“Hey there. What would you like?”

Cassie’s customer—a young man with dirty blonde hair, wearing a white dress shirt that looks like it costs about what Cassie earns in a week—sets down his phone and looks up at her with the most piercing blue eyes she has ever seen.

“Coffee. Please,” he says politely, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with the tip of a finger. His accent is just as crisp and neat as the rest of him. And just as out of place.

It couldn’t be clearer he’s from someplace else.

Cassie can’t remember the last time someone from someplace else stumbled into this diner—though after living all of her twenty-four years in this part of Indiana she’s familiar enough with the types who come through for the university to recognize one when she sees them.

She takes in his neat stack of thick-spined books to the left of his phone and the pad of paper he’s been scribbling on since he got here. Yeah—he’s definitely here because of Indiana University. Probably he does something for the English department. Maybe history.

Something like that. 

But Cassie doesn’t get paid to wonder about her customers, not even the cute ones with blonde hair and nice eyes. She jots down coffee on her notepad, trying not to think about the way those eyes track the movement of her hand.

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. Um… just a minute…” He trails off and peers at the laminated menu she put in front of him five minutes ago. “Your, uh… your number two special.”

Cassie writes down #2 by the word coffee.  “How do you take your eggs?”

The man pauses, bright blue eyes wide behind his silver frames. He looks legitimately confused—like she’s just asked him a question he’s never really considered before and has no idea how to answer.

“Well… how do you recommend I take them?”

Cassie takes a small step back, hesitating. No one ever asks her for food recommendations. This isn’t that kind of restaurant. But if she tells him that she’ll just feel more beneath this guy than she already does. He already knows he’s having breakfast in a crappy diner on the edge of town. He also knows she’s just a waitress—not someone with a fancy job at the university like him. 

No need to remind him of any of that.

“You look like a sunny-side over easy kind of guy to me,” she says.

It’s the first thing that pops into her head—which is unfortunate because it’s also a stupid thing to say. But he seems to take her at face value. “Sunny-side over easy it is, then,” nodding seriously. His eyes linger on her face longer than strictly necessary before darting away again, a small smile on his lips. He has a really nice mouth with full lips that make her wonder if he has a girlfriend somewhere that appreciates them.

She shoves the thought away almost as quickly as it crops up, tucking her notepad into the front pocket of her flowered Mo’s apron.

She’s being ridiculous.

Cassie lets some of her too-curly brown hair fall in front of her face; it’s a protective curtain she’s spent half her lifetime hiding behind.

“I’ll… have it all out for you in just a minute,” she murmurs.

“Thank you,” he says, and then goes back to staring at his phone again, the way he was when she came out to take his order. His smile is gone; the corners of his lovely mouth are turned down, now, in something a lot closer like a frown.

One of the first things Cassie learned on this job was to never interrupt customers who are on their phones unless absolutely necessary. But for once, she decides to set that bit of training to the side. There’s something about this guy’s nice eyes and his too-white shirt and his confusion over the simple act of ordering eggs in a roadside diner that makes her want to be a little reckless.

She clears her throat. “Everything okay?” she asks, before she can talk herself out of doing it.

He blinks at her, then runs a distracted hand through his hair. No ring, Cassie notices, on reflex, then chastises herself for noticing.  

He sighs. “No,” he says. “Everything is not ok.”

He doesn’t say anything more to her, and Cassie knows that’s her sign to turn around, right now, and head straight for the kitchen.   

“Anything I can do to help?” she asks instead.

He chuckles. He has dimples on either side of his mouth when he laughs and perfectly straight, white teeth. Nobody in Monroe County looks like this guy. Maybe nobody anywhere in Indiana looks like this guy. “I don’t suppose you have an in with the editors at the Journal for American Literary Studies?”

Cassie winces. She tries never to think about her failed two-semester college experiment at Ivy Tech. There are times, though, when she can’t help it.

Like on the rare Saturday mornings when she goes to the farmers market and is surrounded by college students and professors. And, apparently, like now.

“I… I don’t know anything about that,” she stammers. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head and grimacing. “I’m sorry. That was like—the douchiest thing I could have possibly said.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not.” He takes off his glasses, and folds them up before laying them carefully beside his neat stack of books. “We’ve only just met and already I’m acting like an asshole.”

He says it so earnestly that Cassie doesn’t know what to do with it at all. She can feel herself starting to blush—something she thought she’d outgrown back in high school.

“It’s… it’s fine,” she says again. “It’s not really any of my business what you’re doing.”

“I do appreciate your interest, though. And your offer to help,” he says. He glances over at the pile of books on the table. “Even if this manuscript is beyond help at this point. Even if I’m beyond help.”

“Manuscript?” she hears herself ask. “Like for a… a play?”

“A novel,” he says. “Hopefully. One day.”

“You’re a writer?”

“Not really. I teach in the English department at Indiana,” he says. He shrugs, and adds, “Occasionally I try and write some things too. But I mostly just do it for my tenure portfolio. And to impress my students.”

He says it so dismissively—as though even trying to write a novel isn’t by itself the most impressive thing Cassie’s ever heard.

“I bet your students are impressed by you,” she blurts out without thinking.

His head pops up, his eyes a little wide. One corner of his mouth quirks up into a half-smile.  “You do?”

Cassie thinks back to the professor who’d taught that terrible accounting class she’d taken at Ivy Tech. He’d been a prominent local businessman with hair sprouting from his ears who never smiled or had a kind word for Cassie—or for any of his other students, for that matter.

She’d dreaded going to that class every week. She’d dreaded going to all of her classes.

“I do,” she confirms. “You seem…”

She hesitates, trying to put what she’s thinking into words.

“I seem… what?” He sits up a little straighter and, adopting an expression of mock seriousness, pretends to straighten an imaginary tie. “I seem… brilliant? Professorial?”

She laughs in spite of herself.

“I was going to say kind,” she says. “You seem very kind.” She pauses, and adds, “I’m sure your students appreciate that.”

