Chapter 5

Chapter Five

A ugust bled into September, and with the coming of the new month arrived the stunning New England fall foliage. The trees on campus dressed their best: bright oranges, deep reds, and gorgeous yellows all stood out stark against a slate sky.

As Autumn crept closer and closer, rain seemed to be our constant companion. It was rather annoying even for someone who enjoyed the rain so much. Maybe it was in part due to the persistent soaking I received headed to and from class because I'd found, when trying to purchase an umbrella the first week, that my parents had cut me off.

I stormed out of the university bookstore just days in to the semester with tears stinging my eyes and called my mother in an uproar. Surprisingly, she'd answered on the first ring, something triumphant in her voice as she drawled her hello.

"Why can't I use my card?" I had asked her, voice thick with embarrassment and rage and years and years of hurt . She'd never cut Walt off, even if he'd done something stupid so why was it always me ? Why was I at her constant mercy?

My mother sighed heavily and sent a series of crackles over the receiver. "Darling, once you bring your GPA back up to at least a 3.5, you'll have your privileges back. Until then, I can't imagine what you could possibly need that isn't already available for you through the school."

"An umbrella, Mother," I ground out. "I need an umbrella."

"Ask your brother for his if need be. Now, look, Vivian, Nikolia's coming to do my hair, I'll call you back later to discuss this with you further."

She never did call me back.

Along with the steady torrent of rain, the temperature plummeted and each of us in Roosevelt House were glad when those creaking radiators kicked on at night. And it was safe to say, I didn't attend any more football games with Sam. I couldn't bear the idea of running into Professor Wilder again like that. It wasn't healthy the way I was constantly preoccupied, wondering if I'd find him around every corner.

Instead, I fell into a seamless groove with schoolwork, attending my classes during the day and studying in the library until dinner which I spent in the dining hall with Sam.

The more time Sam and I spent together, the more we learned about one another. She was an interesting person and though she reminded me of some of the art students I rendezvoused with at NYU, there was something so genuine and likeable about Sam that I wanted to be her friend.

It shocked me. I didn't have to fake it with her, I didn't have to plaster some enthusiastic mask on just to not be alone. I wanted to know her, I wanted to her to know me, too. And that was something I hadn't found, well, ever.

Sam had been orphaned at a young age before moving into her grandparents' small apartment above their equally small press and she told stories of a life that seemed distinctly opposite my own. Her family wanted her to pursue literature as a means of joining them in their publishing house in New York and she was happy to oblige, of course, for she said books were her constant companion.

To that, I couldn't relate more.

Sam grew up an only child and that was just about the only thing I didn't envy her for, though Walt had not spoken to me much since the start of the semester. Something had been eating at him since and he avoided my texts and calls throughout the month with expert skill. When he wasn't studying or in class, he was in the gym, lifting and running himself ragged.

Or so his friends had said.

Maybe it was because he knew Mom and Dad had barred me from my funds…maybe it was his disappointment in my secret keeping.

I certainly wasn't disappointed. Classes were a joy, something I looked forward to every night as I laid in bed listening to the groaning radiator.

Even still, soaked and shivering, I remained stoic in Dr. Wilder's class, listening to his lectures and praying for the time to speed by as I watched his very adept fingers yield the chalk and glide over the blackboard.

He was passionate, so much so that it was difficult to look away when he taught. He had each of us sucked into his discussions, bringing us to the past, to Elizabethan England where he spoke as if he'd written the plays and sonnets himself.

And sometimes, though I couldn't be sure, Dr. Wilder would stare at me, almost begging me to say something—to offer some sort of retort to a statement or controversial ideal as if he knew what lingered in the recesses of my mind.

"Is Romeo for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.' And Romeo replies, ‘Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?' What does this mean?"

The class remained silent.

