Page 13 of Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl
“A dry T-shirt,” she says. “Hmm. Is something bothering you, Dr. Loe?”
I step closer to her and she draws closer to me, and I see that challenge again in her face, like a dare—like a question too, maybe—and I study her eyes, her flushed cheeks, the teeth digging into her bottom lip.
“You,” I tell her softly, “have a smart mouth.”
“You going to fix it for me?”
We are so close now. Close enough that she has to tilt her head almost all the way back to look at me. Her neck is flushed. Her pupils are massive pools of black.
I say in my sternest voice, “I think someone should teach you how to behave.”
Her lips part on an inhale... and she shivers.
I nearly do it. I nearly break our rules and reach up to touch her. Rub my thumb along a furled, pink bud until her knees buckle and I can push her back onto the table. I’d peel the wet silk from her skin and taste her nipples and kiss my way down her stomach. I’d slide her trousers off her hips and toss them to the floor, and then I’d get to my knees and lick her until she shuddered out a climax with her thighs by my ears. I’d unzip my trousers and push all the way inside. I’d show her everything I’d been thinking about since Saturday night—relay every depraved, quivering, sweat-misted detail.
I take an abrupt step back and scrub my hand through my hair. Without looking at her, I say, “I know you must be cold. I have T-shirts or I have some button-down shirts, if you’d rather.”
Maddie doesn’t answer at first, but when she does, her voice is largely devoid of emotion. “It’s fine, Dr. Loe. I have a change of clothes in my car.”
“You can call me Bram,” I offer, looking up right as she starts walking to the front door.
“When you call me Maddie,” she counters, a bit petulantly, and I can’t help but smile a little as she goes outside to her car. I watch as she pops open the trunk and starts rummaging through what look like plastic containers, the big ones meant for storage. She must not have unloaded her car after getting here from California.
She pulls out a shirt, slams the trunk closed, and when she looks up to see me watching her through the window, she visibly flinches.
My small smile slips into a frown as I watch her bypass the front door and go around back with the girls instead.
The frown stays on my face as I go outside myself to finally shut my car door.
Chapter Four
Maddie
There is an art to sleeping in your car, and I am proud to say that I have had my first decent night’s rest since moving to Mount Astra two weeks ago. Thankfully, I clock in at five two, so that’s one less thing to worry about in my 2000 Volvo S40.
For the first few nights, I camped out in the Mount Astra Methodist Medical Center parking lot and I found that sleeping in the back seat was more comfortable.*But then I had a little bit of a scare when a man pounded his fists on my car and shouted about loose women being damned. I could barely scramble into the front seat before he was yanking on my (thankfully, locked) door handles. After that, I tore down my window covers and spent the rest of the night sipping coffee at Waffle House.*
But last night, I discovered the glory of rest stops. You’d think being surrounded by eighteen-wheelers would be intimidating, but there seemed to be some mutual understanding that everyone had the common goal of an uneventful night’s sleep.
I wake up with a slightly stiff neck, but it’s worth sleeping in the reclined driver’s seat after the incident in the hospital parking lot. I barely even miss my mattress—and I definitely don’t miss the man I shared it with, who slept with a Tempur-Pedic body pillow between us because he was a fussier sleeper than a person who was nine months’ pregnant with twins.
As someone who’s been in school for the last seven years, it took little to no time to source everything I might need to fill in the gaps left by living in my car. The campus gym opens at six and the showers are pretty decent when you get to them first thing in the morning before they become a pit of loose hair. And there’s not really anything suspicious about an adjunct putting in a quick morning workout before running to the library to take advantage of the free coffee bar courtesy of an absolutely angelic librarian.
Speaking of, I hold the door open for Junie as she scurries into the library today with her arms full of flavored creamers. “Thank you,” she says as she blows a loose curl out of her face. “I got a new creamer for us to try.”
Junie is the curvy, adult form of thebeforeversion of Mia Thermopolis inThe Princess Diaries. Poofy, untamed hair. Plaid skirts that are a few inches too long. Sweaters that swallow her and loafers that she definitely purchased after reading hundreds of reviews written by swaths of elderly shoppers. In one word, her look istragic.
I didn’t want to like her, and trust me, I tried not to. The moment we met, I could tell that she was the type of person who lived to accommodate. But she wormed her way into my good graces with her array of creamers and insider tips about Astra University. (Example Number One: The campus bookstore sells expired fruit parfaits and no one is willing to stand up to the dictator of a store manager to have it addressed. Example Number Two: A Phi Gam named Dustin was running an underground cologne ring from the back of a local dry cleaner. I took the liberty of visiting the dry cleaner while the owner was working, tipped him off about the bottles of smuggled Acqua Di Giò and Tom Ford, and he was so grateful that, after firing Dustin, he gave me free dry cleaning for the semester.)
The truth is Junie is sweet. Genuinely sweet. No ulterior motives or passive aggression. Just sweet. And maybe I picked up on her people-pleasing vibes and found them annoying because... blah, blah, self-reflection.
I follow Junie to the coffee bar, where I help her organize the new creamer additions.
“I know it’s early, but they already had the fall creamers out, so I just went for it. Seasons be damned.”
“Daredevil,” I tell her with a playful nudge.
She rolls her eyes.