For the first time since Cassie came out of Mo’s kitchen to wait on him the man with the blonde hair and blue eyes seems to be at a total loss for words. He just… stares at her, mouth hanging half-open, his eyes suddenly just a little too bright.

“I hope you’re right,” he eventually says. “I’m new here. I’m completely new to teaching, too, and… well.” He sniffs, and looks away; Cassie can’t help but notice that he’s starting to blush a little. “I just… really hope you’re right.”

“I’m sure I am,” she says. And then, because it’s long past time she went back to doing her job, adds, “I’ll just go ahead and give Mo your order, okay?”

He blinks at her. “Oh,” he says. “Right. Yeah—thanks.”

As Cassie makes her way into the kitchen she can feel his eyes on her, watching her walk away. Having men stare at her while she’s trying to do her job is nothing new, of course—but she can feel the softness in this man’s gaze as acutely as a physical touch.

She doesn’t know what to do with it at all.

“Here’s the order,” she says to Mo, a little too quickly. She hands her boss the ticket, her heart beating a rapid staccato inside her chest.

 

—

 

Cassie sees him again two days later inside the Walmart—the very last place she’d expect to run into someone like him. He’s frowning at the giant paper towels display as she enters the store, looking at least as bewildered by his surroundings as he was by Mo’s egg options.

She stops in her tracks when she sees him there, her hands gripping the blue plastic handle of her shopping cart a little too tightly. He’s dressed more casually today than he was when he came into the diner—snug-fitting blue jeans and a t-shirt for a band she doesn’t recognize instead of the office stuff he was wearing the other day. Which makes sense, Cassie supposes. He’s at Walmart on a Saturday morning, not having a quick breakfast before heading to work.

What doesn’t make sense, though, is how good this guy’s ass looks in those jeans. It should be against the law, really, for a man’s butt to look that good.

It takes all of Cassie’s restraint not to openly stare at him, right in the middle of this store.

Several long moments pass and, when he still hasn’t moved, it occurs to Cassie that maybe they don’t have this many paper towel options where he comes from. Maybe he needs help with whatever decision he’s trying to make right now—like he needed help with his decision about the eggs.

Maybe she could go over to him and offer to help.

Maybe she should.

This is a stupid idea. She knows that. He’s not even going to remember her, let alone want to talk to her in the middle of freaking Walmart. But if there’s one thing Cassie’s always been great at, it’s making bad decisions. Before she can talk herself out of doing it she’s pushing her cart over to where he’s standing, as purposefully as if approaching hot strangers in Walmart were something she did every day of the week.

She clears her throat. “Um. Hi.”

He looks up at the sound of her voice. His face lights up.

“It’s you,” he says, entirely too cheerfully for nine in the morning on a Saturday. “The girl from the diner.” He pauses. “Cassie. Right?”

“Oh. Yeah.” He must have read her nametag the other day. Nobody ever reads her nametag when she waits on them. She smiles at him, trying hard to ignore the warm flush already starting to creep up the back of her neck and the nearly overpowering urge to hide behind her hair again.

“I’m… Cassie Deckard,” she adds. “And I… I don’t think I actually know your name.”

“Oh.” He sticks out his hand for her to shake. “Will Ardery.” She stares at his outstretched hand a long moment, and swallows before grasping his hand in hers. Firm handshake, she thinks, as he pumps her hand up and down, but not like he’s trying to show off. He has small calluses on his palms which scratch deliciously against her skin when she pulls her hand away.

“Everyone in my department says this place is big,” Will says, once they’re no longer touching. He looks around, and adds, “I’ll admit I was expecting it to be bigger.”

Cassie’s eyes go wide. “Really?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I was kidding. This place is insane.”

“Yeah,” Cassie says. “It’s… the biggest Walmart in this part of the state.”

He looks at her studiously, as though she’s just shared new, important, and confidential information with him.

Will Ardery, Cassie muses, you are something else.

“Interesting. I didn’t know that,” he says. “I’m not from around here.” As though that weren’t the most obvious thing in the world. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose with the tip of an index finger, the same way he did yesterday when she was waiting on his table. “But I live here now. Because of the university. Or, well,” he shrugs. “I live near here. I don’t actually live at Walmart.”

She laughs at his little joke, but doesn’t fail to notice how his voice takes on a slightly sour edge when he says the words, and how his lips turn down at the corners. While it’s possible she’s imagining all that she guesses she probably isn’t. She’s lived in Monroe County all her life, and while she’s never seriously considered leaving—this is her home, after all; she can’t even wrap her brain around the idea of living somewhere else—she isn’t stupid. If she’d grown up just about anywhere else and then one day found herself living here she’s sure she’d hate it even more than she already does.

“Where are you from, then? Chicago? Or…”

“California, actually.” He says it so casually, with a one-shouldered shrug—as though being from a place like California is no big deal. Or even embarrassing.

“Really?”

He nods again.

The next words are out of her mouth before she can stop them. “What in the hell did you come out here for?”

He chuckles. “I take it you don’t like it here.”

“No,” she says honestly. “I mean, I’m from here. But that doesn’t mean I like it.” She hesitates, before adding, “I’m sure I’d be miserable if I were from a place as nice as California and ended up here.”

Will shrugs again. “It’s not so bad so far. Berkeley has its share of problems too.”

“Better weather though.” She cocks her head to the side. “Right? Better food too, I imagine.”

“You got me on the weather,” he admits. “As for the food… well, I don’t know that I’d say all the food is better in California.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not,” he says. And there’s an unmistakable gleam in his eye when he adds, “I found a great diner just outside of town that makes the best eggs over easy I’ve ever had.”

For a minute Cassie thinks he’s making fun of her and her stupid job, and she bristles. But then the corners of his mouth quirk up into another easy smile, pulling a matching smile from her before she’s even realized it’s happened.

“Mo’s eggs are pretty good,” Cassie admits.

“They are.”

“She swears they’re the best in south-central Indiana.”

“I don’t doubt for one second that she’s right.” Will looks down at the ground, and shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans before asking, “So—what exactly does one do at the biggest Walmart in this part of the state?”

