Off Limits, Professor

Chapter Ten: Brianna’s Move

The thesis committee assignments went up on the department board on Friday morning, and by ten a.m. the entire literature wing seemed to know Elena's name had been listed under Professor Cole's advisees.

She found out from Brianna, which was somehow worse than finding out from the board itself.

"Congratulations," Brianna said, materializing at Elena's elbow outside the seminar room with the particular brightness of someone who did not, in fact, mean the word at all. "I heard you got Cole as your thesis advisor. That's, what, three advisees he's taking this year? And you're one of them."

"I didn't realize it was a competition."

"It's not a competition." Brianna's smile stayed fixed, though something tightened behind her eyes. "I just think it's interesting, is all. I've been trying to get on his advisee list since September. Emailed him twice. Followed up. Nothing." She shifted her bag higher on her shoulder, the movement sharp, controlled. "And then you show up, what, six weeks ago, and you're already in his office more than half the department combined."

"I don't know what to tell you. I asked. He said yes."

"Must be nice." Brianna's tone had shifted, thin ice cracking under the polite surface. "Some of us have been working toward this for three years. Publishing in the undergraduate journal. Building relationships with faculty the normal way. And you just walk in and get handed the top thesis advisor in the department because you gave one good answer on the first day of class."

Elena felt her patience thinning, the particular exhaustion of being blamed for something she hadn't asked for and couldn't control. "I'm not trying to take anything from you, Brianna."

"Aren't you, though?" Brianna's voice dropped, quieter now, more pointed. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you've figured out exactly how to get a professor's attention. And I'm just wondering how far that goes."

The implication landed with unmistakable weight, and Elena felt her face go hot, anger and something closer to fear tangled together in her chest. "That's not what's happening."

"I didn't say anything was happening." Brianna's smile came back, sharper now, satisfied at having drawn blood. "I'm just saying people notice things. The way he calls on you. The way you're always the one who gets pulled aside after class. People talk, Elena. You should probably be more careful about how it looks."

She walked away before Elena could formulate a response, leaving her standing in the hallway with her pulse hammering and a cold, sinking feeling settling into her stomach. It was one thing to know, privately, how dangerous this whole situation was. It was another thing entirely to hear it reflected back at her through someone else's suspicious, resentful eyes, proof that whatever careful distance she and Adrian had maintained wasn't nearly as invisible as she'd hoped.

She stood there a moment longer than she meant to, watching Brianna's retreating back disappear around the corner, before Priya fell into step beside her, having apparently witnessed at least the tail end of the exchange from a nearby bench.

"Don't let her get to you," Priya said, adjusting her own bag. "She's been like this all semester. She was convinced she'd get the department's research fellowship too, and when that went to someone else, she spent two weeks telling everyone the selection process was rigged."

"Was it?"

"No, the other person just had a better proposal. But try telling Brianna that." Priya offered a small, sympathetic smile. "She's smart, genuinely, but she's used to being the best at everything, and she doesn't handle it well when that stops being true. I wouldn't take it personally."

"Easier said than done, when she's implying I'm sleeping my way to a thesis advisor."

Priya winced. "She said that?"

"Not in those exact words. But close enough."

"That's messed up, honestly. I'll talk to her." Priya squeezed her arm briefly before heading toward her next class. "For what it's worth, everyone who's actually read your work knows you earned that spot. Don't let her rewrite that."

It helped, a little, though the cold feeling in Elena's stomach didn't fully dissolve, following her through the rest of the day like a shadow she couldn't quite outrun.

---

She told Maya about it that evening, curled on the couch with a mug of tea she wasn't really drinking, more for something to hold than anything else.

"She's just jealous," Maya said, with the easy confidence of someone who hadn't had to sit through the actual conversation. "Brianna's been like this since freshman year. Remember when she accused Priya of copying her outline for the Milton paper? Turns out they'd both just used the same study guide. She does this. Finds a target and gets weird about it."

"It felt different this time."

"Different how?"

Elena hesitated, turning the mug in her hands. "Like she knew something. Or suspected something. Not just academic jealousy. She said people were talking about how he calls on me, how he pulls me aside after class." She looked up. "What if people actually are talking?"

Maya's expression sobered slightly, the teasing dropping away. "Has anyone else said anything to you? Besides Brianna?"

"No. Just her."

"Then it's probably just her being petty and trying to make you paranoid, because she can't stand that you got something she wanted." Maya set her own mug down, reaching over to squeeze Elena's hand. "But hey. For what it's worth. If there's actually something going on between you and him, and I'm not asking you to confirm or deny, you know I love a good mystery, you should probably think about how careful you're both being. Not because I think you're doing anything wrong. Just because people like Brianna exist, and they notice things, and they don't always have good intentions when they do."

"There's nothing to be careful about because nothing's happening."

"Sure." Maya didn't push, but her expression said she wasn't remotely convinced, the same expression she'd worn for weeks now, patient and unbothered and entirely unfooled. "Just, you know. If it were happening. Hypothetically."

Elena managed a small laugh despite the tight knot still sitting in her chest. "Hypothetically noted."

Maya pulled a blanket over both their laps, flipping through channels without any real intention of settling on something, the background noise a comfort more than a distraction. "You know what would actually help? Ignoring Brianna entirely. She thrives on getting a reaction. The second she realizes it's not working, she'll move on to some other unfortunate target."

"You make it sound easy."

"It's not easy. It's just the right move." Maya bumped her shoulder gently. "You've survived worse than one petty classmate with main character syndrome. You'll survive this too."

---

She saw Naomi Voss again three days later, in the hallway outside the department office, deep in conversation with another faculty member Elena didn't recognize. She wouldn't have thought anything of it, except she caught, in passing, the tail end of a sentence that made her steps slow without meaning to.

"—strange that there's no record of him before the university. Nothing. Not even a dissertation filed anywhere I can find." Naomi's voice, low, clipped, clearly not meant for other ears. "I've been in this field twenty years. People don't just appear fully formed with tenure track offers and no paper trail."

The other faculty member said something Elena didn't catch, and Naomi's response came sharper, more frustrated. "I'm not being paranoid. I'm being thorough. There's a difference."

Elena kept walking before either of them noticed her, her heart beating faster than the short hallway warranted, Naomi's words settling into the same uneasy pile as the expensive car, the driver, James Bellamy's careful, closed-off expression at the festival. Individually, none of it meant anything. Professors had messy paper trails sometimes. People had complicated histories. There were a thousand mundane explanations for all of it.

But the pile kept growing, thread after thread, and some quiet, persistent part of her mind had started to wonder, with real unease now instead of idle curiosity, exactly what she didn't know about the man she'd spent two months falling for despite every rule telling her not to.

She didn't mention any of it to him at their next meeting. She told herself it was because it wasn't her business, because prying into Naomi's suspicions felt like a betrayal of the fragile, careful thing they'd built. But some smaller, more honest part of her recognized the real reason, the one she didn't want to examine too closely.

She was afraid of what she might find if she actually asked.