“If you slip again, grab hold of me. I don’t go down. Ever.”
She glanced at him sideways, completely innocently, only to see him blush. Julia had never seen a rugby player blush before.
(It was rumored to be impossible.)
“Um, what I meant is that I’m too heavy. You wouldn’t be able to pull me over.”
She shook her head. “You aren’t that heavy.”
Paul smiled to himself at the perceived compliment.
“Has Christa been rude to you?”
Julia looked down at the snow-covered sidewalk in front of them. “I’ve been staying up late every night working on my thesis. Professor Picton is very demanding. Last week she rejected several pages of my Purgatorio translation. I’ve been redoing it, and it just takes so long.”
“I could help you. I mean, you could email your translations to me before you give them to her so I could check them.”
“Thanks, but you’re busy with your own stuff. You don’t have time for my problems.”
He stopped walking and placed a light hand on her arm. “Of course I have time for you. You’re working on love and lust, and I’m working on pleasure. Some of our translations will overlap. It would be good practice for me.”
“I’m not working on love and lust anymore. Professor Picton made me change my topic to a comparison between courtly love and the friendship between Virgil and Dante.”
Paul shrugged. “Some of the translations will still overlap.”
“If we’re working on the same passage we could compare translations. I don’t want to bother you with stuff that’s unrelated to your project.” She looked over at him tentatively.
“Send me what you have and what your deadlines are, and I’ll look at it. No problem.”
“Thank you.” She appeared relieved.
He withdrew his hand, and they began walking again. “Did you know that the Chair of Italian Studies sent out an email announcement about your admission to Harvard? He said that you won a pretty big fellowship.”
Julia’s eyes went wide. “Um, no. I didn’t know that. I didn’t get that email.”
“Well, it was sent to everyone else. Emerson made me print out the email and post it on the bulletin board next to his office, after he insisted that I highlight all the important information, including your name, with a bright yellow marker. Figures. He was nothing but rude to you while you were in his seminar, and now he’s probably going to take credit for your admission to Harvard. Asshole.”
Julia’s eyebrows furrowed, but she didn’t comment.
“What?”
She flushed slightly under his scrutiny. “Nothing.”
“Julia, spit it out. What were you thinking just now?”
“Um, I was just wondering if you’d seen Christa hovering around the department? Or Professor Emerson’s office?”
“No, thank God. It looks as if she’s moved on to someone else. She knows better than to talk to me. I’m just waiting for her to give me a chance to tell her off.” Paul winked and patted her shoulder fraternally. “She better not give you a hard time. Or I have a few stories I could tell.”
* * *
On Thursday, Julia met with her therapist in preparation for her meeting with the Dean, which was scheduled for Friday morning.
Recognizing that Julia needed to discuss what was happening, Nicole set aside her goals for that session and listened patiently before offering her opinion. “Stress can be very destructive to our health, so it’s important to deal with it adequately. Some people prefer to talk about their problems, while others prefer to think about them. How have you dealt with stress in the past?”
Julia fidgeted with her hands. “I’ve kept quiet.”
“Can you share your concerns with your boyfriend?”
“I can. But I don’t want to upset him. He’s worried about me as it is.”
Nicole nodded sagely. “When you care about someone, it’s understandable that you would want to protect them from pain. And that’s perfectly appropriate on some occasions. But on others, you run the risk of shouldering more than your fair share of stress or responsibility. Can you see why that might be a problem?”
“Well, I don’t like it when Gabriel keeps things from me. I feel like a child. I’d rather have him share things than shut me out.”
“It’s possible that Gabriel feels the same way, that he worries about you shutting him out. Have you discussed this with him?”
“I’ve tried to. I’ve told him I want to be equals, that I don’t want to keep secrets.”
“Good. And what was his response?”
“He either wants to take care of me or he’s worried about disappointing me.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
Julia gestured with her hands as she tried to find the words. “I don’t want his money. It makes me feel poor and dependent and—and helpless.”
“And why is that?”
“He gives me so much already, and I can’t reciprocate.”
“Is it important to you that your relationship be reciprocal?”