Page 16 of Falling for Mindy
She waved down the bartender and ordered a beer. “I’m just not sophisticated enough to drink, like, Eternity for Men, I guess.”
“Thanks for coming out with me tonight. It’s been a hell of a week.”
“It’s literally Monday night, Min.”
“Yeah, I said what I said, okay?” I said, taking another drink.
“That bad?”
“Worse.”
“Okay, spill. Give me the time of death,” she said wryly.
“Oh, we can’t say that. No postmortem or time of death because it’s insensitive considering I’ll be working adjacent to a domestic violence shelter,” I sighed heavily. “And the worst part is, he’s right and it’s a careless and crappy thing to say, but, damn, Katie, I don’t like being called out by him of all people.”
“By him I assume we mean Dr. Give It to Me Harder?”
“Professor Quinn,” I corrected coolly. “His LinkedIn listed postgrad work but no doctorate.”
“You have been social media stalking him? Go, girl! I’m finally rubbing off on you. I was starting to wonder if you were switched at birth because you had none of my sneakiness and no wild streak to speak of.”
“Hey, I’m older. You would’ve been the one switched at birth. I’m the original, and you’re just daughter 2.0,” I teased. It was an old joke between us, but she giggled anyway.
“Nah. And before you tell me you have a wild side, I do not consider going to class with only one color of highlighter in your bag to be reckless and crazy,” Katie said.
“Ha ha,” I said, deadpan. “I don’t even carry highlighters. I type most of my notes on my Chromebook so the joke’s on you.”
“Yeah, so much cooler than highlighters. You got me there. Hailey Baldwin and Gigi Hadid having nothing on you.”
“You are the worst,” I said. “And I need that tiny computer to hide behind. Otherwise, I’d have to make eye contact with the sexy professor.”
“You know, this isn’t a new thing for you. When we watched Glee, you totally wanted to do it with Mr. Shue. You didn’t have a crush on Finn like a normal person, you were all about that cheesy, curly haired Broadway wannabe teacher.”
“Let’s never speak of him again, please,” I said with a groan because she was right.
“It was seriously pathetic.”
“What I love is that you admit to watching Glee with me, but you think my cast crush was worse than yours,” I said pointedly.
“So I liked the bad boy,” she laughed. “Puck was hot. Shaved head, played guitar---”
“Dumb and slutty?” I offered.
“Yeah, that too,” she laughed, “but at least he wasn’t the freakin’ adult choir coach.”
“Okay, I surrender. You’re right. My Glee crush was ever so slightly more embarrassing than yours. But it isn’t like I have a history of fornicating with my instructors.”
“Did you seriously say fornicating? Who says that?”
“Me. I’m just weirded out by this. So my SAT vocabulary flash cards came back to haunt me.”
“Before any more big words come guest star in our convo, tell me what the big deal is here. You’re allowed to think he’s hot, it’s nothing,” Katie said.
To her, it probably looked like nothing. Everything seemed to come so easily to Katie. Not that she wasn’t a hard worker—she was—but she was so at ease with people, so relaxed and happy and fun. Carefree. So much younger than me, way more than the two calendar years that really separated us. I shook my head.
“Kittycat, it’s bad,” I said, using an old childhood nickname because I was so upset, “he’s gonna be my internship sponsor. He had to take over for Dr. Arboy. So now I have to go meet with him by myself twice a week!” I said, my voice rising almost to a whine of despair. I dropped my head onto the bar and just sat there for a second.
“Are you okay?” she said, her hand on my shoulder, “are you uncomfortable around him? Does he creep you out?”