“I know it’s a waste of your time, but I need to ask you to do the case until the end of the semester. You don’t have to bring your students around all the time. Maybe once a month, just to satisfy whatever guidelines your department has set out.”
She’s being far too reasonable. What’s the catch?
“I promise I’ll make it worth your while.” She smiles again, and my heart suddenly launches a thousand ships.
No, no, no! What am I thinking?This sex toy executive is not Helen of Troy.
I force myself to focus on what she said. Worth my while. What does that mean?
Her family purchased respectability by donating a huge sum of money to Wollstonecraft. When people hear the name Fullilove, they don’t think about a giant clock dildo, but a family whose name you can see on a building at one of the most selective liberal arts colleges in the state.
“What are you offering precisely?” I ask in my most suspicious tone, the kind I use when Mom calls in the middle of the night sobbing, saying she wants to die because.
“Anything you think you need. Maybe something that could help with your tenure…?”
Thunderclouds gather in my head. How dare she offer to tamper with the tenure process! Not that I need help. It’s simply an offensive quid pro quo. But before I can voice my distaste, a piercing scream cuts into our conversation.
“Are you fucking offering him tenure?” Todd comes crashing through some knee-high shrubs like an outraged rhino. Veins pulse visibly on his forehead and throat. They’re somehow off-sync, which gives a bizarre effect. Forehead pulse, throat pulse, back and forth, like flickering light bulbs.
Which fits, given the intellectual wattage of the man involved.
“Are you?” His chest heaves rapidly and he seems to be having trouble remaining upright. He covers his side with a hand. Probably has a stitch.
“What are you doing here? Where’s your class?” Sierra stands up. Smart of her. With the heels she’s almost as tall as he is, which helps tip the power dynamics a little bit in her favor.
“I dismissed them.”
Guess it isn’t a big deal for his students to miss a lecture on anapestic tetrameter.
“I saw you take him outside and I wanted to talk,” he says to Sierra.
“She brought me out here to talk to me, not to you,” I inform him.
“I’m her husband.”
“Her ex-husband. An object in the rearview mirror of her life.”
Todd manages to straighten up. “Look, Lasker, this isn’t about you.” Condescension drips from his tone.
I can’t believe nobody beat the attitude out of this pathetic dweeb in school. Most guys learn very fast they can’t behave like this unless they want to get punched, or unless they’re strong enough to be the bully.
Sierra puts a serene look on her face and raises a hand. “It is about Griffin because we’re discussing the case study for his class.”
There’s nothing special about the way she says my name, but for some reason, it catches my attention. I roll it around in my head.
“Sierra, you aren’t going to find another man like me.”
I snort inwardly. That’s for sure.
“I know you and understand you and forgive you for all your flaws,” Todd adds.
I squint, running my eyes up and down his rather lacking frame. Does he not have functioning eyes? Even a cursory glance would show he’s the flawed one. Begging on his knees wouldn’t be sufficient to earn him “forgiveness.”
“This isn’t the time,” Sierra says. “And I don’t believe it ever will be.”
“I forgave you for being frigid—”
She gasps.