“Same thing you do at any Walmart I’d expect.”

He glances at her, and his cheeks go a little pink when he says, “Which is… what, exactly?”

“You’ve never been to a Walmart before?”

He shakes his head.

“Really?” She swallows, at a loss for words.

“Really. Not in all of my nearly thirty years of life have I ever been to a Walmart.”

She stares at him, dumbfounded. “Then… I mean, where did you used to go to get your things?”

That makes him laugh for some reason. “Different places, I guess.” He looks at a spot just past her right shoulder and asks, “Since I’m new to the ways of Walmart, would you care to show me around?” His words come out sounding a little strange, a little too quiet—like he intends them for no one’s ears but hers, despite the fact that they are in a public and increasingly crowded store.

“I mean…” Cassie trails off, trying to ignore his intense, questioning gaze, and the way it makes her insides feel like she’s just stepped off the dizzy cups at Holiday World. She nods. “I’d be happy to.”

His smile grows.

“Great,” he says. “Can we start with paper towels?”

—

“Four bags of potatoes,” Cassie muses, shaking her head and watching as Will loads his purchases into the trunk of his too-small car. Based on how lean he is, an hour ago she wouldn’t have guessed Will worked out. The way his arm muscles flex beneath his t-shirt as he lifts his stuff out of his cart, though, leaves no doubt in her mind that he does. Often. “That’s a lot of potatoes for someone who lives alone.”

He freezes at her words, and Cassie realizes immediately what a stupid thing that was for her to say. Maybe he doesn’t live alone. She barely knows him.

But he doesn’t correct her, and if he’s flustered by her comment he seems to recover from it quickly.

“I like potatoes,” is all he says.

His purchases loaded, he slams his trunk shut with one hand. Now that her pretext for spending time with him is over she expects him to say something witty, tell her goodbye, and then drive away to wherever it is people like him go after leaving Walmart.

But he doesn’t do any of those things. He just leans up against the back of his car with his legs crossed at the ankles and says, “So. About the book I’m writing.” A pause. “Can I talk to you about it? I’m in need of some pretty significant help.”

“Wait. Me?” Cassie squeaks in genuine surprise. She knows absolutely nothing about writing a book. “Why me?”

“As I get deeper into writing this novel, I’m finding that I need to talk with someone who knows a lot about southern Indiana. Because the book is about this part of Indiana. Actually—” He pauses, then rubs his chin as he seems to collect his thoughts. “Actually, it’s not really about this part of Indiana. Mostly it’s going to be about aliens. And so what I need to talk with someone about is—”

“Wait. Wait a minute.” Cassie holds up a hand, cutting him off. He’s speaking way too fast—like he’s worried she’s going to turn on her heels and run away from him if he doesn’t get his words out quickly enough. Cassie’s finding it hard to keep up. “You’re… writing a book about aliens?”

“Yes.”

“And it takes place… here?”

“More or less here, yes.” He nods. “And that’s the part I need your help with. I don’t really know this area at all. I only just got here.” He smiles at her. “You, on the other hand, almost certainly know this region like the back of your hand.”

Cassie can feel herself flush a little at the odd compliment. “I mean… yeah, okay. I probably do. But…” She bites her lower lip, worried her next question might hurt his feelings. “What I don’t get is… why would you want the book to take place here?”

“Why not?”

“Mostly because I don’t know why anyone would want to set a book here.”

His smile slips a little. “No?”

“It’s not that I think it’s a bad idea,” she says, very quickly. “Not exactly. It’s just that… I mean, nothing about this area is interesting.” She hesitates. “I can’t imagine someone wanting to read a book that takes place around here.”

“Well…” he says, drawing out the single syllable thoughtfully. He folds his arms across his chest, and his eyes get this faraway look in them as he ponders his next words. “It’s been my experience that people tend to find things and places and people that are quite different from what they’ve experienced in their own lives fascinating. Exotic, even.” He shrugs. “The rural midwest is exotic to a lot of people who’ve never been here.”

Cassie stares at him. “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely.” He says it with complete conviction, but Cassie isn’t sure she believes him.

“And that’s why your aliens book will be set here?”

“Well, that’s part of it,” he says. “But mostly, to give the book the realism I want it to have I’ll need to set it in the place where I’ll be living the next few years.”

“Which is here,” Cassie finishes for him.

“Which is here,” he confirms. “But I still don’t really know this area very well. And, in order to get to know the area fast enough to satisfy my agent I’ll need to speak with people who’ve lived here a long time.” He pauses, and gives her a soft smile. “In the three weeks since I’ve moved here, you are the only person I’ve had more than a five-minute conversation with who isn’t one of my colleagues.”

That surprises her. He’s just so… friendly. He strikes her as the kind of person who would have an easy time talking with just about everybody. “Really?”

He nods. “And you’re much more interesting than they are.” His eyes are so warm as he tells her all this that she can’t help but smile.

“So, really,” he continues, “it’s really quite fortuitous I bumped into you today in the largest Walmart in south-central Indiana.” He reaches into the front pocket of his jeans. When he pulls his hand out again he’s got a crisp little rectangle of cardstock balanced between two fingers.

He hands it to her.

“That’s my business card.” She looks at it—at the bright red Indiana University logo at the top; at the Will Ardery, Assistant Professor of English in bold slanting black letters; at his office email and his phone number written in smaller font beneath it. It looks so… professional. So the very opposite of everything about her and her own life.

“Call me if you want,” he says. “Or don’t. I’m sure eventually I’d be able to find other people I can talk to about life in this area if you’re too busy, or if you’d simply rather not—”

“I’d be happy to talk with you,” she says, cutting him off.

His eyes light up.

“Really? You would?”

She nods. She still doesn’t know why he’s doing this, or why she’s agreeing to help him. But the longer he looks at her, smiling, the harder it is to remember why this is probably a terrible idea.

“Wonderful,” he says, still grinning. “This is… yeah. This is great.”

—

There are three texts from her sister waiting for her by the time Cassie makes it back home to her little one-bedroom apartment on the west side of town.           

