened his briefcase, pulled out a thick, heavy-looking hardback book, and held it up. Economics in a New World Economy. Buy it. Read it. We’ll discuss the first three chapters next week.”

  I opened Amazon on my browser to check it out.

  Fuck. The used copy went for almost thirty-two dollars.

  And it wasn’t lost on me that the book had been written by Professor Turner.

  I sucked in my breath. I was prepared for this. Knew what it was going to mean to be at Harvard. Knew I was simply going to have to work harder at everything, both in school and out of it.

  “Any questions,” he continued in a droning tone, “don’t ask them today. I’m hungover and not really in the mood. Thursday, we’ll start. Class dismissed.”

  The professor tossed the book back in his briefcase and made his way up the center aisle. I could hear most of the students getting up and following him.

  I slumped in my seat. That was entirely anticlimactic for my first class.

  OCD Boy was packing up his stuff, too, but giving me the side-eye as he did it.

  “What?” I finally asked him.

  “Nothing. I just noticed that you literally typed every word he said.”

  I shrugged, shutting my laptop as if to hide the evidence. “So?”

  “No, it’s good. You’re a really f
ast typist.”

  I tossed my laptop in the canvas satchel I was using as a book bag. It was a farewell present given to me by my mom and brothers. I looped it over my shoulder and waited as he pulled together his stuff.

  And waited. And waited.

  He was having a hard time finding the armhole for his coat, mostly because he was still looking at me.

  “What?” I asked, exasperated.

  “You’re an economics major?”

  “Yes,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, ready to get defensive if I had to.

  “You’ve probably got Statistics 10 and Math1A on your schedule.”

  I did. “So?”

  He smiled then, as if he’d made a discovery. “I have a proposition for you.”

  This ought to be good.

  “I’ll pay for your notes.”

  “My notes?”

  “Yes. You’re going to sit in class and type everything the professor says, aren’t you? Like, all of it.”

  That was my plan. I took keyboarding seriously and the number of words I could type per minute was legit. The faster my fingers worked, the more they kept up with the thoughts coming from my brain. It was how I communicated best.

  Straight dictation was nothing for me.

  “I’m not sharing my notes with you,” I said, immediately rejecting the idea.

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” I said, as if that was answer enough. This was Harvard. Harvard. Game on. One of the most intense intellectual competitions in the country. These were the people I was going to be competing with for the top jobs in Manhattan. There was no playing nice with anyone from here until graduation. At least, not academically.

  He rolled his eyes. “I’m not your competition,” he said, as if guessing my motives.

  “You don’t know that,” I said smugly.

  “Yes. I do. I’m a genius. Like, a for-real one. Tested and everything. My point is, I’m not your competition.”

  A genius? And he said it just like that. As if it wasn’t the most bizarre way ever to introduce himself. I rolled my eyes at him.

  “If you’re a genius, then you don’t need my notes.”

  “No, that’s exactly why I need your notes. You see, I learn multiple ways, one of those being auditory. So everything the professor says that I listen to, I’m going to take in. I don’t need notes for that.”

  “Then what?” I wasn’t even sure why I was here still listening to him, except:

  a) I didn’t need to be at my next class for another forty minutes.

  b) He had my attention with the whole genius comment.

  “It’s for when I’m not listening. Which happens. My brain starts to go off on tangents, and because I don’t know where they’re going to lead, I simply follow. When that happens, I lose time. Chunks of it. Classes of it. I considered hiring a note-taker to follow me to class, but I thought it would make me look weird.”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “But here you are! In at least three of the same classes I’m taking. And we have the whole seat thing in common.”

  I shook my head. “We do not have the whole seat thing in common. You came up with some crazy formula. I sat down. There’s a difference.”

  His eyes narrowed like he didn’t believe me and, for a second, I almost conceded that there had been more to my seat selection than random choice, but I stopped myself.

  He was the weird guy, which meant I needed to be the normal one in this exchange.

  “I’ll pay you a hundred dollars,” he said, rattling off the number like it meant nothing.

  A hundred dollars. For notes.

  “Per class.”

  What? Were my eyes round? Was my jaw open? Shit. I tried to rein it in and play it cool.

  “You want to pay me a hundred dollars per class for my notes in case your brain wanders?” I repeated.

  Maybe I was wrong after all. Maybe he was just another rich douchebag who thought he could toss around money to solve his problems.

  “Look, I’m serious. The brain wandering thing…it happens, and I have to let it because, otherwise, what’s the point of having my brain? I can’t just sit there in class, listening to some professor droning on, while the next great idea could be formulating just out of my reach. If I know I’m covered in class, I’ll be less worried about letting go.”

  “You are so weird,” I told him then started to walk so he was forced to move.

  “I’m eccentric. There’s a difference.” He backed out of the row and let me pass him on the steps. “But I’m not an asshole…well, not most of the time. I hope. And I’m not someone who’s just offering money so I don’t have to work at school. That’s not what this is about.”

