4,27 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Bookbinder Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
From Edinburgh's enchanted cobbled streets to its misty hills, a timeless romance blooms.
Burned out in grad school, Olivia Boyd jumps at the chance to spend a semester studying abroad in Edinburgh. There she discovers a city alive with music, history, and charm—not to mention a brooding barkeep who ignites her interest.
Max Cameron was forced to give up his dreams of academia long ago in order to run the family’s generations-old pub, The Red Rose. His structured world is upended by the arrival of an intriguing American woman.
As Olivia and Max explore Edinburgh’s winding lanes and lively music scene, she and Max make the mistake of letting their guard down. But with Olivia’s semester abroad ending soon, she and Max must face their inevitable parting.
If you enjoy a feel-good read with engaging characters and uplifting warmth, get your copy today. Step into The Red Rose and have a seat by the fire.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Seitenzahl: 263
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Ähnliche
ALSO BY J.L. JARVIS
Waterfront Summers
(Can be read in any order)
The Cottage at Peregrine Cove
The House on Serenity Lake
Moonlight on Mariner’s Bluff
Drake & Wilde Mysteries
(Reading Order)
1 Love in the Time of Pumpkins
2 Secrets in the Hollow
3 Shadow of the Horseman
Standalones
(Can be read in any order)
A Christmas Eve Stop
Christmas by Lamplight
A Kiss in the Rain
App-ily Ever After
Once Upon a Winter
The Red Rose
Highland Vow
Short Stories
(Can be read in any order)
Seasons of Love: A Short Story Collection
The Eleventh-Hour Pact
A Christmas Yarn
The Farmer and the Belle
Work-Crush Balance
Cedar Creek
(Can be read in any order)
Christmas at Cedar Creek
Snowstorm at Cedar Creek
Sunlight on Cedar Creek
Pine Harbor
1 Allison’s Pine Harbor Summer
2 Evelyn’s Pine Harbor Autumn
3 Lydia’s Pine Harbor Christmas
Holiday House
(Can be read in any order)
The Christmas Cabin
The Winter Lodge
The Lighthouse
The Christmas Castle
The Beach House
The Christmas Tree Inn
The Holiday Hideaway
Highland Passage
(Can be read in any order)
Highland Passage
Knight Errant
Lost Bride
Highland Soldiers
1 The Enemy
2 The Betrayal
3 The Return
4 The Wanderer
American Hearts
(Can be read in any order)
Secret Hearts
Forbidden Hearts
Runaway Hearts
For more information, visit jljarvis.com.
Get monthly book news at news.jljarvis.com.
THE RED ROSE
A MODERN SCOTTISH ROMANCE
J.L. JARVIS
THE RED ROSE
A Modern Scottish Romance
Copyright © 2023 J.L. Jarvis
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.
Published by Bookbinder Press
bookbinderpress.com
ISBN (ebook) 978-1-942767-59-6
ISBN (paperback) 978-1-942767-60-2
ISBN (Barnes & Noble paperback) 979-8-3196-0767-6
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Thank You!
Book News
About the Author
1
If it hadn’t been raining, they might never have met. But it was Scotland. They didn’t stand a chance.
Olivia Boyd sat at a desk in the Edinburgh Central Library, tapping away at her keyboard. She’d been in Edinburgh for only three days, but the reference library was already one of her favorite haunts. There was something transcendent about settling down at one of the wooden desks arranged in neat rows and plugging her laptop into the floor outlet under her desk. Except for today. She’d forgotten the cord, but she’d still settled in and lost herself in her work.
She looked up again to find hours had passed. Leaning back in her chair, she gazed at the rows of massive windows framing the sky. On either side, each window overlooked an alcove formed by book stacks twelve shelves high. Halfway up, an iron-railed walkway provided access to the top six shelves. It was an impressive monument to Victorian grandeur and philanthropist-robber-baron Andrew Carnegie’s wealth. The ambiance bolstered Olivia. Whether it would drive her dissertation forward was yet to be seen, but she was being productive, which was an improvement over the past several months. She hoped her advisor was right and that a semester abroad would breathe life into her foundering dissertation.
It had to.
* * *
You’re doing it again. She wondered if she had some bizarre form of narcolepsy in which, rather than sleeping, she daydreamed. Her whole reason for coming to Scotland was to distance herself from the past and start fresh. She stood, strolled to the opposite side of the library, and returned to her seat somewhat refreshed. Despite an occasional lapse in concentration, she had been more productive since arriving in Edinburgh. If Scotland couldn’t inspire her to write about Scottish folk music, it was hopeless—a possibility she hadn’t yet ruled out.
