A part of her wanted to round on Alejandro and tell him that this wasn’t the pep talk she needed. As much as she enjoyed Jerome, her colleagues would argue that she should spend less time mentoring, and more time writing, as if it was that easy. She wanted to tell him that she needed to hear that she was a good academic, not a good mentor, but she didn’t, because none of this was his fault, certainly not her inability to write. But she also kept her mouth shut because she was terrified that if she exposed her anxieties to him and exposed how overworked and unproductive she was — and how much anxiety it was causing her — he wouldn’t be able to give her the pep talk she needed. It was one thing to see pity in Toni or Marie’s eyes, but it would undo her to see it in Alejandro’s. Deja knew herself, and she knew that if she saw even a flicker of pity in his eyes, that one look would overwrite all the other flirtatious and dirty looks he gave her, and she wasn’t ready to lose that.

So she kept her mouth shut as they walked up to the auditorium. They snatched their name tags from the table by the door and walked toward the seating area. They weren’t as early as Deja liked, but there were still a few seats in the top tier. She tried to find three seats together that she could grab for herself, Toni, and Marie when Alejandro’s hand cupped her elbow.

“Mike saved us seats, come on,” he whispered to her.

She felt that whisper and his touch through all her layers of clothes and her winter coat in the warm room, and it slowed her response. By the time she could think to remind him that she always sat with Toni and Marie, he was already pulling a seat out for her.

“I…um…maybe I shouldn’t,” she mumbled.

He was pulling his winter coat off, and the movement made his tight button-down shirt pull taut over his abs. Abs, she remembered in that moment, she still hadn’t traced with her tongue.

She had to look away quickly before she did something reckless. She started searching the crowd for her friends, thinking maybe she could slink off to sit with them before the meeting started.