The Bookshop Kiss by Jenny Parker

Author:Jenny Parker [Parker, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-09-23T18:30:00+00:00

9

Selma had woken up early to get started on a new chapter for her thesis, and instead spent an entire hour staring at a blinking cursor, wanting to cry.

All that work down the drain. She kept scrolling back up to the big gaping hole where she’d had to delete all the work she’d done on the diaries that James had plagiarised. Even thinking about them made her feel like she wanted to scream. Scream or cry or even throw-up. That was nearly a full year of work, piecing together the conversations in letters to the events in the private journals and finding common threads in the women’s voices — all of it, taken.

Not just taken, she thought dully as she went to make another carafe of strong coffee in hopes of breaking through her block. Stolen.

James.

She thought he’d been her friend, her ally in the bickering in-fighting that had taken over the English department with the downsizing. Except apparently years of working side by side as underpaid and overworked T.A.s, nights spent bitching and laughing together and all that time she’d even volunteered to edit and help him with his own research, meant nothing.

Nothing compared to scoring a research fellowship based on her bloody work.

He’d just lifted it whole cut from a draft he’d ‘offered’ to help her proof. Lifted it and then dived in to the libraries she’d done all the legwork on and taken over everything. Then presented it to applause at a conference where she was in the audience, aghast.

Thinking about it now, she felt the familiar mix of dread and sorrow at replacing her work.

Thelma, her supervisor, had been sympathetic but firm. She had been beaten to the post by another student and she could either make a huge fuss and hope James got his knuckles rapped — or come off looking like sour grapes.

James must’ve gotten wind of it because that was when he started spreading rumours about Selma sleeping her way through the faculty body.

It didn’t matter that it wasn’t true, just that it was out there. Thelma’s advice? Hold your head up and move on. Hard won advice, she’d confided from seeing other people batter their heads against a stacked system. Rumors were the worst.

Selma had never known how much she enjoyed anonymity until she was the one feeling like she had a scarlet A on her. And she hadn’t even had all the wild affairs that people were pinning on her!

A steady girlfriend here and there, nothing hugely serious and because she’d kept a low profile, somehow that made it even easier to have her linked to every known lecher on campus.

She looked at the mug of hot coffee and her blank computer screen, and thought of spending another few hours trying to get new ideas.

Then she tipped the coffee down the sink, grabbed her car keys and headed out. She needed fresh air and a new view.

Her lovely little VW Bug purred to life when she got in. She patted the dashboard in thanks and pulled out.

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