" ‘Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.' It seems like banter, but what is it truly?" he continued. "Is Romeo not using his power as a man? To pull Juliet into him, this naive and gullible girl. This man who has just been obsessed and besotted over Roseline only to come in and say to Juliet, ‘Give me my sin again.' He knows what he's doing. He might find her beautiful, enjoyable as a person. But what Romeo really wants is to concur a challenge, and Juliet—forced to obey, the duty of a daughter and a woman—simply wants love. Passion. Freedom, even. Do you not agree?"

I'd wanted to jump up and cheer because, yes. It was absolutely true.

But I sat back, taking notes and annotating by his discretion. His own passion for it only ignited my fantasies further and I watched him in hunger.

O, I am a fortune's fool.

After class, as I loaded up my things and the others ventured out murmuring about Romeo, Dr. Wilder stopped by my table, his long, spindle fingers splayed.

"I could see it in your eyes that you had something to contribute. Why didn't you? "

I stalled, the book slipping from my fingers in surprise. "I'm not sure I did, Professor."

"Please, save the little coy act for your other instructors. I've seen in your papers how strongly you feel about Romeo using Juliet—practically stabbing her himself, I believe you said. Why did you not speak up during the lecture? I would have loved for some reinforcements." His thumb brushed over his lower lip, breathing new life into the stupid fantasy I shouldn't have had earlier. "You don't know the toll it takes on a man's ego when his spectators are all but cadavers in their seats."

"Well, we would not want to bruise your ego, sir. I suppose I was just enjoying listening." I offered him a smile.

"You don't strike me as the type to simply enjoy listening. I know there's a spitfire under that darling little fa?ade of yours, one who enjoys the challenge of debate. I believe that is the Vivian I met first."

I shoved my book into the messenger bag with more force than necessary, tossing the strap over my shoulder in agitation. Why did he have to corner me right now? This was the opposite of what I was trying to accomplish—I wanted to lie low and keep my distance because clearly I didn't know how to handle myself otherwise.

"We've already established the fact that you aren't very perceptive, Dr. Wilder. Now, if you'll excuse me." I made to move around him, but he blocked my way, his tall, strong frame towering over me and the mere sight had my heart tripping.

For a moment, the image of him throwing me on the desk and having his way with me flashed behind my eyes.

"Humor me, Vivian." His voice was dark, hanging heavy between us. The air was thick, charged with something that terrified me beyond belief.

"I'm going to be late for my next class," I murmured with a locked jaw .

"I see. Next time, then." He stepped to the side, allowing an exit which I took gratefully. I didn't look back when I finally rounded the corner into the hallway, unable to catch my breath until some time later.

That night, Sam laid on the floor of my dorm, her light brows crumpled together, and the play spread open before her. "Do you think what Dr. Wilder said today was true? About Juliet being the victim of the play?"

I sat on my bed, legs crossed, and notes spread around me in similar fashion. "Yes, in a way."

"Why?" Sam brought herself to sit.

"Juliet is a child. Romeo talks her into a corner every time they have an exchange, she spews sense and his mars it. He knows the implications of their union and yet orchestrates the very disaster himself. Juliet believes that he truly loves her, but is he really anything more than a smooth talker?"

"So, Juliet is just a girl," Sam mused, her pen against her temple. "I never looked at it like that."

"I suppose most people don't. We are all swept up in the idea of forbidden love, right? Not that they are children and Romeo is, well, toxic," I continued. The black ink on the page before me spun into some unknown language as my mind wandered back to class, to when he'd confronted me.

Sam scoffed, "No wonder I didn't see it before. I tend to gravitate towards absolute fuck boys."

"Well, it's not like there isn't a shortage of them here." I snorted.

"You're so right. It's like almost eighty percent of the male population here is an utter no-go. Vapid." She shuddered.

"I think eighty percent is far too generous of an estimation."

"You're not wrong! If only Dr. Wilder was available, right?"

I choked on my iced coffee. "What?"

"Dr. Wilder. He sure is…stimulating." Sam sh immied her shoulders as she spoke, and the burnish glow of the lamp caught tumbling strands of her golden hair as they fell about her.

