Moving In With The Enemy

Chapter 68 ~ "You Spoil Me Rotten"

I hate school sometimes.

Yes, I like researching and finding out answers to questions that no one's every thought of before and I like my degree, but the course work sucks. I'm sick of reading pages and pages of scholarly articles and books and writing a new paper every other week.

My honours project is taking every ounce of zip out of me and I was starting to worry if it was even worth it anymore. I hadn't heard about Brown's Masters program yet and that's the whole reason for this extra burden.

Today was Tuesday, one of my weirder days. I only had class today until twelve and then I normally spent the rest of the day grinding out work. Today I had to meet with Doctor Binkley and have a discussion about my work. It was something we did monthly to make sure I felt like I was always on the right track. 

Walker had a break after his class at one-thirty and we were planning to meet up and study together until his next class at four. Then I was planning to go home again and take it easy.

I take the elevator up to the top floor of the arts building and navigate the familiar twisting hallways until I find her office. I'd been here so many times, had so much to discuss with her. Sometimes we'd just meet because I genuinely liked talking to her.

I see her typing at her desk and I poke my head in, knocking on her doorframe. "Annie." She smiles turning around and closing the windows on her monitor. Her office was well established, she'd obviously been here for quite a long time and it showed, from the stacks of books, to the pictures of her and her family to the plants on her windowsill.

"Hi Doctor Binkley." I smile and she grins. "How was your weekend?"

"Boring, I just read a really interesting book." She says, snapping her fingers and retrieving it from a stack on the corner of her desk. "It's about societal patriarchal views in early modern Europe, the brothel industry and all of that sort of thing." She says, waving her hands. "I thought you might like to borrow it?"

I definitely don't have time to read that, not on top of all of my other work. But I'll skim the preface, first chapter and conclusion, bring it back in two weeks and she won't know any different.

"That would be great." I nod and she kindly passes it over.

"How was your weekend?"

"It was great actually, it was my birthday yesterday so I got to celebrate with my friends and family."

"Oh lovely." She beams. "Do anything special?"

"My boyfriend took me to dinner last night, it was really nice." I tell her and she raises her eyebrows.

"I didn't know you had someone in your life, not that it's any of my business of course, I just.....I try to know my students outside of just our university." She says with a shy smile, placing her palms on the desk.

"We've been seeing each other for a few months now." I nod. "I guess that's pretty recent in all the time we've known each other. Plus we haven't seen much of each other in the past few months."

"Not nearly enough." She chuckles. "So tell me all about Northwestern, I just read the journal you all published. Very interesting."

"It was so incredible." I insist, running a hand through my hair. "I loved every second of it, it was kind of exhausting, but worth it and I just.....I feel like I got so much out of it." I explain, knowing I'm rambling. "Thank you so much for proposing it, I learned so much while I was away."

"And how's your project?" She asks. "Still making progress?"

"Piece by piece." I nod. "Every week I try to give at least six hours to it, it's well over halfway done."