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January...
Change doesn’t happen overnight.
But shit, I wish it would go faster than this.
It doesn’t help that I’m nervous as all hell, and I just want class to start already and I’m going to lose my mind a little if the door to the classroom opens and it’s not the professor, or hell, more people I don’t know.
It’s weird, how some people stick together, say hello to each other, introduce themselves in a business-like fashion that has me squirming in my seat with secondhand embarrassment, embarrassment that I don’t know anyone.
Hell, it feels like a horrifying grown-up version of your first day at a new school, where everyone already knows each other, and there isn’t a hope in hell at being welcomed into a group, at finding where you belong.
It’s fine, though, even if I’m so nervous my stomach lining feels all hot and fiery, and my mouth has gone desert dry. I hastily take a sip of my coffee—the first of many tonight since right after this class on Organizational Behaviour I have a shift at the Arsenal, and I won’t be getting home until three or four in the morning.
I get a few nods sent my way, which makes me a little self-conscious about what I’m wearing, even though I’m not wearing anything close to my version of ‘work-appropriate’ clothing (which is stashed in the gym bag in my car), and yet some of these people are dressed in their version of office wear, and I’m feeling severely underdressed.
Guys and gals dressed in suits, cute blouses and shirts, jewelry to match, makeup understated while mine is smokey and alluring because I’m not going to have that much time to do anything with my face before I get to work. After all, I don’t really know if this first class is actually going to count for something, or if we’re going to finish early.
I don’t know a whole lot, it seems.
The door snaps against the wall, making a sound loud enough that I startle and make a half-sound that has people looking back at me. I give a little wave, my cheeks on fire, the tips of my ears burning, along with every inch of exposed skin.
It’s not the professor who walks in, nope, because that wouldn’t make my heart go crazy from all of this.
It’s the person I wasn’t expecting in the least, and I have to slap my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing maniacally.
That’s Callum Johnston, the other round-the-clock bouncer that’s become Derek’s right-hand man, the super hot guy that I absolutely cannot, will not fall into bed with because I’m the Izzy that’s getting her life together and not the one that runs away from her responsibilities.
Holy shit, holy shit.
Am I dreaming, hallucinating?
There’s no way that this guy is here for this class, no freaking way.
He’s dressed like he would be for work—jeans that fit over his muscled thighs, a tight T-shirt to show off all the bulk underneath the black hoodie that he has unzipped, hood pulled over his head, winter coat crumpled in a meaty first. He’s got a pen that’s nestled in the corner of his mouth that he’s currently chewing, like he’s trying to stave off a cigarette craving.
I only know this because whenever I get to work, it’s to find Callum pacing along the sidewalk while Derek indulges in his nicotine addiction, and Callum ends up reminding me of a caged animal waiting for a golden opportunity to rip your throat out.
Hell, he’s here though, dressed in head-to-toe black, like he’s made of shadows and smoke, ready to mess you up as soon as you step a toe out of line. I mean, it’s his job, after all.
Wow, wow, wow. Am I attracted to the look and vibe he’s got going on? Sure.
Should I be? Definitely not.
This could get interesting, and it could get interesting fast.
Callum looks intimidating standing there, I can admit it, true. He stands like a sentry, and I hold my breath as his eyes scan the room, passing over everyone already seated, conversation halted for a millisecond before resuming, but I can already tell from my peripheral vision that women (and men) are paying close attention to him. After all, he’s kind of like me—we both stand out and don’t really fit the mold of what graduate students should look like.
It was a change I needed but wasn’t sure I wanted.
I don’t have the discipline to be a mega YouTuber like my older sister, or a pro-gamer like my cousin Vick, or hell, I could barely make it out of school, and I won’t survive doing another thousand years’ worth of post-secondary education to become a PT like Amber, and Evie’s working her dream job of managing a little bookstore that hasn’t yet been eaten up by the bigger chains here in Montreal.
I don’t really care enough about books to do what she does, and I don’t have the business wherewithal to actually contribute to running it, so this seemed like a good idea at the time—a two-year stint at getting a diploma in business management from the other English University in Montreal, and hoping it gives me something in the end.
My New Year’s resolutions were to become a better, badder version of myself—an Izzy 2.0 as it were—all the hardware remains intact, all the software’s been upgraded.
Oh God, he’s coming over here, he’s coming over here!
I panic for a second, then realize that I’m sitting on the aisle seat of a long strip of table that resembles a giant picnic table more than anything, allotted seats in a given amount of spacing. Whoever’s come in before Callum has seated themselves three or four chairs away from me, keeping that sort of social distance that dictates whether you know another person or not.
