Keep Me If You Can (If You Can #3)

20. Seagulls Don’t Have Tits

Chapter twenty

Seagulls Don’t Have Tits

O nce in a while, I wondered if I was secretly part wizard.

Coincidence was one thing, but there had been enough instances of me thinking something random only to have that thing happen shortly after for me to wonder.

I didn’t mean things that had obvious consequences. If I thought to myself “I’m going to fail this paper because I mixed up the due date with the midterm date” and proceeded to fail the paper, it wasn’t exactly unexpected.

But if I thought “Boy, I sure miss Ben right now, but I wish I could randomly run into him somewhere because I don’t want to text him out of nowhere and dump all my problems on him” and then got kicked out of Dr. Spitzki’s class because my phone rang unexpectedly, it would be super fucking weird if the person on the other end of the phone was Ben.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

“Hey, Daughter of Mine!” my mom said after I answered.

“Hey Mom,” I said, walking past Dr. Spitzki, who was still pointing at the classroom door in a silent order to get out. “One sec.”

“No, no,” Dr. Spitzki said, his voice full of bright sarcasm. “Actually, Nellie, maybe this is one call worth answering. Let me see your phone.”

I looked at him incredulously. “You want to talk to my mom?”

“Normally I would refuse to speak to a student’s parents since all of you are adults by the time you get into my classroom,” Dr. Spitzki said. “But given how childish you act, maybe a dose of parental disappointment is what’s needed for you to smarten up.”

A few of my classmates let out awkward chuckles, though it seemed to be more out of discomfort than anything. Far more of them had looks of shock on their face, and at least one person in the second row let out a whispered “What the fuck?”

Which was fair. It was pretty harsh, though even I wouldn’t argue that I didn’t deserve it, given how much of a shit I’d been in Dr. Spitzki’s classes over the past four years. But it also didn’t bother me at all.

If anything, I felt sorry for Dr. Spitzki.

Because my mom heard him, too.

“Give the phone to that dick-cheese-licking-walnut-fucker, Nellie,” she said.

I had no idea what a dick-cheese-licking-walnut-fucker was, but I wasn’t about to correct her. “Okay, Dr. Spitzki. If you say so.”

“Excellent,” Dr. Spitzki said as he took my phone. “Hello, Mrs. Belanger.”

Oof. Fumbled before he even had a fighting chance.

I couldn’t hear everything my mom said, but given that he started the conversation by reminding her she’d once been married to my dad, “walnut fucker” was probably among the nicer things. The smug look on Dr. Spitzki’s face was gone by the time he got another word in.

“I simply wanted to give you my opinion on the matter,” he said. After a pause, his face twisted in confusion. “Seagulls don’t have those, Mrs. B—right. Of course… No, they… Vicki, seagulls don’t have tits . They’re not mammals !”

The entire class burst out laughing, including me. I was willing to bet my mom had told him she didn’t give a seagull’s left tit about his opinion, but Dr. Spitzki seemed to be too hung up on the fact that my mom thought birds had tits to realize she was telling him she didn’t give a fuck.

When he handed the phone back to me a few minutes later, it had been replaced by what I assumed would be the same expression as someone who just licked dick cheese out of a walnut he’d fucked.

“I see where you get it,” he said.

“I tried to warn you,” I said.

“Just leave, Nellie.”

I shrugged and turned, even as the other students started laughing again.

“—piece of shit they hire to teach at that school,” my mom was saying as I lifted the phone to my ear. “Of course seagulls have tits!”

“They definitely don’t,” I said. “Birds can’t breastfeed.”

“Explain chicken breasts then, smartass,” she said.

“Sure. It’s the chest part of the chicken. But they don’t have mammary glands and ‘tit’ generally implies a nipple of some kind, so—”

“So you’re smart enough to know how bird tits work, but not to turn your phone off during class?” my mom asked.

I twisted my mouth, trying not to laugh as I found a bench to sit on around the corner from Dr. Spitzki’s classroom and office. “I thought you were on my side.”

“I’m on your side when it comes to not embarrassing you in front of a room full of people,” she snapped. “Unfortunately, that gull nipple you have for a professor is completely correct about it being rude to interrupt class like that.”

“I know. I just forgot. But since I got kicked out anyway, was there anything in particular you were calling about?”

“Of course there is,” she said. “I wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving before I go on vacation.”

I bit back a smile. “When are you leaving for Vegas?”

“In about twenty minutes,” she said.

“To go to the airport?”

“No, to get on the plane,” she said. “We’re waiting right now.”

After making sure she wasn’t getting arrested by air marshals for causing a scene in the middle of an airport or something, I circled back to the topic of her trip again, trying as subtly as I could to figure out who the other person in her we situation was.

“What are you going to do besides win the jackpot while you’re there?” I asked.

“Oh, wander the Strip,” she said. “Hit up the outlet malls. Maybe see a show or two.”

“What kind of show?” I asked.

“I haven’t decided yet, hon. There are so many to pick from.”

“You should go see the Magic Mike one,” I said.

“Nellie!” she said, cackling. “I can’t do that.”

“Oh. You like Chippendale’s better?”

“I’m not going to see a male stripper show,” she said.

“Why not?” I asked, sounding as innocent as I could. “That’s the perfect thing to do with your friend on a girl’s trip.”

