She knew that her family thought the life of a professor was cushy, a few classes a week, and weekends and summers off. She’d given up on trying to correct their assumptions about her life because she quite literally didn’t have time. But being on the tenure track had been hard for Deja in ways she sometimes struggled to even admit to herself. She’d expected the long hours outside of class and the heavy teaching load. She’d even been prepared by her mentors for the lack of mentorship, to a certain degree, but she hadn’t expected the uncomfortable ways she’d folded under the weight of all those pressures.

And she couldn’t have imagined three years ago that she’d be so reckless as to let a man she’d been crushing on for over a year get her off in her office. But she had, and as she looked at Alejandro across her desk with a look of sexy contrition — because apparently, that was a thing — on his face, she understood why. She was lonely and starved for the tiniest crumbs of attention and affection. So lonely that she’d let a man who was realistically a complete stranger fingerfuck her where anyone could have heard, risking the job that had become her entire world, whether she liked it or not.

And the worst part was that she’d do it again — she knew she would — and that made her so sad. It also made Alejandro even more attractive today than he’d been on Wednesday. There was so much riding on Deja succeeding at her job and getting tenure, personally and professionally, and yet, when she tentatively looked into his eyes, she could feel the sad pit of loneliness she’d been avoiding since graduate school. It had become all too easy to avoid how she felt with her schedule because she had almost nothing else going on in her life, but the minute she was presented with a brief reprieve from that loneliness — like the opportunity to let Alejandro touch her again — she knew she’d fold, even if it cost her so much more than she could realistically give.

Her department had a lot to lose if she wasn’t all they’d hoped she’d be when they hired her. She was their first tenure track hire in nearly a decade, part of a campus-wide diversity initiative meant to bring in marginalized faculty, and it would certainly reflect poorly on the department if she didn’t receive tenure; not as badly as it would reflect on her, but still, not great. That was partially why Deja had so many service commitments; her department needed to make sure that she was seen, a constant reminder that the Sociology department wasn’t full of old white dinosaurs. Not anymore, at least.