Mamaw is turning eighty next Sunday and the whole family will be out at the house in Greene County for a big party. Cassie doesn’t even need to read Grace’s texts to know her older sister is reminding her, once again, that she still hasn’t signed up for a dessert yet.

Ordinarily her sister’s nagging would irritate her. But both guilt and texting her sister back are going to have to wait just a minute—because right now, all she wants to do is indulge her curiosity for once in her damn life and google Will.

After all, she tells herself, she’s just agreed to help him write his book. Finding out more about him before she meets with him again is a totally normal, and not at all creepy, thing for her to be doing.

She types Will Ardery Indiana University into the search bar on her phone with shaking hands. A link to his English department profile page is the first result that pops up and she clicks on it, her heart already beating a little too fast. She’s not totally sure what she’s going to find once the page loads—she’s never googled a professor before in her entire life—but she suspects she might regret agreeing to meet with him once it does.

His profile page looks incredibly professional. He looks incredibly professional, in the small rectangular picture they’ve got of him in the upper right-hand corner of the page. He’s dressed in a charcoal grey suit and a dark tie, his expression that’s so serious it almost doesn’t even look like him at all.

He’s an Assistant Professor of English, according to his bio—which, of course, she already knew from the five full minutes she spent staring at his business card after he left the Walmart parking lot. But it’s one thing to see words on a little business card and a totally different thing to be presented with concrete proof of something on the internet.

Her eyes scan the page. Beneath his picture there’s a long list of fancy schools he’s attended and degrees he’s earned, some of which she’s never even heard of before. Below the schools is a list of articles and short stories he’s written—and even a book that has a title she barely understands.

She shuts her eyes and presses a closed fist to the center of her forehead.

Saying yes to this might be the dumbest thing Cassie has ever done. Surely there are lots of other, smarter, better-educated people he could talk to about this part of Indiana?

She sighs, and closes out of the browser window.

Grace needs to know what she’s going to bring to Mamaw’s birthday party, and she isn’t going to leave her alone until she tells her. Might as well get it over with and do it now.

 

—

 

The night before Cassie is supposed to meet up with Will she nearly talks herself out of going four different times.

In the end, it’s only the memory of the warm smile he gave her just before he got into his car at Walmart and drove away that gets her out of bed and out her front door on her only day off this week.

Despite how intimidated she is by him, this really cute, really smart guy apparently wants to hear her opinions on this dumb place. He made that clear at Walmart; he’s made it even clearer in the texts he’s sent her in the days since.

Even though she still doesn’t understand why.

It’s a little past nine o’clock when she pushes open the glass front door to the central campus Starbucks. The students who usually pack this place during the semester must still be sleeping; Cassie has never seen it so deserted. The only people here are the barista—busy cleaning a machine that looks like it froths milk or something—and Will, already sitting at a table near the back in a suit jacket and tie, hunched over a yellow lined notebook.

He looks up the moment Cassie reaches his table. His entire face lights up, switched on like a Christmas tree.

“Cassie,” he says. He pushes back from his chair so abruptly its legs scrape loudly against the hard tiled floor. “Hi. Good morning. What can I get you?”

He nods towards the barista.

But she shakes her head. “Nothing. I can get it myself.”

“Nonsense,” Will says, already striding towards the counter. “You’re helping me out. It’s my treat.”

The latte he buys for her is too hot to drink when the barista hands it across the counter. Cassie carefully lifts its lid, blowing on the steam billowing off the top as they make their way back to his table.

“So,” she says, sitting down in the chair across from him. “What do you want to know about Indiana?”

Will hurriedly flips through his yellow-lined notepad until he gets to a blank page in the middle. He looks up. “I mean… everything, really.”

She stares at him. “Everything?”

“Yes.” He jots down a few words Cassie can’t quite make out from this vantage point. “I want to know everything.”

“I… don’t really know how to tell you everything,” she admits. “Can you… I don’t know.” She bites her lip. “Narrow it down for me? At least a little?”

“Narrow it down?”

She nods. “Can you tell me more about what the book is about? Beyond just… aliens in Indiana.” She takes a sip of her latte. “That might help me.”

Will cocks his head to the side, considering. “Hm. Well… the book will primarily focus on three teenage friends as they make first contact with an alien species.”

“In Indiana.”

“Right.” He taps the table with the end of his pen. “So, perhaps you could tell me a little bit about your childhood? I know what it’s like to grow up in northern California, but know nothing about being a teenager here. Ah, that’s where we can start,” he says excitedly. He scribbles a few words down on his notepad. “Why don’t you start by telling me what it was like growing up here?”

Cassie thinks back to her childhood in the western part of the county. All those long summers spent wading through knee-high grass in Mamaw’s back fields.

“It’s imperative to get the setting of your story exactly right from the outset, you see,” he continues, emphatic. Will sets down his pen, and folds his hands together, interlacing the fingers. “Skimping on details when crafting a story’s setting is the worst thing a writer can do. Even though this novel will be science fiction it’s no less true for that.” He pauses, and then leans closer to her from across the table. “A story should feel like a flesh-and-blood character itself if you’ve done it right.”

Will trails off, gaze both fixed firmly on her face and faraway all at once. His tone, his posture, everything about him is different, suddenly. Cassie finally thinks she has some idea what he must be like in front of a classroom. The rigor he puts into his lessons… the intensity he brings to his lectures… she can see it now, clear as day.

It’s mesmerizing.

“My childhood,” she says, very slowly. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes. Very.” She hasn’t told him anything yet already he’s scribbling furiously on his notepad. “Tell me everything.”  

 

—

 

Several hours later—after they’ve each had a second coffee drink, and Cassie has just finished telling him about the boy who broke her heart after the homecoming dance her senior year of high school—she decides she’s talked enough.

“I’ve been doing a lot of talking,” she says. “Can I ask you a question?”

Will says nothing, and doesn’t stop jotting down whatever it is he’s writing. But he does glance up at her and quirks one eyebrow, which Cassie decides to take it as permission to go ahead.

She clears her throat. “What do you think so far?”

