Page 15 of A Novel Love Story

“And how did you find these people?” I asked, taking a bite of the snickerdoodle. Pru always made the best cookies. Warm and gooey, melt in your mouth. If I didn’t break out every time I ate sugar, I’d have a mouthful of cavities because of her.

She sat down in the threadbare chair on the other side of my paper-filled desk. “The internet.”

“Absolutely not,” I said instantly.

Pru leaned forward. “C’mon, Elsy, just hear me out for a second? I did bring you coffee,” she added, and I took another sip of my latte. I guessed I owed her a listen, even if the answer was going to be an emphaticnoeither way.

I sighed. “Fine. So you met them on the internet, but how do youknowthese people?”

She tried to hide a grin, thinking that maybe she was going to win me over after all. “I started chatting with JakesNob42 about the publisher pushingReturn to Senderback a few weeks, and we just started … talking. About a book club. They know a few people. I know you …”

“So you planned an online book club with someone who willfully chose their username as JakesNob42 …”

“Oh my god.” She rolled her eyes. “You were just complaining the other day about not being able to talk to anyone about the books you read, and now I come to you with a great idea and you can’t get over a username. Which, I might add”—she held up a finger—“is a bit ironic, if I recall your username from high school.”

I sipped my latte loudly. “I don’t know what you mean. Sparkle-LlamaCullen was a great username.”

“It was—what do the youths say? Cringe?”

“Youths don’t say ‘cringe’ anymore,” I replied.

I sighed dramatically, and shook my head. “Bless their little hearts …”

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes again, and took out her phone. “I’m just saying, I’m joining this super-smutty book club, and you should, too.”

“Is itreallygoing to be super smutty?”

To which she replied, “We’re starting with Rachel Flowers. So Emily Henry–level canoodling,but I think we’re going to transition nicely into omegaverse and sex spores.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it again. Gave it a long, and very, very deep thought. Itwouldbe nice to sit down and talk about novels with people who liked browsing the romance section of bookstores. Or, at least, it’d be more entertaining than chatting with Elmer Williams, for the third time, about the newest translation ofBeowulf. Not that there was anythingwrongwith academic discussions—I was an English professor; I loved waxing poetic about the nuances of Apollo and Dionysus’s relationship in Ovid’sMetamorphoses, or the Byronification ofThe Vampyre. But to sit down with mostly strangers and just talk about a lovely little meet-cute? A grand romantic gesture?

Oh, be still, my beating, bloody heart.

“I do like Rachel Flowers,” I finally admitted, and Pru wiggled her eyebrows. Because she had me. Sheknewshe had me.

“No, youloveRachel Flowers. And as luck would have it, so does everyone else in the book club. It’s how I found them. We’re starting with the first book, and reading the next two over October and November, so when the fourth book comes out in February …”

“We’ll be ready,” I finished.

“We?”

I took another sip of my latte. “All right. You’ve caught me.”

She winked. “Hook, line, and sinker. I knew you’d come around.” Then she stood, and stole a peppermint out of the bowl on my desk, reserved exclusively for the college freshman boys who, somehow, didn’t understand that hygiene meant brushing your teeth before your 8:00 a.m. class. “We’re meeting over video call on Thursday. Right after your English 101 class. Come over and we can hop on the call together?”

“Fine, fine.” I checked my watch. It was almost time for Shakespeare’s Comedies,a class I didn’t teach, but the professor had taken a leave of absence after contracting mono (along with, mysteriously, another professor in the nursing school), so it fell to me to teach about taming shrews. “I hope it’s not going to be too weird.”

“Nonsense. We’rewaypast the point of weird.” Then she popped the peppermint into her mouth and took her leave just as swiftly as she’d come.

PRUDENCE NEVER DID ANYTHING IN HALVES, WHILE I DID WELLif I remembered to bringmyselfto things, which is exactly what happened that Thursday of the inaugural meeting of the Super Smutty Book Club. She’d gone all out, with a cheese plate and veggie tray meant for at least ten people, and our favorite bottle of Riesling.

“Abouttimeyou got here,” she said as I slipped in through the front door to her apartment. She wore herI GOT WET IN QUIXOTIC FALLST-shirt, and I took mine out of my satchel and quickly changed in the hall bathroom. “We’re just about to start!”

“Sorry, sorry,” I called, pulling off my Caesar salad–stained top and tugging on my T-shirt. “I had a rather heated discussion with one of the students aboutRomeo and Juliet.”

I heard Pru pause on the other side of the door. “I thought you were filling in for Shakespeare’s Comedies?”

“Oh, I am. The student argued thatRomeo and Julietis satire, like most of Willy Shake’s comedies.” I pulled my hair into a ponytail, checked my eyeliner, and opened the door to find her waiting outside. “So I should be teaching it with the comedies.”

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