Winter Jacket: Finding Home

Winter Jacket:

Finding Home

ELIZA LENTZSKI

Copyright © 2015 Eliza Lentzski

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events, locales, or real persons, living or dead, other than those in the public domain, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, re-sold, or transmitted electronically or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

ISBN: 1511958219 

ISBN-13: 978-1511958219 

Other works by Eliza Lentzski

Fragmented

Don’t Call Me Hero

Apophis: Love Story for the End of the World

Winter Jacket 2: New Beginnings

Winter Jacket

Second Chances

Date Night

Love, Lust, & Other Mistakes

Diary of a Human

+ + +

Works as E.L. Blaisdell

Drained: The Lucid
(with Nica Curt)

http://www.elizalentzski.com

CONTENTS

Dedication

To C

SCAVENGE

It was hot.

Sticky.

Wet.

Oppressive.

Minnesota wasn’t known for unbearably humid summers, but I’d been in my on-campus office all day with not even an oscillating fan to circulate the stale air. With no students on campus over the summer months, the university had no reason to turn on the air conditioning, and I was suffering the consequences of that frugal decision. My cut-off shorts stuck to my thighs, and I wiped at my forehead with the bottom hem of my tank top to catch the sweat that had accumulated on my forehead.

A piercing wolf whistle had me tugging my shirt back to its original place. “Looking good, Professor Graft.”

My friend and mentor, Emily, grinned at me from the doorway of my office. “Trying out a new diet or is that what dating a foxy young thing does to your body?” she asked, wiggling her eyebrows.

Her words and whistle had me blushing furiously, but I’d been working for so long in the stuffy office that my face was probably already flushed red.

Emily was incredibly attractive. There was no better way to express it. When she’d first been assigned as my teaching mentor when I was a new hire, I’d been intimidated by her. She was beautiful and smart and sharp-witted and tenured and everything I wanted to be. Luckily I’d gotten over my little crush though so we could be friends.

“I, um.”

“Don’t answer that,” she waved me off. “But speaking of your significant other, you two still owe me a dinner date,” she clucked.

“Were you serious about that?” I had all but promised Hunter that it would never happen.

Emily shrugged. “Maybe if I can pry my husband away from his fantasy baseball team. Seriously, fantasy football I can understand, but what kind of sports geek has a fantasy baseball team?”

“Keep me updated on that,” I laughed, feeling my embarrassment slip away.

“What is all this?” she asked, gesturing to the disaster that was my office. Piles of books surrounded me like a fortress.

“Just trying to decide what stays and what goes.” I never would have thought choosing which books I could live without for half a year and which needed to make the trip to California would cause me an existential crisis.

Emily picked up one of the hardcover books that had been on my ‘Maybe’ list. “You
are
planning on coming back from your sabbatical, right?”

“Of course.” Even if things in Los Angeles went better than expected, I’d still have to come back to pack up and sell my house.

“When in doubt, always bring Winterson.”

I smiled broadly. “Thanks, dear mentor. What would I do without you?”

“I envy you this break.” Emily sighed and leaned against the doorframe. “I know every semester is the same length, but why do some feel longer than others?”

“Hey, don’t even complain,” I interjected. “You just got back from sabbatical last year.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I know. Take it from me, Elle, enjoy this time off. It’ll fly by, and before you know it, you’ll be back here toiling away with the rest of us.”

I bit my lip and nodded, but I didn’t say anything. Emily didn’t know—none of my faculty friends knew—that if everything went well in Los Angeles that I would be resigning.

My phone rattled on my desk and a picture of Hunter’s face popped up on the screen. “Sorry,” I apologized, picking up the vibrating phone. “I should probably take this.”

Emily smiled knowingly. “I’ll leave you to it then. See you around, Elle.”

I gave her a parting wave, and Emily disappeared from my doorway.

Hunter’s call continued to ring. “Hey, babe,” I answered. “What’s up?”

“Are you still in your office?” she asked.