His pen pauses for the first time in nearly an hour. The corners of his mouth turn down a little in confusion.

“What do I think about what so far?” He cocks his head to the side, which is a thing she’s noticed he does whenever he’s confused or trying to puzzle something out. His glasses slip halfway down the bridge of his nose when he does it, which makes him look a little ridiculous and about five years younger.

It might be the most adorable thing Cassie has ever seen.

When she doesn’t answer him right away, just simply continues to look at him, Will lets out an amused huff. “What do I think about… what? This coffee shop? Monroe County? The weather?”

Cassie realizes, too late, that she hadn’t really thought this question through before asking it. All she knows is that after talking about herself for two hours straight she’s eager to learn more about him.

“Everything,” she says, parroting his request to her from earlier. “This area. Indiana University. Your new life here. Everything. What do you think so far?”

“Oh.” Will sets down his pen and scratches at his chin, thoughtful. “I like it,” he says. He leans a little closer to her, forearms folded and resting on the table between them. “It’s different from what I’m used to. Very different. But it’s good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says. “The people are very nice.”  

“In your department?”

He nods. He makes a point of studying his empty mug very intently before saying, “And outside of my department, too.”

She waits for him to elaborate on that, to tell her who it is he’s met outside his department that’s very nice. When he doesn’t—when he just continues to stare at his finished latte like it contains all the answers to all the questions he’s ever had, the tips of his ears going just a little bit pink—Cassie wonders just what he isn’t telling her.

“Anyway,” he says, sniffing a little and picking up his pen again. “Enough about me.” He looks at her, and gives her a broad smile. “What do kids here like to do for fun on Friday nights?”

 

—

 

There’s a letter waiting for Cassie in Mo’s office when she clocks in at six-thirty the next morning. It’s in a cream-colored envelope with Indiana University’s crimson-red logo in the upper left-hand corner, and it says: For Cassie. Please do not read this until you get home.

Cassie stares at it. She spent nearly four hours looking at Will’s neat slanting cursive at Starbucks yesterday. At this point she could probably recognize his handwriting in her sleep.

“What’s this?” she asks Maureen—or, Mo, as everyone calls her—though of course, she already knows it’s a letter from Will. A letter. She didn’t even think people wrote actual letters anymore. She picks up the envelope with hands that shake a little, running her fingertips over the words he wrote on the front of it.

“Someone came in last night and asked me to give it to you the next time you were in,” Mo says, not even bothering to look up from her computer.

“And you agreed?” That doesn’t seem like her. Mo’s a good boss, but she has repeatedly made it very clear she wants her staff to leave their personal lives at home.

“Didn’t require any extra effort on my part,” Mo says simply. “It wasn’t a court summons and the guy wasn’t some tweaker” She glances up at Cassie. “You going back to school or something, hon?”

Cassie studies her fingernails, hoping her face isn’t as flushed as it feels. “Why would you think that?”

“The IU logo on the envelope.”

Oh. Right. She stuffs Will’s letter into the front of her apron and grabs her time card so she can clock in.

“Ah. No. I’m… I’m not going back to school.”

Mo says something else to her after that, but Cassie is too lost in thought and too dazed to hear it.

What could Will have wanted to tell her that couldn’t be done in a text? Or over email? And why does he want her to wait until she gets home to open it?

She walks out of Mo’s office in an anxious daze, Will’s letter already burning a hole in her pocket.

 

—

 

In the end, Cassie only makes it until her lunch break before her burning curiosity gets the better of her.

Sitting in the driver’s seat of her car, she tears open the official-looking envelope with shaking hands. The letter Will wrote her is on nice, thick stationery—the kind of paper she associates with thank-you cards and the letters Mamaw used to give her on her birthdays. Cassie can’t remember the last time she got a letter from someone on paper like this.

She can’t remember the last time she got an actual, pen-and-paper letter at all.

She slides it out of the envelope.

She starts reading.

 

Dear Cassie,

There’s so much I want to say to you but I lack the courage to say any of it in person. So I’m putting it in a letter, like the coward I am.

I want you to know that meeting you has been, without question, the best thing that has happened to me since moving to Indiana. You are unfailingly kind, thoughtful, and compassionate. You listen to me talk about my stupid book and my job like they’re actually interesting, even though I know nothing could be further from the truth. I look forward to each time I see you more than you could probably realize.

But what’s more—the part that I am far too much of a coward to ever admit to you in person—is you are the sexiest woman I have ever seen before in my life. The amount of time I’ve spent fantasizing about you—imagining what your breasts would feel like in my hands, your nipples pebbling up against my palms as I touch and tease them—is probably against the law in some states. The frequency with which I think about what you would look like on your knees in front of me as I fuck your pretty mouth is nothing short of indecent. I imagine fucking you in my apartment, in my office, bending you backwards over my desk as I enter you, your tits bouncing with every thrust, your tight little cunt spasming on my cock as you fall apart.

I bet you come so prettily, Cassie. If I had you in my bed I would waste no time, pressing my fingers into you the second I had your clothes off. I would work you over like no one has ever worked you over before, wringing orgasm after orgasm from your body until you collapsed boneless onto the mattress, your mouth hanging open, your breasts heaving.

I’m getting hard, right now, just thinking about it. I’m hard all the time, now, though, thinking of you. I jerk off more frequently now than I have at any point since I was a teenager. It’s all because of you and how fucking incredible you are.

I want to take you out on a date, Cassie. A proper date; not just an impromptu meetup at the fucking Walmart or a meeting over coffee where I ask you questions about what it was like to go to high school here. I want to take you out to dinner. To a movie. I want to take you dancing. And then, after we finish with all of that, I want to take you home and fuck you in my bed, again and again, until you forget your name.

After reading this letter you very well may never want to speak to me again. You’d certainly be well within your rights to tear this letter up and throw it in the trash. But I’m choosing to risk giving you this letter anyway in the hopes that maybe—just maybe—you think of me in the same way that I think of you. At least some of the time. If you do, please call me. Tonight.

I think you have my phone number already but just in case, it’s (812) 555-2210.