  I stopped nearly at the top of the steps and turned. “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  I didn’t buy it. “You’re telling me you’re not some rich alumnus’s kid who’s only here because it’s really, really important to Daddy? And you figured you could pay me like I’m some sort of fucking secretary? What gave it away? My Keds or the canvas bag?”

  “What? That you’re on scholarship? Well, it was everything really… But that’s not why I’m asking.”

  “Fuck you,” I said, feeling my cheeks turn red even as I tried to outpace him. But he was super tall and barely had to walk to catch up with me.

  “No, come on. I’m sorry. Like I said, I’m not an asshole most of the time.” He maneuvered himself in front of me, giving me no option but to stop.

  “I don’t need your daddy’s fucking money.” I hated how completely untrue that sounded.

  “Right. Got it. Pride and stuff. All good. But it’s not my dad’s money. Yes, I’m the son of an alumnus, but if I promise you I’m paying with money I earned, would it be less about me being a rich prick?”

  “You work?”

  He grimaced. “I really don’t know if you can call it work when it’s just right there, but yes. It was earned on my initiative. Does that count?”

  I wasn’t even really sure why I was offended. He was weird. He had a seat fetish that was way more out of control than mine. He wanted to pay me a hundred bucks for notes that I was going to take anyway.

  I thought about the thirty-two-dollar used economics text.

  “Fine,” I said, holding my hand out. “It’s a deal. Cash up front before I email the notes. Starting with the next class.”

  He smiled and shook my hand. “Awesome. That’s great.”

  His fingers were long and his hand was narrow and hard. It nearly swallowed my own.

  “I’m Ethan. Ethan Moss.”

  “Julia Whitford,” I mumbled, pulling my hand back because it felt like we’d been touching too long.

  “Perfect. We have deal.”

  “Yep,” I said, then started to move around him. Only he walked backward in front of me, so we were still facing.

  “What?” I asked, clearly not able to shake him loose if he didn’t want to be shaken loose.

  “How much of an asshole would I be if I offered you another twenty to get to class early so you could save my seat?”

  I held my arms outstretched wide. “This big. This big of an asshole!”

  “But you’ll do it.”

  I was typically early to class anyway and twenty bucks was twenty bucks. I smiled. “Sure.”

  “Julia, this is the start of what I think might be an amazing partnership.”

  I doubted it. I did not want the first person I knew at Harvard to be the weird guy.

  3

  Harvard

  Julia

  It was after one o’clock and I was in Annenberg Hall, the dining area reserved for freshmen. It felt like I’d been considering my lunch choice for at least twenty minutes and I was still undecided. There were too many options. Vegan, gluten-free, nut-free, dairy-free. There was a sandwich section, a chili bar, a salad bar, and sushi.

  This couldn’t be normal. Did people actually eat like this?

  I remembered wha
t I’d had for lunch back home. If I was lucky, a slice of pizza from the school cafeteria. If I wasn’t, a PB&J with an apple.

  Maybe I should go for something I’d never had before. Something exotic. There was Korean bulgogi… I guessed that was fancy barbecue chicken.

  In the end, I put a bunch of stuff on my tray and looked for a seat. This was probably the part where I should check out the rest of the room to see if there was anyone else eating alone, walk up to them, and introduce myself.

  Hi, I’m Julia. Mind if I join you?

  Simple. Easy.

  Nope. Instead, I found an empty table and sat. I was tentatively tasting a spoonful of saffron-corn chowder when I felt someone approach. Awesome. Someone who had more guts than me. I looked up and smiled only to see Ethan standing there with his own tray.

  Swell.

  “Hey,” he said, sitting across from me.

  “Hi.”

  “I haven’t gotten used to eating alone yet. My parents believed in being together for every meal when they could. Do you mind?” he asked.

  I didn’t point out that he was already sitting. “No, it’s fine.”

  “Also, I get to thank you for the notes. You’re really meticulous.”

  “That’s what you’re paying me for, isn’t it?”

  “True. Still, thanks. So how are you getting on a few weeks into the semester? Any friends yet?”

  I was sitting alone at a table in the middle of the day. Not much more I needed to say about that.

  “Right. What about the roommate?”

  Blonde, thin, perky, and overly cheerful. I tried. I really tried to connect with her, but when she asked if she could have one of my dresser drawers because I obviously didn’t need it, I knew it was never going to happen. That college roommate bond thing.

  “Her name is Nicki,” I said in lieu of an answer.

  He grimaced. “That sounds horrible. Let me guess. She smiles a lot.”

  I laughed. “All the time. Like she’s never not smiling. She wakes up and she’s smiling. It makes me want to punch her in the face. Which is wrong—so, so wrong. I know that but I can’t help it.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, things didn’t go great with my roomie, either. He’s a football player.”