She took a breath, exhaled, and refocused her attention on her laptop, which went blank. Dismayed, she stared at the screen. The battery was dead. She gazed up at the looming windows and sighed. Dark clouds drifted by. She glanced at her watch. Four thirty was too early for sunset.
It made sense, though, once she reached the exit and looked through the windows. A storm had moved in, bringing rain that now drummed a relentless cadence on the sidewalk outside. She reached into her bag for her umbrella, but it wasn’t there… because it was home, propped up by the door. Great. First her power cord and now the umbrella. Pulling up the hood of her raincoat, she headed outside and through the large wrought iron gate. It was only a ten-minute walk to her apartment on the Quartermile by the University of Edinburgh campus. She would get soaked, but she would make it.
While hurrying, she dreamed of getting out of the rain and into her apartment. She walked past the entrance gate to Greyfriars Kirkyard, which was famously haunted, something Olivia had no trouble believing at the moment. Amid the brooding clouds, windswept branches, and rain-drenched mausoleums, she wouldn’t have been surprised to encounter a wandering specter or two. Terrified, yes. But surprised? No.
Just off the main road, amber light spilled out through the windows of The Red Rose, an old pub recommended by Dr. McNabb for its music. More important than that, at the moment, it promised dryness and warmth. The crackling fire in a small wood stove drew her farther inside, where the smoke from the fire mixed with the aroma of beer. She stepped farther in, past several tables along the wall across from the bar. The back corner housed a well-worn upright piano on a slightly raised area that served as a stage. From it, she could practically hear echoes of old Scottish folk songs.
She glanced about for a seat. Since arriving in Scotland, she’d been very frugal, eating soup and prepared meals from the Sainsbury’s local food shop downstairs in her building. She was due, she decided, for a splurge on a pint and some pub grub.
The after-work crowd inside was lively for a Tuesday. Like Olivia, they’d likely sought refuge from the rain on their way home. The barking laughter of a cluster of men and women near the bar mingled with the murmuring voices that hung in the air.
Movement on the opposite wall drew her attention. At a table beside a small wood stove, a pair of university students stood, zipped up their jackets, and donned book-laden backpacks. No one nearby seemed to have noticed them vacating their table, so Olivia worked her way over and hovered. The instant they stepped away, she slipped into a chair, shrugged off her jacket, and draped it over the chair back. Having staked her claim to the table, she hesitated to move. She felt lost and alone in a new place far from home but resisted the urge to retreat to her familiar apartment. After spending several evenings there, she craved company. Even if she wasn’t with them, the energy of the patrons spilled over onto her, and the wood stove warmed her.
Determined to stay, she went to the bar and studied the chalkboard menu while she waited to order. A petite young woman, perhaps in her twenties, slipped past her and joined the bartender, pulling pints one after the other. With her black curls pulled back into a short bun, she whispered to her coworker, her eyes dancing. Olivia didn’t hear what prompted her mood shift, but she glared at a gray-bearded patron and said something that made him shrink back.
Olivia studied the man as her imagination filled in the blanks. His face was weathered, and his thin silver hair was confined by a cap. His clothes looked as though they’d taken root unhindered by laundry detergent. No one went to work looking like that. He had to be unemployed or, given his obvious age, retired. He’d offended the female worker; that much was clear. Olivia became so engrossed in her musings that she didn’t notice the male bartender now standing before her.
“What’ll you have?”
Startled, she turned to him and was startled anew. She had never been easily charmed by appearance alone, but with no apparent effort, he rendered her flustered. He glanced back to the bar with a hint of impatience, which was understandable, given how busy the bar was. But his eyes held her attention. Their kaleidoscope of deep blues, laser-focused on her, made her heart skip a beat.
Olivia regained her composure in time, she hoped, to avoid appearing like she’d never seen a good-looking man before—which wasn’t the case at all. He had simply pivoted quickly and surprised her. Anyone would have reacted the same. It had nothing to do with that dark, lustrous mass of controlled chaos on his head, his high cheekbones, strong jawline, or full lips.