Yours, hopefully, 

Will

 

By the time Cassie comes to the end of the letter her grip on the paper is so tight her knuckles are white. Her mouth has gone dry, her tongue thick and heavy in her mouth.

Her heart is pounding, racing in her chest as though she’s just run a mile.

What…

What did she just read?

Cassie is no stranger to explicit stories. She’s been online, like most people; back in high school people used to send around links to stories about Harry Potter characters doing filthy things to each other. Occasionally, she would read them. 

She even liked a few of them, revisiting some of the better ones on the rare occasions she touched herself.

But this…

Cassie has absolutely no frame of reference for this.

“Cassie?” Mo is standing outside her car, hands on her hips. Her apron, as usual, is covered in grease spatters from the grill in the back; the peculiar set of her jaw suggests she is equal parts concerned and irritated. “You’ve been out here over an hour. Everything okay?”

An hour?

Fuck.

Cassie’s lunch break is only thirty minutes long.

“I’m… I’m fine,” she stammers. She opens the passenger’s side glove compartment and hastily stuffs Will’s letter and the envelope inside of it.

She smooths the skirt of her uniform absently, trying desperately to ignore just how hard her heart is hammering against her ribcage.

“You sure you’re fine?” Mo peers at her. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

I’ve seen something all right, Cassie thinks.

“Yes, I’m sure. I just… I just lost track of time.”

Cassie follows Mo inside the diner on shaky legs.

She has no idea how the hell she’s supposed to focus on anything this afternoon.

—

Back at home, Cassie flops down on her bed and reads Will’s letter again. And then again. She closes her eyes and imagines Will, dressed in a suit and tie, biting his luscious bottom lip and hunched over his desk as he writes the letter Cassie just read. She stares at the way his hand grips the pen as it moves across the paper and for the first time since meeting him a week ago she finally lets herself imagine the way his hands would feel on her body, pushing her down onto the mattress. Pinning her to the wall. Lifting her dress up and over her head.

She shudders a little. Because in the end, imagining kissing Will takes no effort at all; his full lips, she decides, were made for kissing. And it isn’t a far leap at all from that to imagining how it would feel, those lips of his wrapped around other things, his talented mouth licking and sucking at her until she fell apart.

Her eyes fly open, heart hammering hard against her ribcage.

Is she… really going to do this?

She’s never hooked up with someone at the university before. She hasn’t done anything with someone from the university, in fact, since she was in high school, when she was in the marching band with some professors’ kids. There’s a clear divide between people at the university and people from the town that everyone understands intuitively. It’s invisible; and yet, right now, it is the only thing she can see.

If she calls Will tonight and tells her that, yes—she thinks about him that way, too; or at least, she’s thinking about him that way now—there is no way it could end well.

No possible way.

She calls him anyway.

He picks up on the first ring.

“Will?” Her voice sounds strange to her ears; too breathless.

“Cassie.” He sounds surprised to hear from her. “Hello.”

She closes her eyes, and tells herself she can do this. She called him, didn’t she? That was the first and hardest step. Might as well rip the rest off like a bandaid. “I… read your letter.”

A beat. “You did?”

She nods, then realizes he can’t see her do it.

“I did.”

“I can’t tell you how many times I almost didn’t write the letter.” He laughs a little. “You aren’t too creeped out by it? I mean… by someone you barely know giving you a letter like that? Someone you’ve waited on in the diner?”

“I’m not creeped out,” she tells him honestly. Of all the crazy things she’s thought and felt since first reading his letter, being creeped out isn’t even in the top ten. “It takes more than a letter to upset me. And besides—at this point we’ve seen each other outside of the diner way more than we’ve seen each other in it.”

He chuckles again. “I suppose that’s true.”

There’s an awkward silence that settles over them after that. Cassie has no idea what happens next, and she starts to panic a little. Is this the part where she asks him if she can come over? Is that what he’s supposed to say?

Will saves her from herself by speaking next.

“Do you have any plans this Friday?” His voice is so low, so quiet, Cassie has to strain to hear him over the sound of her racing heart.

Here we go, then. This is it. “No,” she says. “I don’t.”

“Would you… like to do something?” A pause. “With me, I mean? I could take you out to dinner, or…”

He trails off, but Cassie is pretty sure how the rest of that sentence was supposed to go.

“I’d like that,” she says, quietly. And honestly.

“I’m… really glad, Cassie.” She can almost hear the smile in Will’s voice from the other end of the line. “Would you like to meet in my office?”

Her mind drifts back to his letter, and to all of the things he’s apparently fantasized about doing to her in his office.

Her pulse quickens.

“Your… your office?” she stammers.

“Yeah,” he says. “If that’s alright with you. It’s conveniently located. To… to restaurants, I mean.” Another pause. “And to other things.”

Other things?

“Okay,” she hears herself say, her mouth on autopilot as her brain struggles to process what she’s actually agreeing to.. “I can meet you in your office. Sure.”

“Fantastic!” Will’s excitement palpable, even over the phone. “Friday, then? Meet me at my office at six?”

“Yeah,” Cassie says. “I can do that.”

“Fantastic,” he says again. And then, laughing a little, “I’m really happy about this.”

When Cassie hangs up a few minutes later, she realizes that she’s pretty happy about it, too.

 

—

 

Will is still meeting with a student when Cassie shows up to his office on the third floor of the Arts and Sciences building that Friday evening.

The girl looks about twenty, with long straight brown hair and the kind of designer clothes Cassie imagines kids whose parents can afford college can afford to buy them. She sits in a straight-backed chair across the desk from Will, and takes quick notes on her laptop as he talks to her about… something. Cassie can’t quite make out what he’s saying. Maybe it’s because the janitor is running an incredibly loud vacuum at the other end of the hallway.

Or maybe it’s because of the sudden, jealous rush of blood to her ears that just seems to get louder the longer she stares at the college student.

Cassie closes her eyes and rests her forehead against the wood of Will’s office door. She needs to get it together before she lets him know she’s here.

Calm down, Cassie, she chastises herself. You’re being an idiot. She takes a deep, steadying breath, and then chances another glance inside his office.

