Page 9 of Heartbreak Kings
The professor, a gigantic bear of a guy who looked like he might moonlight as a mall Santa, rolled his eyes and sighed, and an uncomfortable chuckle ran through the crowd. The guy was dead wrong, but about eighty percent of the time with these guys, that was true. Sabine was smart and well-read, and her detractors spent more energy on hating her than they did on intelligently refuting her arguments.
Sabine stood. “With Professor Gomez’s permission, I’d like to read from the text.” He nodded assent as the chuckling grew louder. “Chapter one, pages thirteen to fourteen.” She sat there reading through the quote, as calmly as if reading it off for her news vlog. By the end, her challenger had gone from smug to red to white to sweating in embarrassment.
Mic drop.More laughter rippled as the guy flopped back into his seat. I sneered at the back of his head.Childish.This behavior damaged our reputations, not her reporting on it.
Professor Gomez took it from there as Sabine sat down, her challenger silenced. “As you can see from this passage, Sethe suffers a flashback of what she had to do to pay for her baby’s gravestone. This was very much a traumatic event for her, not only because of her blood guilt about her baby, but because she had to degrade herself sexually just to pay for aspects of her baby’s funeral.In this flashback, there are two Sethes. The grieving mother who wants to honor her child, and the child-killer, obviously suicidal, who is doing penance for her crime. And as we see in her relationship with Beloved…”
His lecture went back into the usual drone then, going over concepts I had already grasped. I had readBelovedback in high school, to broaden my horizons, and I had been gripped by both all the horror going on and the exhausted, traumatized but still proud Sethe. Meanwhile, the guy, who had ignored an entire key paragraph of text in his eagerness to challenge Sabine, had probably read nothing beyond comic books.
Sabine was smart. She stood up for herself. She had a strong sense for people’s bullshit and would call angry men three times her size on theirs. She recorded everything she could get away with, and she’d use people’s attacks on her against them by going public with them.
I can’t help but admire her…a little. Even if I was sitting here plotting to manipulate her and ruin her enthusiasm for staying at Markinswell.
I had tasked Nathaniel with finding out as much as possible about Sabine’s background and family. I knew she was poor and here on a full scholarship. Nathaniel theorized Sabine’s claims that this was her best academic opportunity were less than accurate. Rather, Markinswell represented her only full-ride scholarship and her only financially viable way of going to college.
I watched her typing away on her laptop as the lecture went on. If that were true, we really could ruin an impoverished girl’s one chance of making it in mainstream journalism. All on some principle I didn’t entirely agree with. I didn’t want those concerned with the mixing of the student body to lose their voices, but their vindictiveness about the whole thing left me feeling soiled.
But here I was, coming up with the plan and acting on it, because that was what was expected of me. The leader of the Alpha Omega Gentlemen’s Club either solved the campus problems brought to him, or he lost his position.
I followed Sabine at a distance as she walked to the journalism survey. I loved watching her walk. The sway of her hips in her professional-looking broomstick skirt. The determined set of her shoulders. That she never wandered or seemed uncertain.
I was sure that most of her confident demeanor was just very good acting. None of the shit she was going through could be comfortable for her. Inside, she must be frightened as hell by some of the things happening. Some of it unsettled even me. And, to be truthful, made me angry.I’d like to find the ones sending the rape threats and deal with them myself. People like that were not men. They were he-apes who needed some time in a cage or just a good beating. They did not help the cause of returning the campus to its former state one bit. And fear of rape was the weapon of the weakest sort of male.
I suppressed a surge of desire, watching her toss her hair unconsciously as she stepped through the door of the classroom. If only we weren’t at odds, I would have pursued her for real. But school politics had done this, not I. And if it took putting her through some drama to embarrass the school for its decision, I had no problem doing that.
Now, however, I needed to focus on step two of my little game, making contact. I was certain I could dazzle her if given the opportunity.
I sat two seats away from her in class, casually staying in the corner of her vision, turned just a little in her direction, so she could see my face. Perhaps even notice my increasing, curious glances and my smile.
So, what sort of man is your type, Sabine?
Friendly?
Reserved?
Commanding?
Charming?
She couldn’t like an aggressive approach amid all this chaos. I doubted I could befriend her without her becoming very wary of me. She must know at least something about campus politics by now.If I showed myself as ethical, would it prove me as trustworthy in her eyes?Any great lover knew that trustworthiness, or at least a good pretense of it, was a great way to get past a woman’s guard.
I caught her sneaking a peek at me and glanced her way almost unconsciously, warmed by the touch of her soft, soulful gaze. Everything else about her said she was a seasoned professional, too good for freshman year, too good for the people harassing her. But those doe eyes of hers drew my gaze magnetically, making my breath catch.The challenge of dealing with a woman who had some natural power to go along with her intellect intrigued me.
I grabbed a swallow from my water bottle. When I straightened, I saw one student behind her reach for her hair. I caught his eye and shot him a warning glare. The kid, a skinny freshman with glaringly red hair, blinked at me and sat back in his seat.That’s better. Enough of this acting like we’re in third grade.
Sabine seemed oblivious, until out of nowhere, she spoke up, “So, are you going to introduce yourself, or are you just here to keep the freshman boys in line?” She didn’t even glance up from her copy of Michael Herr’sDispatches, but she was smiling faintly.
“I was planning to introduce myself, before the fool seated behind you tried his hand at pigtail-pulling.” I kept my voice gentle and amused, very casual. There was no reason to be tense, even if that soft gaze left me just a little off-balance when she turned it back to me.
“Well, all right, then,” she teased gently. “So, what’s your name?”
“Blake. Blake Morrison,” I replied smoothly and offered my hand.
She shook it. Her skin was soft, her grip firm. “I guess you already know who I am.”
“Yes, well, you’re difficult to miss.” I chuckled softly and noted how quickly she took her hand back. “You seem a bit surprised by my approaching you.”
“Well, it’s refreshing to run into men on campus not threatened by having a woman around.” The corner of her mouth quirked.