I cleared my throat. "I'm not sure stimulating is the right word."

"Come on, Vivian. You'd have to be blind and deaf not to be absolutely enthralled by him. He's sexy as fuck, smart as fuck, and he has this sort of quiet masculinity that just makes me quiver." Sam ticked each quality off on her piano fingers.

My cheeks flamed, god they had to be bright red. I shifted my tingling, deadened foot from underneath my ass.

Sam's eyes brightened and her pen jabbed in my direction more like a sword than anything else. "Look at you! You so agree. You can't lie to me. He's hot. What's the harm in fantasizing over our professor? We aren't doing anything wrong." She turned her attention back to the book for a moment, a smile dancing on her face until she paused, snapping her focus back to me as if she'd just had an epiphany. "Oh my god, I get it! You are actually a church girl!"

"What?" I straightened at the accusation. "No, I'm not! I haven't been to church in years, I don't even own a bible."

Her eyes narrowed. "Have you ever had sex, Vivan?"

"I don't see why that matters," I grumbled, chewing on the inside of my cheek and flicking the page of my book much too hard.

"Oh, it matters!"

"Why? It's stupid, some gross label men came up with to continue their oppression of women."

"You're such a fucking virgin." Sam laughed. "It makes so much sense! I should have known!"

"Stop it." I tossed a pillow at her, giggling when it collided with my face in return.

"Congratulations, Virgin. You've just become my personal project and I'm going to get you laid this year. You deserve it. Maybe then you'll appreciate Dr. Wilder for all his sexy splendor."

I pulled my hair over my shoulder, attempting to hide my guilty expression. I didn't need to fuck someone to appreciate him or his sexiness.

But, could I hate him literally any more? Still, somehow, without being here he embarrassed and enraged me in my own room.

We'd wrapped up Romeo & Juliet at the beginning of September and were just delving into Macbeth, a period of post-Tudor England I wasn't entirely familiar with and knew I should study for better context on Shakespeare's doomed king.

It was a Thursday evening, the sky had gone dark by dinner and a chill settled wonderfully around campus. I meandered from the dining hall to the library by the orange light of lampposts, across walkways covered in slick rain and wet leaves.

I pulled my coat tighter around myself as a breeze tussled my hair, coffee tight in hand. The librarian, Mrs. Cocoran, was kind enough to allow me this slip of the rules—with a lid—at the reading tables if there weren't many students to spot it. This reward was a sort of payment for the late August nights I stayed to help her catch up on her shelving and she seemed tickled since.

I had said, most pointedly upon her approval of my beverage vessels, that it wasn't a problem for me to have a lid on my drink.

Unlike some people.

I shook my head as the rain began to really wet it now, trying my best to let go of that small grudge I couldn't seem to stop stewing over. My flesh had healed, of course, it had been no more than a first-degree burn, but still. Dr. Wilder never took accountability for it. Nor had he ever apologized.

And that fact alone scalded me more than the drink itself.

I pushed open the tall, heavy door into the library, instantly enveloped in the smell of old books and parchment—a comforting blanket over my soul. Mrs. Cocoran smiled, her eyes crinkling in the corner behind her cat shaped frames. Her white hair was curled tight to her head today, likely saving her a frizzy mess in the rain.

"I knew you'd be coming in tonight," she said, stacking her books on a cart to return to their homes within the many stacks.

"We're working on Macbeth in Shakespeare, so I'm brushing up a bit on King James and the damnation of women." I held my coffee up with a sheepish grin. "Am I okay to…?"

Mrs. Cocoran laughed. "Yes dear, best do it on the second floor. The first one's been packed with freshmen tonight and I can't have them asking me to make exceptions—you know how the new lot are."

I offered her a silent thank you, taking the spiral staircase up to the second floor which overlooked the entire library below.

It was a stunning building. One of the originals on campus, the library was older than I dared to think about with tomes I knew had to be from its conception. The whole space was cast in the soft glow of two large chandeliers in the middle of the barrel-vaulted ceiling. Rows upon rows of stacks on each floor ran the length of the building on both sides. On the first floor, desks filled the span of the center with small lamps and tables that had likely more stories to tell than the walls themselves.

