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Alice came over to stand beside him at the counter where he was working. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I know.” He started for the microwave but she stepped in front of him.

  “Griffin.” She was frowning at him.

  He waved her away impatiently. “Whenever I was upset about something, my mom would always make me pancakes. I may not be able to eat pancakes, but I can still cook ’em. And you seem like you could use some pancakes this morning.”

  Alice stared at him for a long moment like she wasn’t sure what to say. Then she stepped aside so he could get to the microwave. He moved past her and put the butter in to melt.

  “Can I at least help?”

  “Can you cook?” Griffin asked. Not that he planned to let her help; he was just curious.

  “Not really.”

  He grinned and nodded at the fridge. “Why don’t you get out the syrup and let me handle the rest.”

  Alice retrieved the bottle of maple syrup from the door of the fridge and carried it to the table. While Griffin preheated the griddle and finished measuring out the ingredients, she sat back down and watched him in silence.

  At least now he knew why she’d always seemed so standoffish with him. He felt bad about all the times he’d innocently flirted with her. He hadn’t meant anything by it. He’d just wanted her to like him. But now he worried he might have touched her on the arm or the shoulder without considering whether it was welcome. He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t be sure. He was a toucher by nature, and he had a tendency to touch his friends when he talked to them. He’d never really thought about how an innocent gesture could be used to coerce or intimidate someone. How a woman who’d experienced harassment might see his actions as a threat.

  “So all this stuff,” Griffin said as he stirred the pancake batter, “this guy. That’s why you were so reluctant to move in here, right? You were nervous about living with me.”

  “I guess.” When he looked over at her she was chewing on her thumbnail. Alice didn’t wear fingernail polish like most of the other extras and actresses. Her fingernails were always short and bare and plain. Natural.

  He poured two pancakes out on the griddle. “I don’t think you should drop out of school,” he ventured while he waited for the bubbles to appear around the edge. “Whatever you decide to do, I don’t think it should be that.”

  There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of the pancakes sizzling on the griddle. Griffin got a fork and knife out of the drawer, and carried them over to the table along with the butter.

  “Do you think I should tell my advisor the truth?” Alice asked, looking up at him.

  He shrugged one of his shoulders. “Only you can make that call.”

  “What if she doesn’t believe me? Or tells Dr. Gilchrist what I said about him? I’ll be finished in my field before I even graduate.”

  “More finished than you’d be if you quit on your own?”

  Her chin jutted out. “At least I’d be quitting on my own terms.”

  “What do you think the odds are this is the first time this guy has ever done this to a student?”

  Alice looked away, and Griffin went back to the stove. When the pancakes were ready, he put them on a plate and set it down in front of her.

  She bit down on her lower lip as she stared at them. “Thank you.”

  “It’s nothing,” he said with a shrug. “Really. Pancakes are easy. And I like to cook, even when I can’t eat.” He went back to the stove and poured two more pancakes out on the griddle. He figured he’d make the whole batch and Alice could freeze whatever she didn’t eat for later.

  While the pancakes were cooking, Griffin went and sat down across from her at the table.

  He ran his thumb around the rim of his coffee mug as he watched her eat. “You’re not scared of me, are you?”

  She stabbed at her pancakes and shook her head. “Course not.”

  “Alice,” he said quietly, and she looked up at him. “I’m not like that creepy professor guy. I would never do something like that to you. I just want to make sure you know that.”

  Her teeth worried at her lower lip as she nodded. “I know.”

  “If I ever do anything that makes you feel the slightest bit uncomfortable, I want you to tell me, and I promise I’ll stop. Deal?”

  She nodded again. “Deal.” Her mouth curved in a faint smile and she gestured at her plate with her fork. “These are really good pancakes.”

  “I know. I happen to be an awesome cook.” He got to his feet again and went to flip the pancakes.

  “You’re a pretty awesome roommate too.”

  “Damn right I am.” He smiled to himself as he finished cooking up the rest of the pancake batter.

  8

  Alice’s heart started racing as soon as she pulled into the student parking lot. She could see the building that housed the sociology offices from here: Eaton Hall. That was where Dr. Frazier’s office was, on the second floor.

  And at the far end of the corridor, eight offices away, was Dr. Gilchrist’s office.

  This was a huge mistake. She never should have agreed to come here. She should have asked Dr. Frazier to meet her for coffee off campus instead. She could have pled work obligations, or made up some sort of personal hardship. She could have gotten a pair of crutches and one of those medical boots and said she’d broken her ankle. That all the walking and stairs on campus were too much for her. Maybe she’d been mugged and that’s why she’d been truant. She could say she was still traumatized.

  She was still traumatized. That much was clear from the fact that she’d been sitting in her car for five minutes, clenching the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip as she made up increasingly ridiculous excuses not to be here.

  But she was here. She’d come this far. It was too late to get out of it. She was already doing it. She just needed to take the last few steps.

  Step one: get out of the car.

  She tried to hold on to what Griffin had said this morning—what was the worst that could happen? Could it really be any worse than it already was? No matter what the outcome was, she had to think she’d feel better once she’d faced the problem. Close the chapter and move on, one way or another.

