Page 4 of One-Star Romance

“But to your question, linguistics is the study of how we form speech, where different words come from, et cetera. Language is fundamental to our social interactions, and those interactions can seem mysterious or unpredictable, but linguistics reveals that they all follow a pattern. There’s an order to everything—” He caught himself. “And now I will stop, since normal people do not need to spend hours discussing words.”

“Yeah, I could take them or leave them,” she said, then flashed him a grin. “I’m a writer, by the way. Or, well, learning how to be one.”

His spine straightened. “Which MFA program are you in?”

“I’m not.”

“Ah.” For a brief second, a doubtful look flashed across his face before he turned back to the bar and took a sip of his whiskey soda.

“What?” Natalie asked.

“Nothing.” He looked down at his drink, turning the liquid around in the glass. “What kind of writing—”

“Try not to let your head explode, but I’m not planning to attend a graduate program.”

A huff of breath escaped him—was that…a scoff?—before he said, neutrally, “To each their own.”

Natalie folded her arms across her chest, thrusting her head up. “Go ahead, say it. Tell me why I’m making a big mistake.”

“I don’t necessarily think you are.”

“Yes, you do. So, go on.”

His expression darkened. “If you insist. Academia helps other people take you seriously, but it also helps you take yourself seriously.”

“Did you get that from an admissions pamphlet?”

“No, my father. He’s a professor.” He shook his head, then went on. “Grad school proves that you want to do the rigorous work of your future profession.”

“Sure, maybe I’m lazy,” Nat said, a fire starting up behind her eyes even as she kept her tone level. “Or maybe I decided that I couldn’t take on more student loans for a program that wouldn’t guarantee me a steady job at the end.” He began to say something, but she continued, unable to stop now even if she’d wanted to. “So instead of being ‘rigorous,’ I’m just juggling four part-time jobs while working my way through every book on writing that I can find at the library, attempting to befriend other writers so we can trade pages, submitting to literary journals, and attending every free author talk that I can cram into my schedule.”

She stopped and caught her breath. Around them, people laughed and flirted. Rob looked at her with a steady expression. She didn’t normally let herself get so worked up. That, or people didn’t normally stay to hear it.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“Yes, actually,” she said, throwing her shoulders back. “Sometimes these author talks have free wine, so I’m saving on my liquor budget.”

The tension stretched out between them, brittle and tight. And then he said, “I hardly ever get free wine in my PhD program.”

“Whew.” Nat shook her head. “Did I get overly defensive?”

There was a small smile on his face now. “Only as much as I got overly didactic.” He stopped for a moment, as if trying to articulate something in his mind. “Sometimes when you’re in the middle of it, it’s easy to forget that academia is not the center of the universe.”

“Same thing with writing! It requires so much of you that you have to convince yourself it’s the only thing you could love in order to keep going.”

“I don’t know that I have to convince myself,” he began.

“You came out of the womb loving academia and have never wavered since?”

“Hm,” he said, a look of concentration on his face. Natalie couldn’t help leaning forward as she waited to hear what he’d say next. Brushing her hair back behind her ears, she realized that her palms were clammy for some reason. “The womb bit is not entirely inaccurate.”

At parties, Natalie often found it difficult to stay put in a conversation. She didn’t like this aspect of herself. But there was always somebody else to talk to, someone who could end up changing the course of your life. Another guy to flirt with when you were single, or somebody who could have a connection in the literary world. So she flitted away the moment a conversation got awkward, a master of the excuse. (I’m just going to get another drink! I have to pee! I think I see my long-lost friend in the shadows!) Somehow, though, talking to this strange, reserved man, with his dry wit and serious eyes, she wanted to stick around and figure out how he worked. He gave as good as he got, all without breaking into a sweat or a smile (mostly). She could tell he was an academic—he had that look, as if he was working out a problem in his mind. Studying her. Truly taking in her words instead of just thinking of the next thing to say to make himself seem impressive, like so many other men did. (And like she did herself so much of the time.) A voice in the back of her mind told her that she should flit away, but she ignored it. Because something about the way he was studying her made her want to give him all the relevant information. It was only fair.

“I did apply to Iowa,” she admitted. “My senior year of college. It’s the Holy Grail, so I figured, why not at least try?”

“Ah. But I take it…?”

“Rejected. Which sucked, of course. You must have felt a similar way with the mime academy.” Now it was his turn to choke on his drink, and the corners of her own mouth turned up in satisfaction. “Rejection can happen to anyone, though. Iowa is incredibly competitive. But maybe…” She leaned forward. She didn’t often say this part when people asked her about grad school. “Maybe part of me worried that, if I applied more widely, I still wouldn’t get in anywhere. That my work would be too girly, not serious enough, not the kind of writing that an MFA program would be looking for. I can dismiss one rejection. But ten? If that happened, I don’t know if I’d be able to make myself pursue it anyway. I’d feel…like an idiot.”

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