In Too Hard (Freshman Roommates Trilogy, Book 3) by Mara Jacobs

arm of his chair. “Sure, but it’s been the same resolution for the past five years.”
    “Yeah, but you know what you have now, that you didn’t for the past five years?”
    “Insight? Drive? Maturity? Discipline? Yeah, no. I’m pretty sure I still don’t have any of those.”
    “You have me,” I said, smiling, almost laughing, letting him know I was teasing. But damn, I would absolutely love for the organizing and transcribing I was doing for him to be the catalyst for him to keep his resolution.
    “Do I?” he said, almost in a whisper.
    “Do you what?”
    He leaned all the way forward, resting his forearms on the table, right in front of the laptop. So close I could make out the grey of his eyes, even in the poor light.
    “Do I…have you?” he asked.
    I didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” I answered, “you do.”
    His shoulders drooped a little and I realized they’d been bunched up…tensed up…while he’d asked me that question.
    Could he honestly doubt how I felt about him?
    Well, yeah, maybe. Because he didn’t know what he’d meant to me for the past five years. He only thought we had shared the past two weeks.
    But maybe even that alone should have let him know I would be anything he wanted me to be.
    I had molded myself into a Bribury Basic, I could easily become what would appeal to Billy Montrose.
    Jane’s pendant seemed to burn against my skin just then, and I pulled it out from beneath the comfy sweater, feeling the warmth from my skin as I held it, tracing my fingers along the outside curves.
    Strength. I had it, I should show it, Jane had said about the necklace.
    I pushed the thought away as Montrose said, “Do you think we should talk about what’s going to happen when the semester starts?”
    “What do you mean?”
    He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and I dropped the pendant out of my hands, then held on tighter to the sides of my laptop. Was he already backpedaling?
    “What, specifically , do you mean?”
    “Well, I mean, you’re not my student anymore, but you are still a student.”
    “Yes…”
    He rubbed his hand across his stubbled chin. “And you are my employee.”
    “A short-term, project-specific employee. I mean, I’m not going to be in a position to cry sexual harassment because you didn’t promote me when I deserved it.”
    “Not that I wouldn’t. Give you the promotion, I mean.”
    I smiled, and he returned it, his teeth almost as bright and evident as his white shirt. “I know you would,” I said.
    His smile stayed as he said, “So…apart from you being a student and my employee…absolutely no roadblocks for us to…”
    “To…?”
    “Well, I guess that’s the question, isn’t it?”
    I tried to channel my future, super-confident, twenty-eight-year-old self. “Do you really think it’s a question anymore?”
    The smile left his face as I just looked at him, then silently quirked one brow up in…question? Challenge?
    Slowly…oh, so slowly…he shook his head just the tiniest amount. But it was enough for me to silently thank my future self for being so bold.
    “No,” he said almost too quietly for me to hear. In fact, maybe I’d just read his lips and hadn’t even heard him at all.
    It didn’t matter. I had the answer I wanted. I nodded once but didn’t say anything. I would have given anything to be with him in person at that moment, sitting on his terrace, hearing revelers from the streets below and out in the city. To be able to reach across the table and touch him. To get up and walk over to him, where he’d make room for me on his lap. And I’d wrap my arms around him, feeling the thin, cool cotton fabric of his shirt, and the hard, warm man beneath.
    Wait. The cotton of his shirt? “You must be freezing out there,” I said, realizing he’d been outside for the last ten minutes or more with no coat, hat or gloves. I shivered in my warm cozy bed just thinking about it.
    “Actually,” he said, grinning, “I am totally freezing my