There is nothing in Will’s body language—hunched over his large wooden desk, staring down at a messy pile of papers scattered across it as he speaks—that suggests he is in any way behaving inappropriately with this student. And all the girl is doing is taking notes; she doesn’t so much as look up at him once from her laptop as she types.

“Thank you, Professor Ardery,” the girl says, after what might be five minutes or an hour. “I should have this back to you by Monday night.”

“Thank you, Simone,” Will says, in a tone Cassie has never heard him use before. He sounds… older, somehow. Professional. She never sounds like that with her. “I look forward to seeing your revisions.”

Simone gets out of her chair and, tucking her computer inside a smart-looking bookbag, walks briskly to the door of Will’s office. She gives Cassie a small smile and a nod before brushing past her and moving towards the elevator.

Cassie peers inside Will’s office again, her heart jackhammering inside her chest. But he still doesn’t seem to realize she’s here. He’s standing behind his desk, still staring down at the mess of papers on top of it, his hands on his hips.

She closes her eyes and counts, very slowly, to three.

Here goes nothing.

She bites her lip, and then raps on his door harder than she’d intended.  The sound her fist makes as it connects with the wood is so loud it’s almost jarring.

Will looks up from his papers, finally noticing she is here.

“Cassie,” he says, brightly. “You came.” He sounds surprised, but also pleased—like he didn’t expect her to show up tonight, but is glad she did.

She stares down at her feet, and at the threadbare hallway carpet she’s standing on. “Of course I came,” she says quietly. “I said I would.”

A long pause. And then Will says, “Please. Come in.”

Will looks good. Of course, he always looks good—but as she takes in his perfectly coiffed hair and dark jeans she realizes he must have put in extra effort for tonight. He put in extra effort for her. The realization makes Cassie feel warm inside—and makes her wonder if he likes the way the simple black dress she chose to wear tonight looks on her body. It’s the nicest dress she owns, but when she steps closer to him, and she can smell the faint hints of musk and leather in his cologne, she starts to worry if maybe she should have tried harder.

“You look nice, Cassie,” he says, breaking the awkward silence that’s suddenly yawning between them. His voice has gone a bit strange and rough around the edges, and it occurs to Cassie—too late—that she has no idea what she’s supposed to do now. All of her focus the past few days has been on working up the nerve to actually get here.

Now that she’s here, and alone with Will in his office, she has no idea what’s supposed to come next.

From the slightly stunned look on Will’s face Cassie thinks maybe he doesn’t have any idea, either. Which is a little surprising. This whole thing was his idea in the first place. Shouldn’t he be… taking charge of things? Or something?

In the end, Cassie decides to approach this the same way she approaches most difficult things: by jumping in headfirst.

She clears her throat. “So. How should we do this?”

Will blinks at her, looking confused. “I’m… sorry?”

“What you put in your letter,” she says. “How should we… you know…”

“My letter?”

She nods.

“I see.” He stuffs his hands into his jeans pockets and rocks back on his heels, thinking. “I was sort of thinking we could go wherever you’d like.”

“Wherever I’d like?”

“Of course.” He gives her a smile that’s so quiet and shy Cassie cannot believe it’s coming from the same man who wrote her all of those filthy things. “I mean, I know there aren’t tons of dinner options in this town. But where would you like to go?” He takes a tentative step closer and for the first time—maybe because this is the first time she’s ever been this near him—Cassie realizes just how tall Will is. Her head only comes up to the bottom of his chin. It would be the easiest thing in the world, really, for her to lean in closer and rest her head on his chest, letting his arms come up around her to hold her close.

But… why is he asking her where she’d like to have dinner?

“I…” Cassie trails off, and licks her lips, and tries to think of how to answer that question. Eventually, she decides on the truth. “I didn’t think we were actually going to have dinner.”

Will frowns down at her. “You didn’t?”

“No.”

He cocks his head to the side, looking at least as confused as he did when she found him wandering around the Walmart.

“I’m sorry, Cassie, but…” Will pauses, and shakes his head. “What is it you thought we were going to do?”

Is he really going to make her spell it out? God, this is even more awkward than she thought it would be.

“I figured we were going to just… ”  She waits for him to figure it out. When he doesn’t—when he just continues to gape at her like she is speaking a foreign language—she sighs and says, “have sex in your office?”

Cassie has never seen someone being electrocuted before—but the wild-eyed, jerky way Will immediately leaps back from her at her words reminds her of electrocution all the same.

“I’m sorry, but…” Will stares at her, his eyes wide. “Why did you think we would… do that? Instead of dinner?”

What? It feels like the ground is shifting beneath Cassie’s feet. Why is he acting like this?

“Isn’t that what you wanted to happen tonight?” She licks her lips. “Have sex, I mean?”

Will takes another step back from her.  “Um… I mean…” He closes his eyes, and presses his fists hard into them. He blows out a breath. “I think any straight man who is asked that sort of question point blank by a beautiful woman like you would be lying if he said no.”

A beautiful woman like me? The compliment warms her, sends her insides fluttering, even as her impatience with this whole situation grows.

After the letter he gave her yesterday, now he’s being coy?

“I’m not asking about any man,” Cassie says, very slowly. “I’m asking about you.”

Silence.

A thought occurs to her. It’s an unpleasant one, but suddenly it’s the only thing that makes sense. She swallows hard and says, in a quiet voice, “You aren’t interested in fucking me anymore, are you.”

Will makes a strange choking noise in the back of his throat. “I’m sorry, but—what?” he splutters.

“Just… you gave me that… that filthy letter yesterday. You told me all the things you wanted to do to me. All the things you think about us doing, together.” Cassie pauses, and digs her fingernails into her palms to remember herself. She will not cry. She will not. Not here, in this fancy university office with all these bookshelves and papers and him. “And now that I’m here, and willing, you’re—”

“Wait.” Will’s eyes have gone so wide Cassie can see white rings around his irises. He looks terrified, his face suddenly as white as a sheet. His hands twitch almost violently at his sides, and a moment later he is clutching desperately at Cassie’s wrists, his grip on them so tight it’s almost painful. “Cassie. What are you talking about?”

