Waiting for a Girl Like You (19 page)

“I think it is.”

“That’s because you’re a self-centered celebrity who thinks everything is about him. You—” She twitched and something awful surfaced under the marble.

“No, it’s mostly because five days ago we were in WVA playing board games, watching
Airplane!
and talking about going to Italy, and twelve hours later you had vanished and everybody blamed me.”

“I just woke up. There’s no way you and I could have a successful relationship. I’m intellectually superior to you.”

Marc blinked. It sounded like she’d just called him an idiot. Harsh. “Okay. You could have said good-bye, at least.”

“I assumed you would have figured that out when I left town, but if it helps, good-bye.”

She turned and walked up the steps. Marc stood listening to her footfalls all the way up, followed by the sound of the fire door at the top opening and closing.

Damn.

He stopped on the way out to leave an autograph for the resident director, but she’d already retreated into her apartment, and he didn’t have the energy to deal with her so he signed her white board. Then he made his way back to the hotel feeling like the whole world was filled with cement.

She was just a girl, and too young at that. The world was full of girls. Girls and women. So what if he liked her and she was calm? She’d just kicked him to the curb. She’d also told him he was stupid. Twice. Just because he hadn’t gone to college didn’t mean he was stupid. What a bitch.

No, that wasn’t right. The cadence of her speech, the way she held herself like she’d taken a mortal wound, the way she vanished. Something was very rotten on the state of Denmark.

Marc grabbed the phone off the desk. “Hi, I need a pack of index cards, a thing of yarn, and some tape delivered to my room.”

Alex opened Roger’s office door without knocking. What was the worst that could happen? Catch him mounting a co-ed on the desk? That would be a relief. “I can’t do this.”

Roger jerked backward, his face turning gray like she might have taken a couple years off his life. He held his hands up in limp claws. His laptop was open on the desk so he might have been working on the book he’d been writing for the past three years. “Can’t do what?”

“This thesis. I can’t submit it as my own work when it’s not.”

“Alex, Alex. You’re being silly again.” Roger came around his desk, and she thought he was going to hug her, but then he reached around her to close the door.

“I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were stupid.”

“You said I was being silly. That’s a synonym for stupid.” Alex put her fists on her hips.

“No, it isn’t.”

“The way you use it, it is.”

Roger sighed, and it sounded just like he was telling her she was being silly again. “You must remember that you have done the work.”

“This is Melanie Finch’s thesis.”

“But you did write your own.”

“I didn’t finish it, and this thesis isn’t my work.”

“All the work you have done to help me over the year would have easily been a master’s thesis.”

“All that work is published in your name.”

“Precisely.”

Precisely what? When had this gibberish he spouted made enough sense to her that she’d gone along with it?

Roger put his arm over her shoulders and guided her to lean against his desk. “Alex, we owe it to Melanie to do this.”

“We owe it to Melanie to steal her thesis?”

“She was a sad, disturbed girl who did a lot of work to no good end. You have already done so much work, and you contributed so much to my book. It’s like you already wrote an entire thesis and then some.” He tugged her closer. “If you hadn’t been so distracted with my book, you would have finished by the end of last year. This is going to give you back a year of your life.”

Alex closed her gritty eyes. Did she want that year back at this price? “I’m not staying at the university once I have my master’s.”

“What do you mean? Of course you are. Darling, we have plans.”

Why had she gone online looking for pictures of Marc last night? If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have seen the pictures of herself with him looking so happy. It was Marc’s fault. Tracking her down in the stairwell yesterday. She’d been trying to break it off—well, not clean, but leaving him out of the really corrupt parts. Better for him to go on thinking she was a crazy bitch than knowing what she really was.

“I told Carla this morning.”

Alex’s stomach lurched. “Told her what?”

“I told her I’ve been unhappy.”

“Unhappy.” Three years sleeping with another woman, and now he tells his wife he’s unhappy? Did he consider this working on his marriage?

“She cried. I’m going to have to tread very carefully with her. I can’t be responsible for her hurting herself or the children.”

“I met her last week.”