She didn’t fall for it. “My friend and I are not interested in that kind of thing.”

“No? What’s she into instead? I’ll look up some ideas for you while you’re on your flight.”

“Very kind of you, Daughter of Mine, but you should be focused on not getting kicked out of class instead of looking up shows in Vegas.”

“Well, I already got kicked out, so I’m free for a while,” I said. “It’s really no problem.”

“Right,” she said. “Except it is.”

I frowned. “What?”

She sighed. “Hon… listen. Please be more responsible.”

My lips parted as I blinked down at my hands. “What?”

“Your professor might be more useless than a mesh raincoat, but as much as I hate to admit it, you’re in the wrong here.” She sighed, the sound uncomfortable. “If you’ve aggravated him to the point he’s answering your phone in class, it’s obvious this is an ongoing issue. You’re paying to be there, Nellie. Wasting your tuition by getting kicked out of class isn’t smart. You’re better than how you’re acting right now, hon.”

I glanced at my feet, trying to suppress the familiar sensation of guilt that always appeared when my mom mentioned tuition or bills or anything to do with the money she didn’t know I was taking from my dad, so there was room for the mostly unfamiliar feeling of disappointing my mom. Because while she hadn’t outright said the whole “I’m not mad, just disappointed” line, I heard the intent of it in her words.

And is there anything worse than that?

Other than an entire list of things that are far, far worse than disappointing your mom. But it still sucked.

“Okay,” I said. “Well, in that case, I have to go.”

“Nellie—”

“I have to get to my next class.” I was actually going to the library to study because I was done for the day, but that was a lot less time-sensitive than I needed my excuse to be. I scratched at my thumb with my forefinger. “Have a safe flight and a good time with your friend .”

“Honey—”

“And Happy Thanksgiving,” I said.

She sighed again. “I love you, hon. Have a good weekend.”

After hanging up, I opened my messages app.

Then I hesitated, turned the screen off, and twisted my phone in my hands.

I wanted to tell someone about this. To rant. To have a sympathetic ear commiserate with me about the fact that my mom wouldn’t even tell me who she’d ditched me for.

But Sydney was in class and more importantly, I’d been leaning on her for everything lately, even though she had her own stuff going on.

She still hadn’t told Olivier she’d found out about his wife, let alone told his wife about it. She kept saying she wasn’t ready, that she didn’t know how she wanted to do it, that she was scared. And all of those things were very fair.

But it had gotten to a point that Olivier knew something was wrong. The day before, he’d finally told her he noticed she wasn’t calling or texting him first. That she hadn’t put any thought into coming to visit him, and had turned down his offer to come see her.

I didn’t want to add more to her plate.

Then there was Anne-Marie. Or, rather, there wasn’t Anne-Marie. She’d finally stopped texting me, which was exactly what I’d wanted, so I didn’t know why it bothered me so much.

Maybe because I was starting to feel guilty about it.

Regardless, she wasn’t an option. And JP wasn’t an option, either. I’d never responded to the single text he’d sent asking how I was, despite the fact that the unread notification was killing me.

And for the second time that day, I thought about how much I missed Ben.

I missed talking to him. Sex with Ben had been great, of course, but I missed him far more on a platonic level. He had the right balance of understanding and gentle guidance that made me feel supported, but not judged. I didn’t have to worry about what came out of my mouth around Ben. Even if I was wrong, he listened to my justifications for why I felt a certain way.

I needed that. With everything going on right then, I needed it more than I even wanted to admit.

But Ben wasn’t here, and I wasn’t a magical wizard who could conjure up his presence with a simple thought, and I had studying to do.

So I walked down the hallway that led to the library, which passed by another hallway that had a bunch of professors’ offices in it, which was empty except for a single figure unlocking a door about halfway down the hall.

A single but very, very familiar figure.

I was seeing things, I told myself. It was probably another professor who had an office in the same spot. Or whoever was using that office for the year that Ben was on sabbatical. It couldn’t be—

My feet started moving before I’d even tried to convince myself it wasn’t him. I hadn’t even finished the thought when I reached the office I’d seen the person go into, the door still sitting open and the nameplate that had always been there still displayed on the wall beside it. His back was to the door, a familiar messenger bag sitting on the chair on one side of the desk as he rifled through a file folder.

“I’m surprised you let them put ‘Dr. Ben Cameron’ on the door. I thought you hated being called ‘Doctor,’” I said.

Ben jolted so violently that he knocked a cup of writing utensils off his desk. Pens and pencils clattered to the ground and scattered, a few of them going flying as he whirled around.

“Holy freakin’ Christ,” he gasped. “Nellie?”

Fuck, he looked good.

Ben’s medium-gold skin had darkened from the California sun, though the biggest change on his face was the layer of scruff on his cheeks and chin. I’d seen him with a couple of days’ growth on his face before, but this was more than that. His thick hair was pushed back off his forehead, showing off the surprise in his hazel eyes. And his smile…

Well, that wasn’t there.

Once he’d finished gaping at me, his mouth closed into a worried line, not quite a grimace but most definitely not the pleasant expression someone would hope to see on the face of a person they’d missed.

In short, it didn’t seem like Ben was particularly thrilled to see me.

Not even a little bit.