It feels as though the ground is shifting beneath Cassie’s feet. “The… the letter you gave me,” she says, feeling stupid and slow. “In the diner. The one where you… where you said that you wanted to…”

Bend me over your desk. Fuck me.

Slow-dawning realization drifts across Will’s face. “No,” he mutters, looking horrified. “No, no, no…”

He drops her wrists and practically sprints across his office to his desk. He yanks open the top drawer, rummages frantically inside it for a moment, then takes out two sheets of paper from it.

He throws them down on top of his desk and begins scanning whatever’s written on them with an intensity that, under other circumstances, would be kind of hot–but which right now only confuses her further.

A moment later he lets out a tortured, keening moan that doesn’t sound quite human.  “Fuck.” He mutters something unintelligible and runs his hands over his face. He moans again, and sits down heavily in his leather chair. “Fuck. Fuck.”

“Okay. Look,” Cassie says, beyond confused at this point. “I’m not sure I understand what’s happening here. But—”

“The letter I gave you,” Will says, his voice hoarse, his tone defeated. His hands fall away from his face and onto his lap. He looks utterly miserable. “I… didn’t intend for you to ever read that.”

Everything stops. The janitor from earlier has stopped vacuuming; all Cassie can hear is Will’s too-rapid breathing and the steady beat of her own heart. She stumbles forward and finds the chair Simone was in a few minutes ago. She sits down in it.

“You… didn’t intend for me to read it?”

He shakes his head.

“Then, why did you—”

“It was a mistake.” He holds up the pages he’s just pulled from his desk and holds them up in the air, shaking them. “I meant to give you this letter instead.”

Cassie stares at him, dumbfounded. “You… wrote two letters?”

He nods, a sad, pitiful look on his face.

“But…” Cassie licks her lips, trying hard to keep up with what he’s telling her. “But why?”

He sighs. “I was having a hard time getting the tone right. I do that, sometimes—write multiple drafts of things.” He shakes his head. “I wrote the letter I accidentally gave you as a way to sort of…” He pauses, and clutches at the ends of his hair. “Exorcise, I guess, some of the things I’ve been thinking about, with you, before writing you a letter that is much more appropriate to give to someone you would like to start seeing.”

Cassie pauses, because she wants to choose her next words very carefully. But it’s hard to concentrate, with the way he’s looking at her right now and with how her heart is racing a mile a minute.

“What does the letter I was supposed to get say?”

He swallows, his eyes averted. “It just says that… that I like you. That you’re… pretty. That so far, you’re the best thing that’s happened to me since coming to Indiana. And that I’d like to take you to dinner, or to a movie, or possibly to dinner and a movie, sometime.” He glances up at her, but only long enough to gauge her reaction, before looking away again, his cheeks pinkening.

“So,” Cassie licks her lips, trying to process this, and trying hard not to die of mortification. “You… meant what you said in the letter. You just didn’t mean to give it to me.”

Will gets up from his chair and walks, very slowly, over to where she is sitting. He kneels down in front of her, until their faces are nearly level. He gently rests his hands on her knees, making her shiver.

“I meant every word of that stupid letter I should never have given you,” he says earnestly. He closes his eyes again, and inclines his head towards her. He lets out a quiet, embarrassed huff that she can feel, warm and sweet, against her lips. “That’s why I had so much trouble getting the words I wanted to actually say to you down on the page.” 

Cassie swallows. “Oh,” she says, having trouble keeping up with all of these revelations with his handsome face so close to hers.

He opens his eyes, and leans in a little more. “The only thing keeping me from throwing myself out a window right now,” he continues, in a low voice, “is the fact that you called me after reading the letter, as I asked you to do. And that you are here in my office right now. With me.” He starts drawing gentle, abstract patterns on her bare knee with his fingertips. Her arms erupt in gooseflesh at the feel of it, at the way the callous on the pad of his thumb scrapes a little rough against her leg.

“If you’d been disgusted,” he continues, “Or if you didn’t, on some level at least, feel the same way, I suspect I’d have never heard from you again.” He chuckles. “Or if I did, it would be because I was on the receiving end of a restraining order.”

She nods, and licks her lips almost involuntarily. She does not miss the way his eyes track the movement of her tongue.

“That’s why I’m here,” she confirms, in a hushed whisper.

She hears his sharp intake of breath, and…

The kiss Will gives her is not gentle.

It’s rushed and uncoordinated, and messier than the kisses he’s given her in her daydreams. Will kisses as though he’s worried she’ll change her mind if he so much as pauses for breath. Their noses bump together, their teeth clash, and his plush, full lips—the lips she’s been unable to stop thinking about for days now—slant urgently, almost painfully across hers.

Will’s mouth, his hands, are possessive and needy in a way Cassie wouldn’t have thought him capable of just a few hours ago. Not even after reading his filthy letter. She responds to his touch in a way she didn’t think she was capable of either, instinctively molding her body to his as he kisses her, winding her arms around him to pull him impossibly closer as his tongue darts out to coax open the seam of her lips.

“Is this okay?” he asks, his breathing already coming a little too fast. He’s pulled back from the kiss but his hands don’t seem capable of stopping now that he’s touched her. They trail down her sides to her waist, back up to her shoulders, her neck, a moment before they come up to gently frame her face.

Asking her if this is okay is sort of a silly thing, she thinks—because they just went over this, didn’t then? Would she be here in his office right now, making out with him like a teenager, if it weren’t okay?

But one look at his anxious expression tells Cassie he needs to hear her say it anyway. She slides her hands up along his forearms until she’s covering his hands. “It’s definitely okay.”

He chuckles a little, then sighs, and rests his forehead against hers. “I have no idea what you see in an idiot like me.”

 

—

 

In the end, they decide on the Italian restaurant downtown for dinner.

It’s nothing special, but as Will looks at her across the table, the light from the candles reflected in his eyes, for once in her life Cassie feels like maybe it is.