Those meant nothing to her. Of course, she was deluding herself. There was something about him, and he wasn’t alone. Since arriving in Edinburgh, she’d observed something about Scottish men. From taxi drivers to store clerks, the men of all ages projected a cheerful demeanor with an underlying current of grit that she found very manly. Anyone who might accuse her of overgeneralizing could take a ten-minute walk and tally the masculine men they encountered. She wondered if it was in their DNA, a genetic memory of hard times passed down through generations. The women had their own version. Everyone she’d encountered was unerringly warm, but Olivia had the distinct sense that if put to the test, they wouldn’t put up with nonsense. She liked that about them. It was possible her impressions were skewed by the exhilaration of being in Scotland. She loved it—the country, the history, the architecture, and most of all, the people.
That included the bartender, who was north of six feet tall and not overly bulky. She approved of his corded forearm muscles and the broad set of his shoulders. And that is a penetrating stare.
Because he’s waiting for you! So stop gawking and order! The man’s busy!
His eyes darted away.
Extremely busy. She tried to be quick. “A half-pint and a bowl of Cullen skink.”
He had the pleasant but expectant look of a man trying to hide his impatience. “A half-pint of what?”
Uh… I don’t know! She felt like she was failing a test. “Beer?”
He glanced past the half dozen taps that lined his side of the bar to a man with a twenty-pound note in hand, waiting to order. “Give it some thought. I’ll be back.”
While she intended to mull it over, she became distracted as he walked away. Worried she might lose her table or jacket, she glanced over, but both were still there. She refocused on her beer choices, but the names and logos meant nothing to her.
He returned. “Have you decided?”
She hated wasting his time, but she was at a loss. “I’m not much of a beer drinker. What do you recommend?”
“Let’s narrow it down. Light beer or dark?”
She shook her head. She was more of a wine drinker, but no one had a glass of wine in hand. Apparently, people here went to a pub for a pint, so she felt compelled to try it.
He lifted an eyebrow. She wasn’t sure how to interpret that. “Wait there.” He went to the taps and returned with two small glasses of beer—one dark and one light. “Try these.” He disappeared.
Olivia tasted each. When he returned, she pointed to a glass. “I like the dark one.”
He nodded approvingly then pulled her a half-pint of the dark beer.
“What is it? In case I want to order it again.”
“Dark Island.”
She made a mental note of it then asked, “And my soup?”
“We’ll bring it to your table.”
Olivia paid him and went back to her table. She sat, leaning her shoulder against the dark-wood wainscoting that rose to meet red plaster walls. As she soaked in the fire’s warmth and the room’s conversational murmur, an inexplicable sensation of coming home settled upon her. It made no sense, but the feeling was too strong to deny. She took a sip of her beer and leaned back, wholly content.
She had made the right choice. Being in Scotland would revive a career that had gone off the rails. She’d begun her PhD work well enough but lost control of it somewhere around the beginning of her fourth year at Cornell. On a sunny morning the previous June, her mother had gone out to the backyard to work in the garden. Halfway across the lawn, she stopped and turned. Olivia looked through the kitchen window at her mother’s pained eyes and set down the coffeepot. Surrounded by flowers and grass, she stood as if frozen in time then collapsed on the lawn.
The semester that followed was a foggy memory of plodding along, making excuses for her lack of progress. She spent hours in the library, sheet music fanned out on the table before her while her eyes strayed to the window. Outside, everyone else seemed to walk with a purpose from building to building, no doubt accomplishing more than she was. Instead, she hid away wearing headphones and listening to old scratchy recordings of Celtic songs, pen in hand, her wrist resting idly on a blank spiral notebook.
Why? She asked it a lot. Why ethnomusicology? Why can’t I stop grieving? Things she hadn’t thought of in years drifted up to the surface: fleeting snapshots of childhood memories of sun-splashed days in the park with her parents, her father’s hand grasping hers, and shuffling along a frozen creek in her double-runner ice skates. Then her father had left them, and part of her mother had left too. The next couple of years were a blur, with a few scattered memories long since detached from the days they belonged to. By the time Olivia reached high school, she and her mother had outgrown the sad years. Life was good. But now, that life was over.
The spring semester ended, and Olivia was the same distracted shell of a student who’d begun the year mired in research, still rewriting the same twenty pages she couldn’t seem to get past. And then she met Noah.
* * *
“Cullen skink.” The bartender set down a thick white china bowl filled with chowder.
“Thank you.” The fish smell was robust.
She must have reacted visibly to it, because his eyebrows drew together. “Have you had it before?”
“No, but it looks amazing.”
He looked doubtful. “It’s fishy.”
She nodded. “I thought I detected a faint seafood aroma.”
His eyes twinkled. “Did you now?”
She laughed, and he joined in.