I gulp audibly and hold my breath as Callum makes his way up the stairs leading to my row, and then...walking right by me to take a seat in my row, keeping a seat between us for spacing, following those social rules and nuances that no one openly discusses but we all seem to inherently know.
Oh my Goddddddd...
Are we just going to pretend like we don’t know each other? Is that what we’re going to do?
I practically burn with my indecision, mind racing at trying to decide whether to say something, even if it is a quick hello, but I just don’t.
I’ve “worked” with Callum for a while now, and he’s no longer the new guy. He knows my face, recognizes me, if not already knows my name, so really the ball’s in his court, and not the other way around.
I huff out an annoyed breath at myself, waiting for him to look at me with quick little glances in my peripheral vision, but I can’t see anything except a portion of his profile based on his hood being pulled low on his head.
How does he see? Can he see? Why is he acting like a sheepdog?
It’s not like I’m the one to ever say hi first, either. When I do see him—if it’s in the break room, or before leaving for the night, or whatever, we hardly make eye contact, even though I’m very aware of him, wondering if all that silence is hiding an awkward, shy guy that I could become friends with.
Nope, we’re not going to be the old Izzy anymore, partying it up with random strangers. It’s time to get serious, Iz, remember? We have shit to do and milestones to achieve and all of that. We need to actually have some accomplishments to our name, make Mom and Dad proud.
Make myself proud—start something I can finish, and actually finish it.
That’s the resolution for this year—finish this semester with good grades, better grades than I have ever received in my life, work hard, keep my head above water. Network, anything, because unfortunately, I can’t stay at the Arsenal forever unless I get serious about my future.
Do I really want to, though?
No.
Should I?
Hell, yes.
I glance over to my right again, looking at Callum just sitting there, calm as you please, twirling that pen from his mouth between his fingers like some kind of rockstar drummer of old, and by that movement alone, I can sort of tell that he’s nervous.
Faced by a line of disgruntled people waiting to get inside the Arsenal and whatever time of night, guys and gals getting drunk off their faces and starting fights—I’ve never even seen Callum break a sweat. He just sort of moves forward with authority and something like grace as he goes to defuse a situation.
I’ve been watching him for a while, trying to figure out his deal, Derek ribbing me about it more often than not (although not in front of Callum, for which I am eternally grateful).
Nope, Callum seems just as nervous, just as out of sorts, as I am as we sit in this classroom, barely a quarter past five o’clock in the evening, the sky black as pitch through the windows, making the bright and whiny fluorescent lights overhead appear to be that much brighter.
I quickly notice that we’re the only two dressed down, and I wonder what that says about us, what kind of first impressions we’re giving off.
I’ve always been nicknamed the party girl of the group, Evie always being the bookworm (even though she can drink anyone under the table and has a poker face that’ll make you doubt your own sanity before believing that she’s telling a bald-faced lie) of our little duo, my older cousins always so wrapped up in each other’s lives that there’s always been a sort of disconnect between us and them.
But still, in the Prewitt family, I am known to be the irresponsible party girl who has everything handed to her (or so Max has thought). And it looks like I’m living up to expectations here, too, a floundering fish in a sea full of hungry sharks that have scented blood.
Great, just really freaking great.
I’m going to have to buy a whole new wardrobe for this program, aren’t I, if I want to look the part, right?
There goes my next paycheck...
“Sorry everyone, sorry about that,” Professor Margot Bertrand says, her English lightly accented as she walks in the room with her arm swinging, laptop pinned to her chest, looking an elegant sort of frazzled, and honestly, I kind of want to look like that when I’m frazzled. Shit, if I can get my life together like Prof. Bertrand, then I think I have everything covered from here on out.
It’s the first few days of January, and I’m already whittling down and specifying my New Year’s resolution—always be put together like Prof. Bertrand, keep your shit contained, and take care of you own shit. Stop asking everyone for help all the time just because you know they’ll give it to you.
“Traffic is horrendous,” she says, skipping over the ‘h’ like it never existed in the first place as she hooks up her laptop to the projector at the front podium in front of the class. Her eyes scan through the selections as the projector screen slides down from the heavens with a disconcerting whirring sound, and I wish I’d had the forethought to bring my laptop with me to hide behind instead of a good old notebook and pen to take notes in.
Why did I do that when I know I can type a lot faster than I write?
Come on, Izzy, it’s like you’re not even trying...
I pull in a deep breath, tap the point of my pen against my notebook, keeping time in this way as Prof. Bertrand’s presentation gets shown on the screen, and then the lights are dimmed, and off we go.
