“The course isn’t called Strategy and Information at Penn, but I realized it was just advanced Game Theory. I’ve already taken those courses, and I assumed the reading material would be identical.”
He was right.
And he saved me at least forty-five minutes of hunting through the library. “Thank you,” I said under my breath, still outright dazed. He’d been my rival since I was a teenager, and I’d yet to fully understand what it meant to have him as a teammate.
We’d been on a handful of dates before this, mostly fueled by quick wit and my glares. He’d been extremely supportive of my Calloway Couture runway show, but today was different. I didn’t ask Connor to collect these books. I didn’t ask him to meet me at the library.
I blinked out of my stupor, unable to look at him directly. I set the book down. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” It sounded more hostile than I really meant.
“Yes,” he said, “and I’m already here.”
I swallowed as my iron walls lowered for him. They had never lowered for anyone before. “I have a French paper due first, and I need to wait for a computer.”
He stood straighter. “You can use my laptop. I’ll buy you a coffee, and when you finish your paper, we can go through the game theory textbooks.”
Before he moved, I said, “I don’t need Connor Cobalt the Tutor. I’m perfectly capable of studying on my own.” My lungs burned hot. I could barely breathe. I could barely meet his eyes without being overwhelmed by sentiments I’d never met in my life.
Very deeply, he replied, “I’m not Connor Cobalt the Tutor right now.”
I hesitated to ask. Rose Calloway does not cower. I lifted my chin, locked eyes with his, and questioned, “Then who are you giving me?” He changed for people. It was a fact we both acknowledged and understood.
Connor waited to answer, tension jutting out my collarbone. Tension constricting muscles in his arms. “You have Connor Cobalt the Boyfriend.”
Boyfriend.
In a hushed voice, I asked, “And how much of him is real?” How fake was he being with me?
Connor began to smile. “Terribly real, darling.”
Darling.
It was the first time he called me darling.
At that, he walked away and only looked over his shoulder to remind me, “I’m buying you coffee. I’ll be right back.”
Slowly and incredibly dazed, I sunk into my chair and removed my blazer. I found his laptop and just clicked straight into a blank document. I wouldn’t snoop. I valued my privacy too much to be hypocritical and destroy his.
I tried to focus on my notes. FRE 371: World Literatures in French. I had pages and pages, and I began skimming the Frantz Fanon text. By the time Connor returned with two steaming cups of coffee, I’d written a thousand words.
I told him I was halfway through, and he spent that time reading over my ECO 418: Strategy and Information notes. He only distracted me once. When he leaned forward in his chair and slipped a pencil behind his ear.
I glanced over and watched his calculated eyes graze over my handwriting. I could barely admit it then, but I can now: it turned me on. Even his fingers lightly gliding over my notes turned me on.
After a full minute, he caught me staring. In French, he asked, “Fini?” Finished?
“Presque.” Almost.
I typed out the last line, emailed myself the paper and then pushed his laptop aside. He slid his chair closer beside mine, our arms brushing. Connor pulled all the reading material towards us, and we began to talk about sequential bargaining under asymmetric information and applications for perfect Bayesian equilibrium.
Two hours flew by. My pencil broke while I wrote out a complicated formula to an equation. He slipped his pencil out from his ear and held it to me.
I lost all thoughts. My heart sped rapidly, and my chest collapsed in a shallow breath. I pushed my notebook to him before he noticed. “Can you finish the line? I’ll find a pen.”
He lingered for a second and then accepted my request. Connor finished the formula, and I dug in my handbag for a pen.
What the hell is going on? my iron walls seemed to shriek. This was unlike me. Letting him stay. Letting him help. Letting him near.
I didn’t want to push him away. I wanted Connor right here next to me.
I found my pen. I placed it on the table, and his arm extended over the back of my chair. He started talking about the equation, but I couldn’t think straight.
“Rose?”
I glanced at him, just slightly.
He studied me with noticeable affection behind his blue eyes.
“Continue,” I told him, my voice stilted.
“No.”
My eyes flamed. “No?”
His hand encased my cheek and jaw, large and assured. My pulse beat my veins alive. His other hand rested on the outside of my thigh, climbing towards my ass.
I held onto his shoulder. Our lifetimes of combatting one another seemed to flip over like a spinning coin that fell to one side.
His lips an inch from mine, he whispered something, not a quote. Not in French. Connor Cobalt murmured, “What’s inside this feeling that screams at me?” His eyes spoke of battles and wins and years positioned right across from me. “Devotion.” He neared. “Fealty.”
His lips touched mine. Our very first kiss. My rigid body stayed erect, but I heated like a thousand burning stars. He deepened the kiss, in control so I wouldn’t have to think.
I was thinking.
I thought about how my mind sparked and blistered. I thought about how his hands commanded the moment as much as his lips. I thought about how he held me like I’d always been in his possession, as he’d always been in mine.
What’s inside this feeling that screams at me?
Devotion.
Fealty.
It’s what I remember as I scream in a hospital. As I squeeze my husband’s hand. He towers beside me—as invincible as the day he leaned against that library table.
“Push, one more,” the doctor encourages.
I push with everything inside my soul. I scream so horrifically, my throat scorched and raw. Then I hear the shrill cry pitch the air. That cry. It eases me like morphine, and I thud against the hospital bed. Connor dries my forehead with a towel, and we both watch the nurses clean our baby, the doctor assures us of good health.
Then the nurse places the newborn on my chest. I don’t hear the nurse’s next few words. Tears well and burn. Seven children and this one affects me all the same.
“Rose, darling.” Connor lifts my chin, and I meet his glassy blues, his grin terribly gorgeous. “We have a girl.”
“What?” A girl.
I didn’t hear the nurse. I didn’t remember to look.
Connor kisses my forehead and then he kisses hers and whispers soft French. A rare tear slides down his cheek.
When he looks back at me, I say quietly, “What’s this feeling that screams inside of me?”
His glassy eyes carry their own extraordinary grin. Sparkling like cut diamonds. “Love,” he tells me with such certainty.
His single tear dries faster than the waterfall my ducts let through. Connor brushes beneath my eyes with his thumb, and we watch our daughter coo peacefully.
I stroke her soft, tiny arm.
Years.
I wanted another girl for years. There was even a possibility that we wouldn’t try again after our seventh child, but we had her.
I smile. “Fate was kind to us after all.”
“Chromosomes,” Connor says. “Science. Not fate, darling.”
I shoot him a glare, my energy rising a little, even after intense labor. I rub my eyes once more and hone in on our newborn’s thin hair.
“She has red hair?” No one on my side of the family has red hair, but Connor’s mother did. “I thought your mother dyed her hair.”
“She did dye it a deeper red. Naturally, her hue was more orange.”
My lips inch upwards at our baby. I feel her heart patter against my chest, her little mouth opening in a breath. “Audrey,” I say the name I’ve had picked out for years. After Audrey Hepburn.
Tears fall again.
I’m a tsunami today. More water than rage.
Connor pulls his chair close and sits beside me. “Audrey Virginia Cobalt.” After Virginia Woolf.