“Yeah.” I surveyed the damage. “But I’m close to finishing up.”

“I left you something in your desk.”

I spun on my heel and looked at the aforementioned piece of furniture. “You did? When?” I thought I had cleaned it out only a few days prior.

“Look in the top right hand drawer.”

“Where are you?” I asked. “Your voice sounds echo-y.”

“Just look in the desk drawer, Dr. Graft.”

“You’re being awfully secretive,” I remarked. Despite my curiosity, I did as she instructed and opened the designated drawer. In my experience, good things tended to happen when I followed her directions.

I normally stored old essays and blue books that had been graded but hadn’t been claimed yet in the top drawer. Since it was summer though, the drawer was empty—or at least it should have been. A cream-colored envelope sat alone inside the drawer. The paper was thick like that used for wedding and graduation invitations.

“What is this?” I asked, pulling out the envelope. The words “Clue One” were written on the front. I should have waited for her answer, but I immediately ripped into the sealed envelope instead.

Inside was a thicker piece of paper. I pulled it free from the envelope and recognized Hunter’s handwriting. “The words on these pages brought us together. Figure it out and we’ll come together again soon,” I read aloud. “What’s this about?”

“I thought you should have a proper send-off before you left,” she responded. “Who knows when you’ll be back on campus again.”

“Is this a scavenger hunt? Are you going to make me run around campus all day looking for clues?”

“Maybe.” I could hear the smile in her voice.

I ran my hand over my face. “Babe, I’ve got so much to do before we leave on Friday.” I had underestimated how much time and work went into moving across the country, and I was starting to feel overwhelmed by the whole process.

“I thought you might say that. Look in the second drawer.”

My desk should have been entirely cleaned out. But she’d already surprised me with one envelope. I pulled out the drawer directly beneath the one where I had found Clue One. It was empty as well, except for a manila envelope.

How had she gotten access to my office? Who had she charmed and convinced to let her into the locked room?

“Is this Clue Two?” I asked, juggling my phone, the original envelope, and now the second larger one.

“No. Think of the second envelope as … incentive.”

The larger envelope was sealed with only a metal fasten, and I dug around inside for what it contained. My fingertips slipped over lace and I pulled whatever was inside free from the oversized envelope. I now held a pair of dark red underwear with black lace trim, delicate and flimsy.

Hunter’s voice dropped in my ear: “I was wearing those this morning. Now I’m not. Come find me, Professor Graft.”

The phone clicked and the dial tone sounded in my ear.

After the initial shock of being in possession of my girlfriend’s underwear had worn off and I had stopped obsessing over the details of how she had gotten into my office without me knowing, Hunter’s first clue had me marching in the direction of the university library.

“The words that had brought us together” could have been a number of things. She’d been my student once, and it could have been any of the books I’d assigned in class. But more likely it was Sylvia Plath’s
The Bell Jar
, the author after whom I’d named my cat. I’d let Hunter borrow the book once upon a time and we’d spent hours at Peggy’s bar discussing the lesbian subtext between the main characters. That wasn’t the first time Hunter had impressed or surprised me, but it was the first night she’d kissed me.

Walking into the library, I was greeted with a blast of cool air. Few buildings on campus were open year round, but the library, student union, gymnasium, and a few administrative buildings like the admissions office stayed open.

The library was more silent that day than usual—like a vacuum that swallowed up any noises in the vicinity. I was a frequent visitor because of my discipline, and I’d been able to procure a job for my mom there only a few months prior because of my connections. She’d quit since then, however, after making the decision to move back to my home state of Michigan and help my younger sister raise her new baby.

I consulted the online card catalogue briefly to find the call numbers associated with the book I sought before traipsing down to the lower level stacks where the literature books lived. I was probably the only person on the sublevel floor. The stacks were sparsely populated when school was in session, let alone in the summer.