  Talking it through with someone finally after months of keeping it bottled up had helped a little. Alice already felt better after opening up to Griffin. Maybe even strong enough to face whatever happened after today’s meeting.

  As soon as she opened her car door, the familiar smell of campus hit her like a face full of cold water. The air had always smelled different around the university. Maybe it was all the green spaces and limited traffic, or maybe it was the food processing plant a half mile away. Whatever it was, Alice had used to love it. It had smelled like academia to her. Lectures and syllabi and bibliographies—all the things that had made her want to go to graduate school.

  Now it smelled like dread. Dr. Gilchrist had soured it for her. Twisted it into something that made her feel sick.

  But she was out of the car. She was standing in the parking lot with her bag on her shoulder. Progress. Now for step two: walking to the sociology building.

  That part wasn’t too bad. It was a pleasant walk on a pleasant morning, with a pleasant backdrop of hills spread out in front of her. They dwarfed Eaton Hall, making it seem small and insignificant by comparison.

  Alice used the short walk to calm herself down. Concentrating on the repetition of her stride, she took long, slow breaths of fresh air. It helped a little, but the walk wasn’t long enough for her to fully get out of her own head. She was at the door to Eaton Hall before she knew it.

  She might have stood there for a long time trying to work up the courage to go in, except someone happened to come out just as she was approaching the door, and they held it open for her. It was a student, but no one she’d ever seen before. A whole new freshman class and graduate cohort had arrived since the last time Alice had set foot on campus.

  Inside the buildin
g, she felt a fresh wave of nausea at the familiar, musty office smell. Her anxiety only increased as she stepped into the stairway and trudged up to the second floor. She was terrified of meeting someone she knew—someone who would ask her where she’d been. Fortunately, it was still an hour before the first classes of the morning started, and the halls were mostly deserted.

  She took the long way around to avoid walking past Gilchrist’s office. Most of the office doors were closed. Not many professors were in yet this time of morning. Dr. Frazier’s door was one of the only ones open. Alice paused just outside and knocked on the doorframe.

  Dr. Regina Frazier looked up and smiled. “Alice.” She’d changed her hair over sabbatical. It used to be cut in a short afro shot through with gray, but now she wore long black braids that were gathered into a ponytail at the back of her neck.

  “Hi,” Alice said meekly.

  “Come in. Sit down.” Dr. Frazier motioned to a chair.

  Alice took one of the hard wooden chairs in front of the desk. It felt like being in an interrogation room. Like there should be a bare light bulb casting harsh shadows and a panel of one-way glass set into the wall. Except the lights were the same dull fluorescents as the rest of the building, and the walls of Dr. Frazier’s office were covered with framed diplomas and artwork drawn by her kids.

  “I’ve been worried about you.” Dr. Frazier leaned back in her chair, offering a kind smile. “You disappeared on us.” Her face was soft and round, and her ebony skin glowed warmly in the sunlight filtering in through the narrow office window.

  “Sorry.” Alice dropped her eyes to the floor. “I had some personal stuff.”

  “So you mentioned in your email. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s just been hard to prioritize school.” That wasn’t a lie, technically. It had been hard to prioritize school over her fear of coming to school.

  Dr. Frazier nodded and threaded her fingers together in front of her on the desk. “How can I help? What can we do to get you back on track?”

  “Um…” Alice had rehearsed what she was going to say a dozen times in her head, but now that she was here the words stuck in her throat.

  Dr. Frazier leaned forward, eyebrows slightly raised, and waited.

  “Actually…” Alice took a breath and tried to will her voice to steadiness. “I think I need to drop out of the program.”

  She’d been going back and forth on it all morning, and that was what she’d finally decided. She felt like a coward, especially after Griffin had encouraged her not to quit school, but she just didn’t want to deal with any of this anymore. She was tired of living with this big black cloud hanging over her. She wanted to be free of it, even if that meant taking the quitter’s way out.

  Dr. Frazier blinked and pulled her head back. “Why?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I’m sure it is, but you’ve put in so much hard work to get here and you’re so close to finishing. It would be a real shame to quit now.”

  Alice looked down at her lap. “I’ve decided not to go into academia after all.”

  “When did you decide this?”

  “It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while.” That at least was true. She’d been having doubts about it since before the situation with Gilchrist developed. “I like data gathering and analysis, but I’ve never liked teaching. I just don’t think it’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

  “I can understand that. It’s not for everyone.”

  Alice avoided looking Dr. Frazier in the eye, too afraid of the disappointment she’d see there. “There are a lot of jobs I could get with my skill set. I could go into data science, for example.”

  “That’s true. You’ve definitely got options outside of academia—but you’d have a lot more options if you finished your doctorate. It would be foolish to quit at this point. If you push through this last little part, it will open so many more doors for you.”

  “I just…” Alice gulped around the burning in the back of her throat. “I can’t finish. I don’t even think I want to.”

  “Which is it? You can’t or don’t want to?”

  Alice’s answer came out in a whisper. “I can’t.”