He seemed to take pity on her. “I can get you something else.”
“No! I’ll have this.” She gave him an insistent look.
The warmth in his eyes lit his face. That was a new look for him. She didn’t mind it at all. A few minutes ago, she wouldn’t have guessed he even had a smile, let alone such a winning one. As he returned to the bar, she was still pondering it, along with his deep Scottish burr. She could listen to that all day long, the mellow tones of his Scottish brogue, velvety rolling R’s, and lilting phrasing. A voice like that could read bedtime stories to her, but she doubted she would sleep. Her mind wandered, but she reeled it back in. No, that voice would never grow old.
She wasn’t alone in her opinion of the accent. Before leaving home, she’d noticed Scottish accents popping up in TV commercials. Now, here she was, surrounded by them. She sighed and soaked it all in. What a great place to be.
The bartender turned back toward her. Only then did she realize she was staring. Just in time, she looked away toward the fire. No matter which way she turned, it was hot. She stopped short of fanning herself like an antebellum ingenue.
What’s the matter with you? You are better than this.
But was she? Maybe people just said that because, deep down, they knew they weren’t.
Dismissing the thought, Olivia picked up her spoon and dipped it into the Cullen skink. It was intensely fishy—and delicious. She glanced toward the bar and locked eyes with the bartender. The heat of a blush filled her cheeks. Something shifted within her, as though the world had gone on spinning and left them behind.
A loud shout rose from the bar. “Hey, Max! Gie us a pint!”
His eyes darted toward a man holding up an empty pint glass. Max gave him a nod and tossed a glance back in Olivia’s direction before leaving.
Max. He looked like a Max. Olivia didn’t date his type—rugged physique, chiseled face, and deep-set eyes. She had nothing against good-looking men, but she’d met a few. College campuses were crawling with them, and like so many grocery store pastries, they never turned out to be as good as they looked. At this point in life, her late twenties, if someone like that showed an interest in her, she was wise enough to know it would never work out. Or she used to be.
Hmm. That was a definite glance. He was probably just watching to see how I reacted to the soup.
She watched him walk away until a bar patron shifted his stance and obstructed her view. Dang it! That shouldn’t have annoyed her as much as it did. But, in all fairness, it was her view, and he’d blocked it. She was pretty sure men brawled over less at sporting events.
So, his name was Max. Max… Maximilian? Maxim? Maxwell? He looked like he could be a Maxwell. Her interest was purely academic, of course. It was all about context. As a student of Scottish music and culture, as well as an observant tourist of sorts, she would be remiss in failing to make note of the locals. That’s what travel was about—not just seeing the sights but also making connections.
That was all she was doing—connecting with Max, on a purely informational basis. Some people kept travel journals. She made detailed mental notes.
Olivia was, after all, an observer. It was her academic duty to soak it all in. She was nothing if not a professional—a professional student, but still… If universities could engage in ridiculous studies like “Tree Climbing” or “How to Watch Television,” she could do her own irrelevant research. At the moment, she was making an informal study of forest-green flannel shirts, blue jeans, and Doc Martens, as well as the intriguing men who wore them. At their first meeting, her dissertation advisor had cautioned that there came a point when the research had to stop. Olivia wasn’t there yet.
She reminded herself that Max wasn’t her type. Why is that again? She failed to come up with a rational reason. All she could think of was that Max was unique. The campus she’d just left had some good-looking guys, but they were nothing like Max. It wasn’t simply the accent, although, to be honest, that did tip the scales in his favor. Perhaps it was the way he walked across the room with the effortless grace of a man who didn’t worry about what people thought. Of course that would appeal to her because he had what she lacked—complete ease in social settings, along with a clear sense of his place in the world.
When Olivia’s schoolwork cratered, the confidence she’d once enjoyed had gone with it. No longer sure of herself, she felt adrift. Career websites weren’t teeming with jobs for ethnomusicologists with incomplete doctorates in traditional Scottish folk music. So she had followed her heart, which didn’t seem to care about paying the bills.
Her heart knew what it wanted, and at the moment, her heart hummed in Max’s presence. She couldn’t help herself. She blamed Scotland. This would never have happened in New York. But Edinburgh was enchanting, and nothing felt real.
Now desperate to be disenchanted, she applied logic to break free of its spell. So what if Max was confident? Lots of people were. Olivia, herself, used to be. She was intelligent, focused, and hardworking. Those qualities had gotten her a graduate teaching assistantship at a university she wouldn’t otherwise have been able to afford. But that was school. This was real life, where her discomfort went deeper. Maybe Max’s confidence had never been tested like hers. Worse yet, maybe this was the tip of the iceberg. Confidence was a double-edged sword. Successful people possessed it, but jerks did too. She wondered where Max fell on that spectrum.
