Page 52 of The Make-Up Test
He is worse at translating Middle English than he has let on.
He secretly paid his way into the program, Hollywood-celebrity style.
Colin cleared his throat. Not in the I’m-about-to-patronize-the-crap-out-of-you way, but more nervously, like a cough that wasn’t fullyrealized. “So I didn’t…” His knuckles whitened as he clenched his hands on the steering wheel. “I didn’t really take two gap years.”
“What does that mean?”
“I went to the UK for a week the summer I graduated, but other than that, I was back living with my granddad and working as a mail clerk at his old firm.”
“There’s nothing wrong with taking time off to work.” Allison chose her words carefully. Even without understanding what he was trying to tell her, she recognized a minefield when she wandered into one. “Did you defer your acceptances? Is that why you’re starting at Claymore now?”
His body tensed. “I wish.”
Allison waited for him to go on. The endless stretches of dark highway and the white numbers of the car’s clock ticked off the minutes: one, two, three. Finally, she huffed a breath. “I love a good mystery as much as the next girl, but can you stop being so cryptic?”
His fingers extended and contracted against the steering wheel. “I had to take two gap years because I didn’t get accepted to any Ph.D. programs.” He flinched with each word as if they physically hurt.
Maybe they did. Allison couldn’t wrap her head around such a fate. She’d gotten into three of the eight programs to which she’d applied, and those stats had felt dismal.
Her mind whirled. He’d broken up with her—and thrown everything in her life into upheaval—because he didn’t want to be tied down when his life truly began. Allison had always assumed he’d gotten into a number of places and that’s why he’d been so adamant she couldn’t be part of the decision. “Did you know, when you ended things with us, that you weren’t going anywhere?”
“I thought we weren’t talking about the past.”
“Colin.” His name sliced from her lips like a shard of glass. Though it had been over two years, his answer to this question felt pivotal. She needed to know if he’d taken everything from her—the Rising Star, her confidence,them—for nothing.
“Yes.”
Who knew one word could cut a person in half? Allison choked. “What the actual fuck? Were you tired of me and you thought saying you didn’t want me to burden your future plans would hurt less?”
“No.” He released one hand from the steering wheel long enough to scrub his face.
“Thenwhat?”
“I couldn’t…” He exhaled loudly. “I couldn’t tell you I was a failure.”
Of all the things she’d expected him to say, it had not been this. “I wouldn’t have cared.”
“It wasn’t about you.”
“Now I’m even more confused.”
His long fingers fished his coffee cup from the holder, and he brought it to his lips. The bitter aroma filled the car as he sipped. Allison struggled not to cringe. He’d never taken his coffee with enough cream or sugar. If it didn’t taste like warm ice cream, it wasn’t worth drinking.
Blond eyelashes long and light as moth wings fluttered against his glasses’ lenses as he blinked.
“Remember when you presented that paper at Brown’s undergrad conference?”
She nodded.
Though Allison had spent the weeks before the event sick to her stomach at the idea of standing up and reading her work in front of a big crowd of strangers, that conference had, in the end, been the thing that crystalized her resolve about pursuing a Ph.D. It had been the first moment where she truly saw herself as a scholar, and after answering a handful of questions about her analysis of consent inTroilus and Criseydewith a deftness she had not thought she possessed, Allison found herself hungry for more.
Colin had been there, sitting in the front row, one ankle crossed over one knee so his socks were visible (orange with black cats arching their backs). The whole time she’d read, he’d nodded along, as if hewere hearing these ideas for the first time, not the tenth. But it was the expression on his face that Allison remembered most. Beaming, like he’d never been so proud of anyone in his life. When she’d joined him after her panel was over, he’d wrapped her in his arms and whispered, “You were brilliant” into her ear, his voice husky in a way she’d never heard before. Back then, she’d been so mesmerized by his intelligence that hearing him call her brilliant was a thrill. But it was more than that. It had felt like he’d suddenly spotted this facet of herself that Allison had been afraid no one would ever notice.
Colin scratched the back of his neck. “I’d always known you were smart, and capable, and driven. But that was the day I realized that you were going to do this thing we both wanted. No question. Ph.D. program, tenure-track job, all of it. So, when I didn’t get in anywhere… when that future looked a lot farther away for me, I… just… I couldn’t lose at everything.”
Allison narrowed her eyes. “It wasn’t a contest.”
“Come on. Everything was a contest between us back then.”
