Chapter Five

“You didn’t come home last night,” Elyse said matter-of-factly as I emerged from my room. She was sitting on the couch with her laptop in her lap and some show on TV.

Is she accusing you of something?

No, of course not, what would she be accusing me of? She has no idea what happened! She couldn’t!

But there was a trace of judgement on her face. Was she accusing me of something?

“Yeah,” I gave her a guilty smile, “I had too much wine at Vi…Professor Devereux’s house.” I glanced back to my room to make sure I hadn’t left anything out in view before heading to the kitchen.

“You were drinking wine with Professor Devereux?” Elyse’s eyes tightened at that. “What were you two doing?”

“Just talking,” I grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge, cracked the cap open, and downed half of it in one go. “She made us dinner, and we talked about my dissertation,” I said a little breathlessly after wiping some stray water from my lips. “It was really no big deal.”

“No big deal,” Elyse chirped sarcastically as she rolled her eyes.

Then it hit me: Elyse was jealous. Of course she was. I had known for a long time that Elyse was jealous of me for getting to work so closely with Vivian…I mean, Professor Devereux.

You can still call her Vivian in your head, you dummy.

Elyse will get suspicious if she hears me calling Vivian by her first name.

Suspicious of what? Nothing happened…except for you peeing the bed.

My cheeks got a few degrees warmer.

“Whatever,” Elyse said, breaking me out of my own thoughts. “I hope you didn’t do anything too embarrass yourself if you were drinking that much.”

More embarrassing than you’ll ever know.

“I didn’t drink that much,” I lied, matching Elyse’s emphasis on ‘that.’ “Just…too much to drive home. Besides, Professor Devereux insisted I stay the night, she said it was the least she could do after pouring me so much wine over dinner.”

“Whatever,” Elyse closed her laptop and got up from the couch, “must be nice to be teacher’s pet.”

“I’m not!” I forced my voice to stay mild. “It was just dinner! We talked about my dissertation!”

“No one else is having dinner and wine with their advisor, Lavender,” she said condescendingly, as if I wasn’t seeing something that was obvious to everyone else, and began walking to her room. “At least when we get our doctorates, we’ll know we really earned them,” she slammed her bedroom door to punctuate her sentence.

“I am earning it!” I told her closed door through gritted teeth.

I did my best not to stomp as I walked over to the couch and, for the second time that day, flung myself on it. I had woken up from my nap in such a good mood too; now it was ruined.

I had liked Elyse when we first met, but ever since Vivian agreed to be my dissertation advisor, she had been getting more and more bitchy towards me, she had never been so direct about it before. I could understand jealousy, but I couldn’t understand why she took it out on me.

If only she knew what really happened.

I’d rather she think I slept with Vivian. Better she thinks I’m sleeping my way through my doctorate than to know just how badly I humiliated myself in front of Vivian.