Winter Jacket (6 page)

I leaned against the counter and watched Troian do her thing.
 Nikole handed me a glass of red wine, which I gladly accepted. "Look at this service," I approved, taking a small sip. "Wine
and
a delicious home-cooked dinner?  Who needs a girlfriend when I've got you two?"

Troian wrinkled her nose. "Ain't no way
you're getting in our bed, Bookworm.  I don't care if Nik keeps having those sex dreams."

Nikole made a noise beside me and looked l
ike she was choking on her wine.  I thumped her soundly on the back as tears sprang in the corners of her eyes.

"After all this time, and her mouth still surprises you?" I asked.

Nikole laughed and wiped at her eyes, mindful of her eye makeup. "I have no comment."

Troian snorted and twirled her wooden spoon like a baton. "You really make it too easy, Elle."

Dinner tasted just as delicious as it had smelled.  Troian had outdone herself with rich butter chicken, piles of fragrant basmati rice, and warm, chewy naan. The three of us sat around the dining room table after the meal with empty plates, satisfied stomachs, and half-filled wine glasses.  As dinner dwindled, our conversation had somehow turned to my recent dating adventures, or rather
lack
of.

“What about Internet dating?" Nikole asked. She swirled her wine glass around by the glass's stem. "Would you be open to that?"

I shook my head. "That's just asking for trouble. Posting a public profile and having a student stumble upon it?"

"You really think your students are browsing 30-year-old
, women-seeking-women?" Troian pragmatically asked.

"Stranger things have happened. I'm not hiding being gay," I clarified, "but I don't want to be that clueless professor who's so awkward she can only get dates online.
This school is too small, you guys," I sighed. "It's like high school all over again.  And the faculty and staff gossip just as bad as the students."

"Don't get mad at me for asking,” Nikole tentatively started, “but do you think you haven't actively been looking for a girlfriend because of
Hunter?"

"What?" I nearly choked on my wine.

"Just hear me out." Nikole held up her hands in peace. "I just mean that maybe this crush is holding you back. It's safe to daydream and think about the What Ifs; you don't have to put yourself out there and risk getting emotionally hurt."

“Do you really think so?” My mouth twisted
.  There rang some truth to my good friend’s words.

“Has this ever happen before?” Nikole asked. “I mean, you’ve been teaching for a while.  This can’t be your first student crush.”

I shook my head.  I swear I could feel my brain rattle around.  Maybe that was my problem. My brain had become detached with all this obsessing.  “Never.  I mean, I can appreciate when students are attractive.”

“You’ve got eyes, after all,” Troian jumped in.

“It’s never been to the point of distraction,” I noted, choosing to ignore Troian’s unhelpful interruption. “I get tongue-tied.  I get nervous talking to her one-on-one.  Even now,” I exclaimed, my voice pitching higher, “I’m getting sweaty just thinking about it.”

“Why this girl?” Nikole asked.

“Yeah, what does this girl do that makes you wet?” Troian grinned eagerly and leaned forward in her chair.

I rolled my eyes.  Nikole at least had some sense of decorum. Troian was unexpectedly crude.
As much time as we spent together, her mouth never failed to amaze me.  How someone so tiny and innocent looking could be so crude was disorienting.

“She’s beautiful,
” I noted.

“Boring.” Troian rolled her eyes.  “I could pick up a dozen chicks down at Peggy’s tonight hotter than her.”

Nikole scoffed.

“No
t one hotter than you, babe.” Troian batted her eyelashes at her girlfriend.

“You’ve never even seen
Hunter,” I pointed out.  “Nor are you ever going to.”

Troian stuck out her bottom lip and pouted. “You’re no fun, you know that?”

“I’ve gotta agree with Troi here, Elle,” Nikole noted, swirling the liquid around in the bottom of her wine glass. “You gotta let us see a picture of this girl.”

“It’s not like I carry a picture of her in my wallet.”

They both raised their eyebrows at me.

“I mean it, you guys!” I defended myself. “I’m not
that
creepy.”

Nikole looked thoughtful. “I suppose there are degrees to ones creepiness.”

Troian pounded a fist on the table. “We all know that Elle is a perv, but let’s get back to talking about this girl,” she ordered.

“So besides the fact that she’s allegedly pretty,” Nikole said.

“Beautiful,” I corrected.

“Right.
Beautiful
,” Nikole echoed, smirking.

I fanned out my fingers on the
tabletop.  “I just don’t know.  And it’s so incredibly cliché, but there’s just something about her.”

A kind of uneasy silence settled on our group.  I really didn’t want to talk anymore about Hunter, but my friends seemed determined to press me about her. 

After a while, Nikole broke the quiet.  “I don’t want to be rude,” she said, stifling a yawn. "but I’m gonna let you two hash this out," she said as she stood from the table. "I've got seedlings to tend to in the morning." She kissed Troian and her hand lingered on her girlfriend’s cheek. "Not too late, okay?"

I knew
that if I stayed too much longer I'd be over-staying my welcome. And the way Troian gazed after her girlfriend as she sauntered off in the direction of the bedroom told me that me still sitting here might already be pushing it.

"I've got to get over her, right?"

Troian’s eyes left her girlfriend’s backside and snapped back to me. "Why?"

"She's my student." What about that was so hard for Troian to understand?

"I think you're allowed to have crushes,” Troian reasoned. “I mean, look at me and my irrational obsession with nearly every brunette Hollywood actress."

"That's different,” I countered.
“Celebrity crushes are allowed.  Everyone knows what."

"
But I work with some of these women
and
I've got a girlfriend,” she pointed out. “You're single, Bookie. Crush away."

