The Professor She Was Forbidden to Want

Chapter 4

Maren's POV

I didn't move for a solid ten seconds after the door shut behind him.

Then I made myself move, because standing alone in a professor's office staring at his empty chair wasn't exactly a good look if anyone walked by. I grabbed my bag, checked the hallway both ways, no Julian, no Corinne, nobody and headed for the stairwell trying to figure out what had just happened and coming up with nothing that made sense.

He was all open and then two seconds later his phone lit up and he looked like someone had knocked the air out of him.

I texted Toby from the stairwell.

Maren: ‘something weird happened. Tell you at dinner?’

Toby: ‘you always say that and then dinner is just you eating cereal standing at the counter’

Maren: Okay fair. tell you at dinner anyway

He didn't bring it up again that week, which almost bothered me. I saw him twice,once in passing near the department office, where he gave me a short nod and kept walking, and once at a faculty talk I only went to because free food was involved. He sat two rows ahead of me the whole time and didn't turn around once.

I told myself I didn't care. I told myself that a lot, actually, which should've been my first clue that it wasn't true.

By Thursday I had a grant report due at midnight and a draft that wasn't anywhere close to finished, so I set up camp in the department library on the third floor, the one nobody used after six because the heating up there never worked right. I liked it for exactly that reason. Nobody bothered you.

Except at nine-thirty, somebody did.

"You're still here."

I looked up. Julian was standing at the end of the row, jacket off, sleeves pushed up, holding a stack of papers like he was working somewhere nearby and heard me typing.

"Grant report's due at midnight," I said. "I have maybe forty percent of it done."

"That's not great math." He said

"I'm aware."

He hesitated, like he was deciding whether to keep walking or not, and then pulled out the chair across from me instead and sat down without asking. I felt my whole body go a little too aware of the two feet of table.

"I owe you an explanation," he said. "For last week."

"You don't owe me anything." I said.

"I cut you off mid-sentence and told you to leave my office. I owe you something." He set the papers down, lined them up straighter than they needed to be, like his hands needed a job. "That call was from the dean's office. It's…. it wasn't about you. I want to be clear about that. It's an old thing, from a few years back, that occasionally still needs my attention when it resurfaces."

"The thing Toby told me about." I said

His eyes came up fast. "What did Toby tell you?"

"That a TA filed a complaint against you a couple years ago. That it wasn't true. That it almost cost you tenure."

He was quiet long enough that I wondered if I'd overstepped. Then he nodded, slow, like he was deciding something.

"That's the short version, yeah." He rubbed a hand over his jaw. "The long version is worse, but the short version's accurate enough. It got resolved. Officially. But officially resolved and actually over aren't the same thing, and every once in a while somebody in administration wants a follow-up meeting to make sure I'm not, I don't know. A liability."

"That's awful."

"It's bureaucracy." But something in his voice didn't match the casual way he said it. "Anyway. That's why I left the way I did. Not because of anything you did."

"You said my name," I said, before I could stop myself. "Not Ms. Ellison. Just…Maren."

He didn't answer right away. He looked at me across the table, and I watched something shift behind his eyes, some decision being made that I couldn't follow.

"I noticed," he said finally.

"That's it? You noticed?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know. Something that explains why a professor who apparently doesn't take on new advice, doesn't do collaborations, and specifically requested my file before it was even official, just called me by my first name and then bolted out of his own office like the building was on fire."

The corner of his mouth twitched, almost a smile, gone before it fully landed. "You've been keeping track."

"Toby's been keeping track. I just listen."

"Sure you do."

We sat there for a second, and it should've felt awkward, two people at a table with too much unsaid between them, except it didn't. It felt like the opposite of awkward, which was somehow worse.

"I should let you get back to your report," he said, standing before I could respond, gathering his papers a little too quickly. "Midnight deadline."

"Julian."

He stopped. Turned back.

"Was it about you?" I asked. "The call. You said it wasn't about me, but you didn't say it wasn't about anything real."

He looked at me for a long moment, like he was weighing how much to actually say.

"There's a formal review happening," he said finally. "Nothing urgent. Nothing you need to worry about. But it means I need to be careful right now, more careful than usual, about everything. Who I'm seen with. How things look." He glanced down at the table, then back up. "I wanted you to hear that from me before you heard some version of it from somebody else."

"Some version like what?"

"Ask Corinne," he said. "I'm sure she'll have one ready by Monday."

Then he was walking away down the row before I could ask what that meant, footsteps fading toward the stairwell, and I sat there with my grant report at forty percent and my brain running through everything he just said and everything he very clearly hadn't.

A review. Careful about who he's seen with. Corinne having a version ready.

Something was already moving that I hadn't even known to look for.