As I silently traveled the long, narrow shelving units of books, it didn’t evade my notice that Hunter herself might be waiting for me, not
The Bell Jar
. But if she had gone to the trouble of setting this up, I doubted I would get away so easily with only one clue. It would have been a lie, however, if I didn’t admit to fantasizing about fooling around in the stacks. It was probably every bibliophile’s dream. I thought about my girlfriend’s long, lean body trapped between my body and a bookshelf, her backside pressed against rows of books that threatened to topple over. I thought about her perched on a sturdy wooden study table with me between her parted thighs. I could practically see the strain on her face and the way her teeth dug into her lower lip as she struggled to stay quiet.

Damn it.

I shook off the haze of lust that wrapped around me like a tight blanket in order to focus on the classification labels on the ends of each shelving unit. Even if I had wanted to call Hunter’s phone and demand she tell me where she was hiding, I wouldn’t have any cell service in the belly of the library. I’d just have to think of this scavenger hunt as foreplay and make her pay for it when I finally tracked her down.

I ran my fingertips along the lineup of books at eye level. There were multiple copies of Plath’s most famous novel on the shelves, but my eyes settled on the familiar spine of the same edition that I owned. When I pulled the book from its place, an envelope in the familiar cardstock fell from its pages.

I couldn’t open up the second envelope fast enough. I read the next clue inside my head, in case someone else actually was in the library basement with me.

“Dr. Graft, how does your garden grow? Find my next clue, and you’ll be one step closer to having something to feast on.”

I grinned, immediately knowing the answer. Doug Witlan, a tenured biology professor, had constructed a raised garden on a corner of campus with one of his advanced biology classes a few semesters ago. Student workers tended to the garden in the summer and early fall months, and the harvested food was donated to a local food pantry.

I tucked the clue card into my bag and replaced the book on its proper shelf. I was tempted to linger a little longer in the library and enjoy the air conditioning, but Hunter’s underwear was stashed in my workbag, and I was eager to return them to her.

The campus garden was a short walk from the library on a small plot of land near the building that housed the Math, Business, and Economics departments. Even without the scavenger hunt, gardening and flowers and freshly tilled soil would always remind me of my girlfriend. I did a cursory scan of the raised beds. Where would she have hidden the third clue?

It was early in the summer season and new green shoots broke the soil’s surface. Miniature corn stalks crowded the center of the plot, and the beginnings of prickly cucumber and pumpkin plants wound around the garden’s perimeter. Neat little rows of carrots, radishes, and something that looked like leaf lettuce each had markers at one end of their respective rows. The paper seed bags were attached to popsicle sticks that had been stuck into the ground to identify each plant. I crouched down for a closer look. Maybe she’d attached the next clue to the back of one of the markers.

The click-clack of pointed heels striking against concrete drew my attention away from my search for clue three.

“Elle?”

I turned my eyes away from immature leaf lettuce and the green stocks of carrots and radishes to find Jessica Merlot’s black stilettos beside me. Her shapely legs were at my eye level, and I quickly scrambled to my feet.

I brushed away at the dirt that stuck to the bare skin of my knees and self-consciously ran my fingers through my ponytail. “Oh hi, Dean Merlot.”

Despite the summer heat, Dean Merlot was dressed as impeccably as ever. Her sleeveless grey shell showed off thin, toned arms, and the material of her black skirt clung to shapely hips and stopped just above her knees. Without my similar armor of pencil skirt and blouse, I felt vulnerable and ill-prepared for a conversation.

“It’s just Jessica,” she gently corrected as she’d done every time before.

“Hi, Just Jessica,” I routinely replied.

“What’s this?” At her words, I discovered Hunter’s next envelope. It had been taped to a peace garden stake that lined the perimeter of the vegetable garden.

I reached for the envelope, but missed. Jessica Merlot now held the next clue. She flipped the envelope over and read the words written on the outside. “Clue Three?” Her face scrunched in confusion.

“It’s, uh, that’s mine.”

“What is it?” she asked, waving the envelope.