“No apologies necessary.” He didn’t think she’d want to hear that he thought she was a delightful drunk. His acquaintance with Daniela Martinez had been brief, but he somehow knew she would not want to be called delightful, at least not by him.

“I’m just so happy that party is over. I’m so happy the semester is over.” She made a theatrical gagging noise. “I don’t have to set foot in that place for almost a month.”

“Not your dream job?”

“It’s fine.”

“Don’t sound so excited.”

“You know, sometimes I think I’m a professor because school has always been my default mode.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m good at school. I always have been. So I kept doing more of it. And I like some of the parts of it—reading and writing, and . . .” She laughed, a touch bitterly. “Reading and writing.”

Hmm. The reluctant English teacher? “Molding young minds not for you?”

“It sounds terrible. I don’t mind teaching. I just . . .” She shrugged.

“What?” he pressed. He wanted to know what made Dani Martinez tick.

“I don’t know. I assigned The Great Gatsby this semester because most of them would have read it in high school. I thought this would be an opportunity to really get into it in a more meaningful way, but it didn’t work out the way I planned.

“And I hate committee service, or at least the committees I have to be on. Nobody really tells you how much of your life as an academic is going to be committees. But I can’t say no because I’m junior, and I’m also constantly on edge that I’ll be seen as not pulling my weight. You hear one too many comments about being the ‘diversity hire,’ you get paranoid.”

“Do people actually say that?” How appalling.

“People actually say that. Maybe not in so many words, but you know what they mean.” She sighed. “Do you ever sit back and look at your life . . .” As she trailed off, she leaned back as if to illustrate her words. He hovered his arm around her for fear she would lean too far on her backless stool. She must have felt the nearness of his arm even though it wasn’t touching her. She looked over her shoulder in confusion.

“Do I ever sit back and look at my life and . . . ?” he prompted.

“And think, ‘How did I end up here? How is this my job?’?” she finished emphatically.

He certainly did. Not in the way she meant, because he didn’t have a job in that sense. But he had been thinking a great deal lately about duty and work and purpose. “What would you do if you could do anything?” Unlike him, she could.