Roger stiffened. “When?”

“The day I got back into town. I went to your house looking for you, but you had gone to get paint. You were painting the dining room.” Alex turned to him. The proximity was too tight. From this distance, she should be leaning in to kiss him. “She isn’t anything like you described.”

“She’s been having a good summer. That visit with her family did her a lot of good.”

What had she ever seen in him? Doughy, barely on the healthy side of pale, big fat liar. “You told her I had crippling social anxiety.”

“I had to have a good reason for why you never came over. It would just be too difficult to have both of you in the same place.”

“For who?”

Roger frowned like that should have been obvious. At least he hadn’t used a nice word to tell her she was stupid this time. “For all of us. For you to be with your rival. For me to have the love of my life and my wife together. For Carla to realize when she saw us together. It wouldn’t be fair to her.”

To her. As much as Alex wanted to know what hold Roger had over Diana, she wanted even more to know what hold Carla had over Roger. Alex drew a deep breath and closed her eyes. That made everything so much worse. All the better to see Marc’s face when she had told him she was intellectually superior. Yeah, superior. Marc would have been smart enough to get her out of this mess. He could have waltzed in here, formulated a plan, and executed it without anyone even feeling slighted because he was just so dang charming.

Roger kissed her cheek.

Alex flinched. “Roger, don’t. I’m going to finish the year here. During that year, I’m going to apply to doctoral programs elsewhere.” The University of California perhaps. According to the Internet, Marc was interested in studying literature.

“Darling, why? We’re so close to having everything we’ve always wanted. I have a friend who rents a condo that is far enough away from campus that we won’t run into any students. I’ll be able to come to your place. It’s waiting for you.”

“I’m committed to the residence hall for this year.”

“But you don’t have to do that now. You’ll have a real job.”

“I keep my promises.” Except for the one to Ida about working that breakfast shift, and the one to Marc about running away with him and being his one and only as long as he wanted her.

Roger scowled. His toy was not behaving the way it was supposed to. Poor baby. “I suppose this will allow you to start paying off your loans.”

Loans. There were no more loans. Marc paid them off even after she’d told him to leave her alone. Told him he was stupid. Why would he do that?

And she was about to go through with the defense of a master’s thesis stolen from a dead girl because Roger said it was expedient. Right from a certain perspective. What perspective could this possibly be right from?

“Roger, this is wrong. I’m going to the dean and withdrawing Melanie’s thesis, and then I’m going to finish my own thesis, defend it, and find another university for my doctorate
.
”
That I’m not even sure I want anymore. How many semester hours would it take to get a teaching license? Teaching high school English can’t be that hard.

“Darling—”

“Please stop calling me that.” Alex pushed away from the desk and turned to face him. The office was so crammed with books that she couldn’t get far, but it was enough for the moment that he wasn’t touching her. Her chest hurt. Her eyes burned. Once, in a past life, she had been able to draw a deep breath, but that was a hazy memory now. She deserved a Darwin Award for throwing away a chance with a man who loved her to keep covering up this affair with a man who didn’t even know what love was.

“You can’t believe the dean will allow you to just withdraw your thesis.” Roger shook his head. “You’ll be kicked out of the program. Shamed and blacklisted.”

Shit, she’d been wearing those rose-colored glasses again. The dean wasn’t going to accept
Oops, this isn’t mine
as a reason for withdrawing a master’s thesis. Unless… “Not if I tell him you did it.”

The noise Roger made hung somewhere between a derisive laugh and a cough. “Why would he believe such a story?”

“Because it’s true?”

Roger smirked.

She should have known that was unrealistic. “Then you need to help me come up with a story that will keep us both in the clear. And your pal Diana Gregor.” Alex pressed her fist into the desktop. “I’m going to the dean, with you or without you. At this point, I really don’t care if I get kicked out of the program or who I take with me.”

Instead of flying into a rage or panicking, Roger leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “I don’t understand. I thought you came back to me because you remembered how much you loved me.”

“I came back because you threatened to destroy my career, and you submitted Melanie’s thesis as mine. I didn’t come back out of love. I came back out of fear.”

