Page 44 of Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl
Downstairs, I take the liberty of making Maddie some coffee (she’s one of those people who can drink espresso like it’s warm milk and then tuck herself right into bed after) and carry it into my office. I shut the door behind me—I doubt Fern will leave her room unless it’s to forage for food, but I want Maddie to work without any other interruptions. And maybe... maybe I don’t hate the idea of a little privacy.
For the sake of my own focus, of course.
Maddie has claimed the chair behind my desk—a chair that is indisputablymychair—and is perched there with her laptop open as I bring her the espresso with a little square of chocolate on the saucer.
“Oh,” she says, looking at the espresso and then up at me. Her eyebrows have pulled up and created a kissable knot right above her nose. She looks stupefied. “This is for me?”
“You like late-night espresso, yes? Garishly en-sugared drinks in the morning, then grim brain fuel at night?”
“I do, I just—” Her exhale is a laugh. “Yes. Yes, I don’t know why I’m surprised by what you notice anymore. And the little chocolate square... I feel like I’m in a hotel.”
“A nice one, I hope,” I say as I settle heavily into the armchair near the bookshelves. It’s a good armchair, but unlike the one in my room or the one in the living room, it wasn’t made with my proportions in mind. I always feel like I’m sitting in a dollhouse when I use it.
Maddie pretends not to watch me fold in my arms and knees, but she’s biting her lower lip so she doesn’t betray her smile.
So she stole my chair to get a rise out of me.Interesting.
“The nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed at,” she confirms. “Even if I’m hoping for some more guest perks.”
“Is that so?” I ask. A little gravely.
Maddie has this way of looking out from beneath her lowered lashes. It’s a way that could be flirty, but it’s more like she’s about to take you apart bit by bit and she hopes you’ll beg her not to when she does. It gets my dick so hard, and I breathe through my nose as I reach for my laptop and crack it open. I made it a week. I made it an entire week.
I can make it through the next hour or so of grading.
And I almost do, truly. Despite Maddie’s bare legs and the way the cozy lamplight accents the upturned lift of her nose and the lush curve of her mouth—a mouth that’s all plump, creased fullness in the middle of her lips and then sharp, sharp corners, ready to tip down into a devastating pout at a moment’s notice. Despite the way her expression flickers as she’s focusing on her work—her eyesalmostnarrowing in disapproval, her cheeksalmostlifting in a smile, her jawalmosttightening in irritation, like her mind is moving too quickly and intricately for her face to keep up with. Like every feeling, even the simple ones like disappointment or amusement, comes with an array of possibilities, scenarios, and outcomes, and she’ll take a look at all of them before she gives you the pleasure of a reaction, thank you very much.
It’s because I’m watching her so closely that I see it, the confusion in the high arches of her eyebrows, the suspicious uncertainty. It’s one thing I’ve noticed Maddie never fails to express: her disbelief when she encounters something deeply, deeply stupid.
“What is it?” I ask. It’s the first we’ve spoken since we started working, although my painful awareness of her every shift and sigh has meant I’ve barely been able to concentrate anyway. Alas.
She’s sitting with one knee drawn up to her chest, the chair scooted close enough to the desk to keep her wedged there, and she brings her fingers up to pinch worriedly at her lower lip. “It’s nothing,” she says. “Just... nothing. I’ll figure it out.”
“I want to hear about the nothing.” I close my laptop so that she has my full attention. Which she would anyway, but watching her play with the pink curve of her lip has me additionally riveted.
She doesn’t speak right away, looking over at me with peevish stubbornness, which I return with a mild look of my own. She might be an unstoppable force, but I am an immovable object. My life’s work is charting the generational growth of mosses—I am primed for an entirely different scale of time than someone who’s spent the last three years playing politics.
As I suspect, I win, and she relents with a huff.
“Two of my students turned in bullshit for their Supreme Court assignments.” She turns her laptop toward me, and I get out of my chair to look more closely, setting my own laptop on my desk so I can have both hands free to brace myself on the back of Maddie’s chair as I lean over the top of her.
I can smell jasmine. Fuck.
“They’re supposed to give me four paragraphs summarizing a seminal Supreme Court case of their choosing. And pretty much everyone did fine—or at least ChatGPT did fine—but these two...”
The first short essay is, in fact, very short. It’s three sentences about Sandra Day O’Connor. And not even a case she ruled on, just her life.
The second assignment, when Maddie clicks over to it, is a PNG of disembodied testicles wearing a Ruth Bader Ginsburg–style collar. Both the collar and the testicles are drawn with an impressive amount of detail. Underneath the testicles, it just saysSCROTUS.
“The lace work on the collar is...”
“I know,” Maddie agrees. “I think it’s hand-drawn too.”
“Ah, throw them a bone and give them a point for it,” I say, straightening up. “Maybe two, depending on how many points the assignment was worth.”
Maddie’s mouth twists to the side. I study her.
“What is it?”
