Blush - Jamie Brenner Page 0,99

her hair. All she felt was relief that at least he was happy. It didn’t matter that she felt, well, a little robotic. Maybe she’d never experience physical ecstasy again—maybe it was simply something she had to let go of.

He moaned in a primal way that gave her a little chill, a shiver that told her she wasn’t completely dead inside. Maybe this was the best she could hope for from now on. It was enough—it had to be enough. And it would be her little secret. Surely, what Steven didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

Surely, their marriage needed this one little lie.

* * *

The campus felt strange and familiar at the same time. It was like walking through a stage set of a place she had once known.

Sadie had two weeks before classes officially started at the end of August, and she needed that extra time to get her head on straight. She found herself wandering in a fog from task to task: Registering for classes. Meeting friends for coffee. Checking books out of the library. All the while, she thought about Mateo. It was irrational; they had had a brief summer fling. She thought for sure that once she was back on campus, back to reality and away from the insular world of the winery, she would forget all about him. But so far, that hadn’t happened.

Mercifully, she had a big distraction that morning: her first academic meeting of the semester. On her way up the stairs to the English department offices, she considered yet another in endless variations of how to admit to her academic advisor, her academic idol, that she’d failed to get her thesis off the ground.

Dr. Moore wore one of her trademark colorful dresses, this one a green-and-blue pattern that looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. Her face was brightened by orange-red lipstick, her big dark eyes shining, lit from within. She couldn’t help but feel happy at the sight of Dr. Moore, even though it was her moment of reckoning.

Sadie sat in the chair opposite her desk. Her palms were slick with perspiration despite the whirring table fan cooling the room.

“How was your summer?” Dr. Moore asked.

“It was good,” Sadie said.

“I hope the time away helped get your creative juices flowing.”

It would be a relief, really, to simply admit defeat. She’d been dreading this moment, but now that it was here, she was ready to just let go.

“Actually, it was just the opposite. I didn’t get any writing done.”

“I see,” Dr. Moore said, steepling her fingers. “What did you do?”

“I helped out at my grandparents’ winery.”

“That sounds interesting. How long have they had the winery?”

“My whole life,” Sadie said. “But this was the longest time I’d ever spent there.”

Dr. Moore nodded. “Sometimes when you’re engaged in the world, it’s hard to make time to write. But then, when you get back to the page, these are the experiences that bring enrichment to your work.”

Sadie nodded. Then she said, “I don’t know. I think it was one big distraction.”

“Did you do any reading?”

“No. Not really.”

“Sadie. I find it hard to believe you didn’t read any books all summer long.”

“Well, I mean, I read some trashy novels. But just out of curiosity. I wasn’t reading reading them.” She would not mention the book club—no matter how far off the rails the meeting went.

“What novels?”

“Oh—nothing you’ve ever heard of. Books from the seventies and eighties. They were from my grandmother’s book club.”

“Try me,” Dr. Moore said with a smile.

“Um, well, one was called Lace. Another was Chances . . .”

“By Jackie Collins.”

“You know that book?”

“Of course.”

“And also Scruples by Judith Krantz.”

Dr. Moore nodded. “And what did you think of the books?”

“Oh, the writing is terrible,” Sadie said.

“And yet the novels are classics in their own way.”

“Classics? No. I mean, really—have you read them?”

“Yes,” Dr. Moore said.

Sadie looked at her in surprise. “So then how can you call them classics?”

“Italo Calvino, in The Uses of Literature, said: ‘A classic is a book that has never finished what it has to say.’”

If Sadie didn’t know better, she would think Dr. Moore was mocking her. She couldn’t possibly be suggesting that she take these books seriously. A book’s merit was based on the words on the page.

Ever since she was a little girl, Sadie had thought a lot about the written word. She thought about words as she fell asleep at night; she thought about them when she dressed in the morning. She arranged them in her mind like colors