On the second floor, tables and desks for studying were sprinkled through the stacks, in the corners, against the walls. It was very private, though the sensation of always having eyes on you never ceased and few new students meandered up to the top floor unless absolutely necessary.

They claimed it was haunted.

I didn't mind the idea of foregone poltergeists rambling about the stacks with me. I was used to the sensation of watchful gazes, what with always being under my mother's nose.

It was considerably quieter among the shelves on the second floor, which I was grateful for tonight. I needed the solitude to focus.

In the back corner I found an empty table, its lamp already on but that wasn't totally unusual. I set my belongings down and threw my coat over the back of the chair, hoping it didn't ruin anything in this section, which looked deliciously ancient. The bindings on the shelf behind the chair were lovely faded red and green leather with chipped, gilded font.

I wrung my hair to the side before pulling my readings—a tattered copy of Macbeth and several printed articles on the cursed depiction of women in history—as well as my laptop from the messenger bag. I opened the computer without sitting down, quickly bringing up the library's website to find some books on James's England.

With luck, they were all upstairs on the other side of the loft and should have been fairly easy to find. On the back of my hand, I wrote in black ink the sections and authors, moving with purpose over the worn wood floor to the stacks across the way. A freshman downstairs burst into laughter, breaking the heavy silence and startling me with a jolt. My fingers curled over the banister to steady myself, my heart pounded and the library goers shushed in unison.

I almost envied him his joy. Whatever had made him laugh so purely, so boisterously was something I knew even from up here I hadn't had in quite a long while.

With a slow exhale, I tried not to let that loneliness sink in. Even at NYU I'd kept my distance from the other students, thoroughly rebelling against this idea my parents had in their mind of who I was and what I would become.

But none of that mattered now. I was taking things into my own hands, and in a way, that meant finally allowing myself the ability to open up to another human being. Someone who wasn't Walt.

Or Sam.

I chewed on the inside of my cheek, coming to the right set of stacks, my finger gliding over the shelf as I searched for the author…G…G…G…

A nearby thump brought me out of my skin, a cold sweat threatened to break over my brow. Damn that freshman, he had me on edge. I wasn't usually so jumpy up here.

I peered in between the shelves trying to find who might be up here with me. They'd been so silent I wouldn't have been surprised if it was the local wraith. We'd have to go our separate ways though, no need for any more ghoulish interactions tonight.

But as my eyes scanned between the small space allotted by the books, I spotted a white dress shirt opened at the top two buttons, a sprinkling of chest hair and black ink peeked out against milky skin. Maybe I was desperate for sex as a twenty-year-old virgin, or maybe it was the absolute masculinity this small snippet exuded, but my mind ran away with itself.

A handsome stranger in the stacks of the library, pressing me against the books, asking me if I needed any help finding my tome…

It really was about time to get laid.

"Jesus, Viv," I muttered. I shook my hands several times in an attempt to dispel the overly heated blood which boiled just near the surface .

Get the book, I reminded myself. My attention fell back to the crowded shelving.

There it was: thick and smudged brown cloth binding. I snagged it, bringing it into my chest.

I needed to get this studying over with, start forming my argument over Lady Macbeth and the Fates so I could go through my four mandatory rounds of self-edits before the due date.

With a quick glance at the top of my hand, I committed to finding the next author. Soft footfalls approached from nearby and I tried to ignore them as I scanned the shelf. The last thing I needed was to get swept up in another daydream with this poor man.

But his steps halted somewhere close and I didn't dare look for him as I came around the corner.

I nearly cursed myself, skidding to a stop before we collided.

Again.

Dr. Wilder towered over me, the corner of his lovely mouth tipping up in a sneer.

"Lucky you stopped yourself this time, hmm?" His hushed voice caressed over my skin, reminding me of the fantasy I had of him moments ago. Unknowingly.

