Page 20 of Love, Academically
Shit, kickboxing. It was unlikely he’d get out of the hospital in time.
Rhys scoffed. This was the antithesis of a ‘hot date’.
“Is everything okay?” Lila asked, wincing as she moved her ankle.
“Is it sore?” he asked, pointlessly. Of course it was sore, that’s why they were there.
Lila nodded with a grimace. “And cold.”
Did he have a blanket in the car? No, of course he didn’t. Why would he?
“Put your foot up here.” Rhys gestured to his lap. “You should elevate it.”
“You want me to put my leg on you?” Lila asked, surprised.
“Well, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. But you should elevate it.”
Why was she making this so hard? He was only trying to help.
“Oh, should I?” she asked, forehead creasing.
“Yes,” he said firmly. Surely, everyone knew that you had to elevate a twist or a sprain.
Rhys watched her throat bob in a swallow before she said, “All right,” and put her hands under her thigh, lifting her leg gingerly and resting it over his legs.
Ah. He hadn’t thought this through. What was he supposed to do with his hands? He couldn’t put them onherleg. That would just be weird. He had said that she could put her leg up there, so the least he could do was not maul her. With a lack of anywhere else to put them, he just kind of squished them across his waist.
“Thank you,” Lila said, facing him, sitting sideways on her seat now. “It is more comfortable this way.”
Rhys just nodded. Lila had managed to get some glitter on her face (where did it even come from?), and it glinted in the fluorescent light. That’s it, the car would have to be valeted. There was no way he could cope with glitter flashing at him when he was trying to drive.
She was looking at him expectantly.
“Do you bake cookies every night? Is that why you always smell of vanilla and sugar?” He blurted the first thing he could think of. And he was hungry.
“I hate baking, but I like the end result, and they taste so much better than any from the shop. Believe me, I’ve tried them all.”
There was a lot to unpack there. The whole goddamned History Department smelled of cookies and sweetness and she didn’t even like making them? Eating them was a different matter, and he fully appreciated their appeal. Rhys would lay a wager that she had pushed a shopping trolley full of different brands ofcookies and a head of broccoli around a supermarket, with just the barest nod to five-a-day.
“So if not baking, then what do you want to do with your life? Not that running the department isn’t a worthy thing,” Rhys added quickly, tightening his jaw, because could he be any more condescending? Sometimes his words didn’t come out right. They didn’t sound the way they did in his head.
“I don’t know what you lecturers would do without me. You wouldn’t even know what lecture halls you need to be in, regardless of the rest of the stuff I do for you all,” she chided lightly.
“I didn’t mean that your role wasn’t important.”
“I know, I’m teasing you.” She nudged him with her shoulder.
But she hadn’t answered, she’d deflected. Rhys waited, but Lila looked down at her fingers, fiddling with one of her sparkly rings.
“I don’t want to tell you, you’ll laugh.”
“Why would I laugh?” Unless it was something he was supposed to laugh at? Although he didn’t think it was, not the way her cheeks were flushed with what he presumed was embarrassment. He would be the last person to laugh at anyone following their dreams.
Lila shrugged and crossed her arms over her chest. “Jason always thought it was a bit silly.”
“Oh right, did he?” It wasn’t a question. He’d already established that Jason was a bit of a self-centred dick. “I think denigrating someone because of what they want to do, what their passion is, is an awful thing to do.”
He should know.