She returned to her soup. She was overthinking things. That was a pitfall of being alone, but she would adjust. All that mattered right now was this charming Scottish pub, the cozy fire beside her, and the hot chowder before her.
When she’d finished her soup, she leaned back, sipped her beer, and left all thought behind. When it couldn’t have seemed any more perfect, the crowd thinned, improving her view of Max. Until now, she wouldn’t have thought dark wavy hair was her favorite, but now, she couldn’t imagine anything better.
The guy didn’t smile much, but when he did, he was excellent at it. He manned the bar with the deftness of a professional plate spinner, keeping everything turning, including her head. He wasn’t prone to banal banter with patrons, but he chatted enough to keep them smiling and drinking. Now that was an art. He turned toward Olivia, but she averted her eyes just in time.
Do you know what isn’t an art? Looking cool while staring at bartenders like a lost puppy.
Max wasn’t entirely perfect. His face was a bit asymmetrical. He had frown lines between his eyebrows, although he didn’t seem like a scowler. Maybe he was a deep thinker—a philosophical bartender. His day’s growth of beard might have been a little uneven. She couldn’t tell from this far away.
Stop squinting. It’s not like you’ve been tasked with deciding where he falls on a scale of one to ten.
Nine.
No one was ever a ten. It was Olivia’s way of managing her expectations. But Max was attractive, and that was enough.
Enough for what? Olivia had a boyfriend—well, she used to.
2
His name was Noah, and he used to be perfect for her. He was the boyfriend version of a favorite sweater—well-worn and comfortable when needed and slung over a desk chair when not. Olivia frowned. That wasn’t fair. Noah meant more to her than that. They were practically in love, although they’d never said it in so many words. But after a year, it was clear they were headed that way. They were comfortable and seldom disagreed, and they’d put in the time. If they weren’t in love yet, they would get there.
Except they wouldn’t now, because they were on “a break.” Olivia kept forgetting that. “A break” sounded deceptively temporary, but she knew better than that. They’d had some heated discussions—a lot of discussions—some loud. Noah had found so many reasons for her not to go to Scotland that tension had mounted between them. By the time she’d left, even though Noah called it a break, it was more like a truce. At first, it was a relief. Everything she used to rely on, the comfort and ease they’d once shared, was now cracked and crumbling like an eggshell clinging hopelessly to its membrane long after the damage was done.
It was going to end. They just needed to go through this dance of semantics, sidestepping around their coughing and wheezing relationship, watching it slowly expire. Only then would they call it the end, by which time it would be so far beyond obvious that feeling nothing would be a relief. Even so, she would miss the little things they’d once done together, like grocery shopping and stopping for Friday-night pizza before going home to watch movies. She’d once viewed them as special couple traditions, although, looking back, they were just errands and routines.
Noah was a great guy. Like Olivia, he had a tireless work ethic, and neither of them liked drama. His methodical diligence had sent him up the corporate ladder from stock boy to corporate regional manager of a grocery store chain. With a shelf full of career self-help books to show for it, he had studied the social norms that would best set him on his desired career trajectory. He had mastered the business-casual look to a tee with his trimmed hair, pressed chinos, sports coat, and shirt with no tie. A faint scent wafted around him—Irish Spring, Old Spice, and Crest or, as Olivia liked to think of it, grocery aisle seven.
Noah was a man of few words, and all of them practical. Everything he owned, he packed away neatly or arranged to perfection. Olivia had once discovered a list of clothing he wore in a two-week rotation taped to the inside of his closet door. That was Noah. Proper organization required no further thought. And with the addition of Olivia in his life, every piece of his life had been assembled: food and shelter, a steady job, and a reliable girlfriend.
Noah and Max couldn’t have been more opposite—not that she knew anything about Max. But he seemed intriguingly different. The only thing Max seemed to have in common with Noah was height. But Noah had the slender frame of a weekend cyclist, while Max had more of a rugby physique. She wasn’t sure what a rugby physique was. She’d never even been to a game. Or do they call it a match? Either way, rugby just sounded burlier. Add to that some disheveled dark hair and a day’s growth of beard, and that was Max. In the opposite corner was Noah—fine-boned build, trimmed blond hair, and a face that had never seen a five-o’clock shadow.