Why that mattered, I wasn't sure. I played awful things in my mind during class with him rather knowingly every lecture.

It brought a flush to my neck and cheeks. "That time would have been my fault, yes. I'm sorry. If you'll excuse me." I made to leave, but he snatched my wrist, effectively stalling me. Dr. Wilder's long fingers were warm as he brought the back of my hand closer to inspect.

"Studying for my class?" A dark brow quirked under the tendrils of hair that fell over his forehead.

"Yes," I muttered, still unmoving. I realized the sleeves of his shirt were pushed up his forearms once more, exposing thick veins and toned muscle. And though that in itself was enough to bring those fantasies rushing back into my mind, it was the swirls of black ink that had me quaking.

Now I could get a good look at them. One piece in particular over the span of his arm was a bust of Michaelangelo's David, haunting and gorgeous. Latin surrounded him, Latin which I did not know, but was dying to understand.

Dr. Wilder's eyes followed my gaze and he cleared his throat, dropping my wrist.

"Sorry, I imagine this appears rather unprofessional."

"No, it's gorgeous," I said, extending my hand. "May I?"

He was hesitant, eyebrows knitted and lips pressed thin. But he acquiesced, extending me his arm, allowing a full view of the realistic ink set in his skin.

Homo sine amore vivere nequit.

"What does this say?" I asked, my finger running over the intricate lettering.

"‘A man without love cannot live.'"

I dropped his arm, my heart beating too fast as I took the other with similar curiosity. This one bore a serpent, winding its way up and under his sleeve, its scales so beautifully done I gasped at the delicacy of it. In between the gaps were flash pieces of various natures, all done in black work. This arm, too, was inscribed with Latin.

I didn't even need to ask. Professor Wilder offered, " Dulcius ex asperis. ‘Sweeter after difficulties.'"

"I love it," I muttered, pulling my hand back, locking it around the book against my chest.

"Do you have any tattoos?" He leaned against the stacks, shoving his hand in his pocket.

"Oh, god no. My mother would skin me alive if I did anything like that. Not that I wouldn't love something artful." I hadn't realized how close we were in the confined space but the scent of coffee, ink, and tobacco radiated off of him in a heady mixture. I wanted a closer look at the piece on his chest, my eyes darted between the stormy gray of his own and the open expanse of his chest.

Fuck, we were merely talking about tattoos and yet I was panting. I shouldn't be so charged with raw sexual energy. It couldn't be healthy.

"And you always do as your mother instructs?" he asked with a knowing glint in his eye.

I attempted to divert his question, taking one last look at his corded arms. "Thank you for allowing me a peek."

"Of course, any time."

It took all of my strength to meet his gaze, which seemed to be full of overwhelming interest. "It's getting late and I need to study," I said, shuffling backward in a daze. My mind was whirling with the fantasy of him pressing me against the stacks and I was simply not going to breathe any more life into that. No .

"You forgot your book," Professor Wilder said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "I know where it is and I can grab it for you if you'd like. Although, I have to say, I'm not sure how much more help it will be with the one you're already holding."

"Oh. Thank you, I appreciate that, I'll just stick with this guy then." I brandished the book in the air awkwardly. "Goodnight." I bowed my head in some pathetic fluster of a parting gesture and skuttled back toward my desk. It hit me that the sound downstairs had died significantly.

"Vivian," Dr. Wilder called after a moment. Though it wasn't unusual for an instructor to refer to a student as their first name, the way he said it brushed over my curves like satin.

I stopped, watching as he poked his head from behind the stacks and willed myself to cool with little avail. I definitely needed to get off.

"Don't stay out too late tonight. The…weather isn't going to ho ld out long and I'd hate for you to get caught in it since you often don't carry an umbrella."

Something in him noticing that small bit of information was…touching.

"Thanks again, Professor."

He smiled softly, disappearing once more into the books.

And I returned to my own work, ever the more distracted, the words on the pages bled together in a mix of ink.