  “Tell me why. Whatever the problem is, I can help. We’ll figure it out together.”

  This was her opening. If she was going to tell Dr. Frazier about Dr. Gilchrist, now was the time to do it.

  Alice stared at the kid art just beyond Dr. Frazier’s left shoulder. It was a picture of a red horse, and it had five legs. A giant blue cloud hung ominously above it, as big as the orange sun next to it.

  She’d spent the whole weekend trying to come up with a workaround, but this morning she’d realized it was pointless. Even if she could figure it out herself, or find someone else to help her, Gilchrist would still be on her committee. She’d have to see him. Seek his approval. Be interrogated by him in her defense.

  She just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t even stand the thought of being in the same room with him, much less being questioned by him at the most important moment of her academic life.

  “Well?” Dr. Frazier pressed.

  Alice’s hands twisted in her lap. She was tired of carrying this stain alone, but after so many months of silence, it was hard to make the words come out. “Dr. Gilchrist was supposed to help me with the network analysis for my dissertation…”

  “Yes.”

  “I—” Alice swallowed down the lump in her throat. “I can’t work with him.”

  Dr. Frazier was frowning. “Why can’t you work with him? Was he uncooperative?”

  Alice shook her head. “He makes me uncomfortable.”

  Dr. Frazier got up and closed her office door. Instead of going back to her desk, she sat down in the chair next to Alice. “Uncomfortable how?” Her expression was somber and urgent. “Did something happen?”

  Alice looked into Dr. Frazier’s dark, concerned eyes, took a deep breath, and told her everything.

  Griffin was on his last setup of the day, a two-shot on the doctor’s lounge set with Alexandra Shaw, the actress playing his current love interest. The extras wouldn’t be needed until they moved on to a later scene set in the hospital cafeteria, which meant Alice hadn’t been in yet.

  Whenever the director called cut, Griffin would look around to see if she’d arrived, anxious to hear how her meeting with her advisor had gone. It was ridiculous. Here he was, constantly checking his phone, a nervous wreck over someone else’s problem. Someone he barely even knew. It was exactly the kind of distraction he’d been wanting to avoid—the opposite of a temporary business arrangement with no personal entanglements.

  A couple of the other extras had wandered by, but so far no Alice.

  He wished he’d asked her to text him as soon as she got out of the meeting to let him know how it went. Except…he wasn’t sure he was entitled to that level of friendship. Sure, she’d confided in him this morning when he’d caught her in a moment of weakness, but that didn’t mean she was on board to give him constant updates on her personal life.

  On the other hand, she had asked his opinion. Didn’t that give him a stake in the outcome?

  He didn’t spot her until after the seventh take. She’d already changed into nurse’s scrubs, and she clutched a large to-go cup of coffee as she spoke to the second AD. Griffin caught her eye and gave her a questioning look.

  She responded with a tentative smile and a nod—which meant what, exactly? Did the meeting go well? Had her advisor believed her? Was that douchebag professor getting his ass reported to the administration? Or was Alice just putting a good face on it all because she didn’t want to talk to him about it at work?

  Griffin’s instincts urged him to go over there and pull her aside to make sure she really was okay. He nearly did, until the makeup artist popped up in front of him with a handful of brushes. Thwarted, Griffin spread his feet in order to lower his face to Janie’s eye level so she could touch up his makeup.
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br />   They reset for another take, and Griffin tried not to think about Alice and her problems while he shared an intimate moment with his latest on-screen girlfriend—fully clothed, thank god. The current storyline was made slightly awkward by the fact that Griffin and Alexandra had briefly—very briefly—been involved last year. Fortunately, they were both professionals who could deal with it like adults.

  Alexandra’s character was his fifth love interest in seven seasons. The last couple years, the writers hadn’t seemed to know what to do with his character other than throw actress after actress into his bed so they could show off Griffin’s newly acquired six-pack. It wasn’t exactly the character growth he’d been hoping for at this point in his tenure, a fact which had made his decision not to renew his contract easier.

  Today’s scene consisted of three pages of dialogue ending in a kiss that was meant to grow heated as the camera cut away. After the other setups they’d already done, it must have been his fiftieth time kissing Alexandra that morning. His lips were numb and swollen, and he could taste the eggs she’d had for breakfast beneath the Altoid she’d popped before they started shooting.

  “Cut!” the director called out halfway through their lip-lock, and came over to talk to them. “I’m sure you two are as tired of kissing as I am of watching you kiss, but I’ve seen sibling figure skating pairs with more chemistry. Can we give it a little more oomph, please?”

  “Sorry.” Griffin shot an apologetic look at Alexandra. “That’s on me. I’ll get my head in the game.”

  The next take, Griffin shoved all the distractions—including Alice and his personal feelings about Alexandra and this particular storyline—into a box and dredged up more energy to sell the scene.

  “Excellent!” the director said, followed by the magical words everyone loved to hear: “Let’s move on!”

  Released from purgatory for the day, Griffin immediately went in search of Alice. He found her by the craft services table, grazing on a big bowl of M&Ms. “Hey!” He pulled her slightly aside and lowered his voice. “How’d it go?”