And Max is the bartender—a stranger who’s nothing to you. Noah is—was—your boyfriend. Olivia exhaled. She should have felt something more than ambivalence. Of course, she would miss him, but after leaving to live across the ocean, what she felt most of all was free. And that made her feel guilty.
People liked Noah. They couldn’t help it. She’d never known anyone so unerringly tactful. She used to wonder how he did it. So it had come as a shock when, upon hearing her plans for Scotland, he’d revealed a new side to his character—seething with resentment.
Noah was a planner, and they’d never even talked about Scotland. Yet somehow, Olivia had gone to see her dissertation advisor for a regular meeting and come out with a startling plan—her plan, not Noah’s.
* * *
Professor Denise Lamanski’s office looked nothing like the bare, white-walled classrooms where she usually taught. One wall of her office was lined with bookshelves packed with vertically arranged books. A desk covered in stacks of books, papers, and a desktop computer faced a tall window. Behind it, facing the door, was a table with two guest chairs. One chair contained a disheveled pile of books topped with a foot-tall stack of file folders. The wall space was filled with diplomas, pictures, and art prints, giving an impression of knowledge, culture, and comfort. Dr. Lamanski was at her desk with her back to the door. Olivia hesitated then knocked lightly on the open door.
Without turning to look, her advisor said, “Come in.”
Olivia quietly made her way to the one empty chair, where she sat, and she waited. It couldn’t have been more than a minute, but it seemed like five.
Dr. Lamanski pivoted in her chair. “Olivia. Hello.” She rolled her chair a few inches closer to the table, facing Olivia. The professor had the look of a grandmother, the mind of a computer, and a tireless work ethic that no one could match. She smiled. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“Good.” Her pleasant demeanor looked forced. She took a moment. “There’s no easy way to say this. Your teaching assistantship is not being renewed.”
Olivia’s stomach sank.
“I know it’s disappointing. But it might be a blessing in disguise.”
Olivia wasn’t feeling blessed at the moment, but she still had her dignity. On second thought, the way Dr. Lamanski’s shoulders slumped and her face filled with pity, Olivia realized that was gone too.
Dr. Lamanski held up a finger. “All is not lost!”
Great. I’m feeling better already. Don’t wince. Don’t frown, either. Pretend you’ve had Botox.
“Let’s look at the plus side. With no classes to teach and no papers to grade, you can focus on your dissertation.” Dr. Lamanski opened her laptop. “Which brings us to this.” She slid the laptop around at an angle so Olivia could view the latest draft she’d turned in a few days before. The column containing her professor’s comments looked longer than the draft she’d submitted.
Her advisor removed her glasses and set them on the table. “Olivia, let’s talk about this.”
Olivia was mortified. She hadn’t expected the feedback to be glowing, but she’d hoped it wouldn’t be so painful. Tension clamped her throat. She couldn’t speak.
Dr. Lamanski broke the unbearable silence. “How would you… assess the status of your work at this point?”
She didn’t have to say more. Olivia managed a nod to her advisor’s questioning look. She had to say something. “I know it’s… undeveloped.”
The only response she received was a raised eyebrow.
“It’s not ready, I know. But… we were due to touch base and…” Olivia lifted her hands as she shrugged helplessly.
“It’s been five years.”
Olivia knew that. Two other students who’d started at the same time had already graduated. And here she was, not even close to finished. She’d become another ABD—all but the dissertation. Her professor looked pained, but not nearly as pained as Olivia felt.
“I fought for you, but I couldn’t produce any signs of progress…” Dr. Lamanski paused, brow furrowed. “You’re a smart woman. You’re well aware of how important this is.” She stared at Olivia as though she were unaware. “This document establishes your professional credibility and that of your doctoral degree.”
Olivia was acutely aware. She knew she wasn’t performing. Like a pro athlete, she’d been cut from the team.
As if she’d given up waiting for an explanation from Olivia, Dr. Lamanski glanced at the screen displaying Olivia’s work and waved her hand toward it. The dismissive gesture hurt almost as much as her words. “Why didn’t you come to me sooner?”
Olivia swallowed. Why couldn’t she just sink into the floor here and now and just vanish, let the earth swallow her beneath layers of despair and a few feet of topsoil? “I didn’t want you to see it until it was ready. I know it’s not. I guess I thought if I just did a little more research, I’d find something—that one thing—that would make everything fall into place. And the teaching took more of my time than I expected.” Just like this lame explanation.