"So you're condoning this?"

"It's harmless fun," Troian shrugged. "Besides, you freaking out about Winter Jacket has been one of the most entertaining things you've done in a while."

"Thanks,"
I deadpanned.

"As long as you don't start being anti-social or turn dow
n dates because you're too busy scrapbooking every piece of paper she’s ever touched, I think you're fine."

I tried to remember the most recent date I'd been on.
 I'd basically taken a break from romance after Cady and I split up. I wondered if the almost one-night-stand with Megan counted as a date.  I decided to keep that question to myself.  Troian didn't need to be reminded that I'd brought home the bartender to whom she'd betrothed me.

“Are you guys ever going to have a House Warming party?”

Troian shrugged. “What for? Isn’t that just a lame excuse to demand presents from your friends? Like a wedding or a baby shower?”

I shook my head. “You’re such a sentimental.”
I finished the rest of the wine in my glass. “How’s work?” I asked, thankful for the opportunity to change the topic. “What are you working on right now?”

“Well, I just fin
ished edits to my screenplay.” Troian was an amazing science fiction author who had a singular talent for creating new worlds and original creatures.  No vampire and werewolf love-triangles for this girl.  She’d recently sold the rights to one of her novels to be made into a movie and had been charged with writing the screenplay as well. “My agent wants me to strike while the iron is still hot, so I’m working on a concept for a new TV show.”

Her ambition and success made me feel like an underachiever sometimes, even though I was a published author, too.
“How did I luck out and get such a glamorous best friend?”

Troian grinned.  “Traffic jams and hot ass cars.”

Troian and I had met through a happy coincidence.  I had just started teaching at my university and was running terribly late.  I didn’t yet live in my house within walking distance from campus, and I was supposed to be attending a guest lecture that day by an alum who’d recently made it big as a screenwriter in Hollywood.  The department was bringing in Troian Smith to campus to talk about her experiences to our undergraduate English composition and creative writer majors.

Because I was still a new hire, I was frantic about being
so late.  I’m not normally an aggressive driver or prone to road rage, but on that particular afternoon, stuck in a traffic jam due to road construction with minutes to spare before the presentation, I was honking my horn and uselessly slapping my palm against the steering wheel in frustration.

A woman stuck next to me
in a custom Acura TSX started to laugh at my despair.  I could hear her because it was a rare, hot Spring day and we both had our windows opened.  I remembered her words: “You need to calm down,” she’d told me, shaking her head and grinning broadly.  “It’s called a traffic jam for a reason.”

I’d barked something back at her about being late and in a hurry
and minding her own business, but she’d just smirked and turned her car radio up even louder.  The bass pouring from the vehicle had practically rattled my teeth in their sockets.  She had looked as if she was actually
enjoying
the delay.

When I had finally made it to campus, I had circled around the faculty parking lot, looking for a parking spot and unabashedly cursing my bad luck.  It was nearly impossible to find a vacant spot in the early afternoon.  It was one of the reasons living close to campus had appealed to me later when I bought my house. 

I ended up having to park in a student lot.  I had momentarily worried about getting a ticket or being towed because I didn’t have the right parking stickers for that lot, but paying a fine had seemed more attractive at the time than missing Troian Smith’s talk altogether.  I was still insecure about having procured my job, feeling like a fraud despite my advanced degrees, and was kissing as much ass as necessary to stay in the Department’s good graces.

I had walked at a brisk pace across the parking lots, not willing to break into a full sprint and draw unnecessary attention to myself.  When I yanked open the door to the academic building where the talk was being held, the woman from the traffic jam was in the building lobby.  I was in such a hurry, I had nearly collided into her.  In my defense, Troian is short and easily run-ove
r-able.  If my clumsiness had startled or annoyed her, she didn’t let on. 

I had blindly apologized and was about to rush off to the auditorium when she called me out:  “You seriously need to chill out. You’re going to give yourself an aneurism.”

“I’m sorry,” I’d barked back, not really meaning it.  “I’m terribly late.”

She had pointed to a poster announcing Troian
Smith’s talk. “To the screenwriter’s talk?”

I had been surprised she knew.  Even though I was relatively new
to campus, I didn’t recognized her as a fellow faculty member and her car was far too nice to belong to an undergraduate.  As a private school we had our share of undergraduates who came from wealthy families, but the student parking lot was filled with reasonable compact cars – not that flashy thing I’d seen this woman driving on the highway.

She had given me that same maddeningly cocky grin from before as if she hadn’t had a care in the world.  “You’re fine.  They can’t start the talk if the guest of honor isn’t there yet.”

“How do you know she’s not here yet?” I had shot back, forgetting my manners in my mild panic.

The woman had stuck her hand out in greeting.  “Troian
Smith.  Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

It was a nice feeling – being able to laugh at the memories of a day that at the time had caused me so much anxiety.  I had significantly calmed down since then.  More confidence in my teaching abilities and Troian’s bad influence were partly to credit. 

“You were a cocky shit back then,” I snickered not unkindly.  “I can’t believe I put up with your giant ego.” 

“Whatever,” she scoffed.  “You wouldn’t love me half as much if I didn’t have major swagger.”

“Speaking of which, I’m glad you got rid of that horrible car.”

Troian looked appropriately appalled. “Hey,
that car was awesome.”

“Yeah and totally impractical,” I said, making a
face.  “You could drive it two months out of the year because of the weather.”

She shrugged, not affected by my teasing. “I’d just gotten my first big check for writing.  You can’t blame me for wanting a sweet ass ride.  It’s in my DNA.”