Fear. The word caught on some Moby Dick-sized blackness in her soul, dragging it up so that it nearly occluded the fluorescent lights in the office. Alex reached back for support. Her hand landed on a thick paperback that felt too much like her Early British Writers book for comfort.

“Alex?” Roger stood, reaching for her.

“Don’t.” Alex put up her hand to stop him, but snatched it back before he could grab it. The last thing she wanted was for him to get that foothold again. It might start becoming reasonable to defend the stolen thesis, and from there, it was all downhill into the cesspool she’d been trying to climb out of for the past five months. A board creaked in the outer office. One of the other profs must be stopping in, or a student looking for a professor early. Either way, witnesses would keep Roger in check. “Roger, I meant what I said last spring break. I’m done. This is wrong. It’s not fair to me. It’s not fair to Carla. And it’s not fair to Melanie.”

“Melanie is gone. There’s nothing you can do to hurt her now. I know you were good friends, but she chose to take her own life.”

Alex clenched her fists. Was Roger insane or had he just started to believe the story he’d woven for her? “We were not good friends. We barely knew each other. Even if we were best buds and her dying wish was for me to use her thesis to get my degree, I wouldn’t be able to do it. Can’t you see that it’s wrong?”

“Love is always right, and I do love you, Alex. You mean the world to me.”

“If I mean the world to you, then why won’t you let me go? I’ll take all the blame for the thesis if you want. I’ll take the blame for everything. Just let me go.” Marc had talked to her. He had played board games with her and hung out. He had walked around town holding her hand, ushered her into his car, ate lunch with her. A woman at the diner had videotaped him saying he loved her. It was probably on YouTube by now. When she got back to the dorm, she’d search for it.

Marc had said he loved her and everyone in the diner had applauded.

“I thought you understood. I have to move very carefully with Carla. She’s delicate.”

Someone was muttering their way up the dim, narrow hall just outside Roger’s office.

“I am not asking you to move in any direction with Carla, and she’s delicate because she’s depressed…except she’s not, is she?”

“She’s having a very good week. That was why I agreed to repaint the dining room. She was finally interested in something, and I wanted to support that. Before I can leave her to be with you, I need to know that she’s stable.”

Shock rolled up her spine and thundered out her mouth. “I don’t what you to leave her, for me or not for me.”

Roger opened his mouth no doubt to embroider another layer on his fiction, but froze as the office door swung open between them.

For one glacial moment, Marc just stared at them, his presence filling the doorway. Then his eyes blackened and his brows came together as his presence grew to darken the office, the building. “Surely, you are not serious.”

“Don’t call me Shirley,” Alex quipped. The look Marc turned on her made her wish she was on a crashing airplane.

“Him? You dumped
me
for
him
?”

“Marc.” Alex floundered as her desire to flinch away from him collided with her need to collapse into his arms, succeeding in slipping on a pile of books. She caught herself on a bookcase before she landed on her ass, and then wondered if she wouldn’t be better off groveling at Marc’s feet.

“Who do you think you are barging into my office like that?” Roger blustered. “Did no one ever teach you to knock?”

“The last time I saw you, I was kicking you out of a diner for manhandling her.” His gaze swung back to Alex. “If I had only known.”

“Marc, please—” He loved her.

“No.” Marc dusted his hands together. “I’m out.”

He couldn’t have disappeared that fast, but the doorway was empty. “Marc!” Alex lunged for the door, but Roger grabbed her arm.

“Where are you going?”

“I swear to God, Roger, if you don’t let me go I will go to the dean and tell him everything, starting with how you were sleeping with the undergrad who was writing your papers for you.”

Roger went white and released her.

Alex ran out of the office and down the hall. Marc was pushing through the stairwell door. “Marc, wait.”

He didn’t stop. Alex’s throat closed against a second plea. How had he even tracked her down in Roger’s office? Why was he here at all? When she said good-bye at the dorm, he should have gone away before he found out about this. She shoved through the door. His footsteps were near the bottom. She started down the stairs double time. “Marc, please!”