“Good evening, everyone, good evening. I’m Professor Margot Bertrand, it’s nice to meet all of you,” she says, a little out of breath, but the kind of breathlessness that’s relegated to running up a flight of stairs because she was afraid of being late, not because she’s nervous. She’s not—I can tell.
“Everyone have a copy of the class syllabus? If not, it’s going to be online under our class folder. I’ve recently uploaded all of your assignments for that folder as well, so technically, if you were very, very eager you could start and finish them all by tomorrow, and then check your textbook to make sure you’ve answered correctly,” she says, laser pointer flickering to the Assignments portion of the syllabus, worth already 20 percent of my grade.
The grading scheme is further broken down into a midterm and a final (worth 50 percent of my grade), and I’m already starting to sweat.
The professor continues to talk about herself and her research and how that relates to organizational behavior (she specifically looks at productivity through the lens of gender roles which I find to be really cool, if complicated in my head, but maybe I’m just not that smart of a person to be reading her academic papers and whatnot), and then she quickly becomes my least favorite professor on the planet.
“So I’d like to take a moment and get to know about you,” she says, waving her hands in our direction, and my throat closes up, and I want to die from secondhand embarrassment for her.
“Please, I’m going to call your names from the roster here so I can put a name to a face, and then tell me one of your more interesting attributes, if you’ve come to Montreal from elsewhere, and anything else you’d like to tell me.” She smiles, but it’s hidden underneath an evil grin as I die a little on the inside.
Didn’t we get rid of this shit back in kindergarten? Who introduces themselves in class anymore?
You literally have my tuition money, why do you need to know about me at all?
Why, why, why?
Like me, I can vaguely feel that Callum has stiffened up, too, like he wasn’t expecting this sort of revelation tonight, even though my attention gets snagged on how very super interesting it’ll be to hear him talk for the first time in six months—his unusual quiet demeanor being challenged in front of the professor.
What if he’s hard of hearing, Iz? Don’t be a dick, would you?
Right, right, right.
People take their turns, so many of them listing their credentials by trade, a bunch of people older than my father with a bunch of letters after their name, that makes my cheeks burn with embarrassment.
Jesus, what the hell am I doing here?
I know that I paid to be here, just like everybody else, and I was accepted into the program for a reason, and maybe yeah, my reference letters were top-notch, because sure as shit my grades weren’t the best, or maybe they’re looking to fill in their quota for a young-ish white female, local to the Montreal area?
Shit, shit, shit.
My heart rate goes out of control when it comes to my turn, and I swear I forget how to speak for a second.
“Hello,” I say. “My name’s Isabella,” I tell the room, cringing on the inside, because no one calls me Isabella after the whole Twilight Saga debacle and me getting up in people’s faces at the strange comparison between me and a certain character just by sharing her name.
“I work in retail,” I embellish (because slinging and selling drinks are a form of retail, right? Right?!), “and I was born and raised in Montreal. Good to meet everyone,” I say, nodding along and feeling my cheeks burn all the more for it as the silence stretches.
I glance over to my right to find Callum having pushed back the hood, scratching at his head, his longish black hair falling in almost-waves around his face, doing nothing to soften the sharpness of his features or the aura that surrounds him that if you were caught in a dark alley with this guy: You’re dead, dead, dead.
“Hi,” he says, his voice deep and resonant, and I find myself gaping at him.
Yeah, I definitely never heard him talk before because that voice of his? It’s something else.
“I’m Callum. Born and raised in Montreal, and I work in security. It’s good to be here.” Callum nods, turning his head to look at the next person down the row, effectively dismissing any potential comments or questions anyone else may have, as the person that follows sputters to comply with the professor’s directions.
I watch Callum pull in a deep breath, letting it out slowly, then return to twirling his pen over and over between his fingers, to the point where it’s just an adult fidget spinner, and maybe he needs the kind of grounding techniques that I use on myself whenever I’m having a bad hour or day.
Huh.
Wasn’t expecting that, not at all.
When class is finally over and my hand is cramping, I nearly squawk when he turns quickly to look at me, and I know I’ve been caught staring at him. I go for a sheepish grin, waiting for him to return the smile, because I honestly didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m waylaid by how very beautiful he is, under all of this glorious fluorescent lighting that makes everyone look a little ill.
“What are you looking at?” he asks, green eyes flaring wide, jaw clenched.
I shake my head and turn away, practically hunching in on myself so I don’t blurt out anything stupid and make him pissed.
Well, there goes that idea of being study buddies.
Callum apparently hates my guts.
Why, though? Why?
