Chapter Text
The campus was deserted, and Eloise loved it.
A week after finals, the hallways that usually echoed with footsteps and conversation had gone silent. The coffee cart in the lobby was shuttered. The adjunct offices stood dark.
It was officially Winter Break and holiday detritus warred with academic paraphernalia. Someone had strung white lights along the hallway although several were burned out. A slightly bedraggled wreath hung on the department office door, its red bow listing to one side. A menorah cut out labored as a nod to inclusivity. Outside her window, snow was falling in thick, lazy flakes, blanketing the quad in white and making the whole world feel muffled and still.
Eloise had her kettle, her laptop, and absolute peace.
She should have been home. Her mother had called twice to remind her that the roads were getting bad and that she was welcome for dinner, which was code for "I'm worried you'll starve alone in that tiny house." But her mother’s house didn't have this chair, this desk, these books arranged in an order that made sense only to her. And even her home didn't have the particular satisfaction of sitting in a space she had earned.
It had been a hard year. The dissertation revisions, the job market anxiety, the dawning realization that academia was a sinking ship and she had somehow scrambled aboard anyway. But she had this office. Her name on the door. A class she had designed herself, a chance to teach a subject she was passionate about to students who were truly interested.
One student in particular.
Eloise pushed that thought aside. She'd been doing that all week, with mixed success. Grades were submitted. The semester was over. Cressida Cowper had earned a solid A, because her work was excellent, and Eloise had triple-checked her own grading to make sure she wasn't being influenced by anything other than the quality of the papers. She wasn't. The Sedgwick paper really was that good. The Killing Eve paper had promise, though it needed development.
That was all professional. Completely professional.
The fact that Eloise still thought about the way Cressida had said "four weeks" in the doorway of this office, the way she'd smiled that small private smile before walking away, the fact that Eloise had not opened her window for three days after that conversation because the jasmine was fading and she wanted to hold onto it as long as possible...
None of that mattered now. The semester was over. Cressida would move on with her life, her career, her next chapter. Eloise would move on with her dissertation, her teaching, her collection of regrets about things she couldn't have done differently anyway.
She stared at her laptop. The cursor blinked. She had rewritten that paragraph four times.
A sound in the hallway. Soft footsteps, muffled by the snow that must have come in on someone's boots. Eloise frowned. No one should be here. The building was technically closed, though her keycard still worked and no one had told her not to come in.
The footsteps stopped outside her door.
Eloise waited. A student with a grade complaint? A colleague who'd also sought refuge from the holidays? The footsteps didn't move. Then she heard a soft rustle, and a whisper of paper sliding across the floor.
Something white appeared under her door. An envelope.
Eloise stared at it. The footsteps shifted, and the door rattled slightly as whoever was out there stood up.
"Come in," Eloise called, loud enough to carry through the thick wood.
The rattling stopped. Silence.
Eloise stood, crossed to the door, and pulled it open.
Cressida Cowper stood in the hallway, snow dusting her shoulders, one hand frozen in midair as if she'd been about to knock or possibly flee. She was wearing a long charcoal coat, elegant and clearly expensive but practical in a way her usual clothes weren't. Flat boots. Her hair was damp at the edges, curling slightly from the snow. Without the heels, her eyes were only a few inches above Eloise's.
Eloise had never seen her in flat shoes. She looked younger. Softer. Still devastating, but in a different way.
"Hi," Cressida said. Her voice was slightly breathless, like she'd been hurrying. Or like she'd been caught.
"Hi," Eloise said. She looked down. The envelope was in her hand. She didn't remember picking it up. "What's this?"
Then she remembered what she was wearing.
She was wearing the Christmas sweater her mother had given her last year. It was forest green with a nightmarish reindeer design and actual jingle bells sewn into the antlers. She’d put it on this morning because they turned down the heat when the building was empty, and her office was freezing, and most importantly, she was going to be alone. Now, she wasn’t alone.
Cressida’s eyes traveled from Eloise’s face to her sweater. Her expression shifted.
“Don’t,” Eloise said.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You were absolutely going to say something.”
Cressida chewed her lip. “It’s very festive.”
“My mother thinks I need more joy in my life.”
“The bells … the bells make the outfit.”
One of the bells jingled as if to prove that point. Eloise closed her eyes briefly.
"That's…" Cressida stopped. Started again. "I didn't think you'd be here."
"I'm always here."
"I know. I mean, I thought you might be, but the snow, and the break, and..." Cressida gestured vaguely at the empty hallway. "I was going to leave it. Under the door. And then leave. Before you found it. That was the plan."
"The plan was to slide an envelope under my door and run away?"
"It sounds worse when you say it like that."
Eloise looked at the envelope in her hand. Plain white. Her name written on the front in handwriting she didn't recognize. Elegant, precise, the kind of penmanship that suggested either expensive schooling or a lot of practice signing autographs.
"Should I open it?"
Uncertainly broke through Cressida’s expression. "You don't have to. I mean, you can. It's yours. I gave it to you. I slid it under your door, which I now realize was a cowardly way to do this, but it's done, so." She stopped talking with visible effort.
Eloise opened the envelope.
Inside was a card. Cream-colored, thick paper stock, the kind that cost more than it should. On the front, in small gold script: Thank You. She opened it.
Professor Bridgerton
Thank you for a semester that changed how I think about the world and my place in it. Your class gave me language for things I'd felt but couldn't articulate. I'm grateful.
If you'd like to continue the conversation, now that there are no grades between us:
And then, underneath, a phone number.
Eloise stared at it.
"It's my cell," Cressida said, unnecessarily.
"I can see that."
"You don't have to use it."
"No, I…" Eloise looked up. Cressida was watching her with that familiar stillness, but underneath it was uncertainty. Less composed. "Is this… Are you… Do you want me to call you? Because…"
"Yes," Cressida said. "If you want to."
"If I want to."
"If you want to."
Eloise's brain stalled. The card. The phone number. Cressida in flat boots, looking nervous. This seemed like... but it couldn't be….
"I thought you were straight," Eloise said.
The words came out before she could stop them. She regretted them immediately.
Cressida's eyebrows rose. "You thought I was straight."
"You're a model. You're…" Eloise gestured vaguely at all of Cressida. "You know. You dress for… people assume…"
"That I dress for men."
"Yes."
"That the male gaze I'm constantly performing for is the gaze I actually want."
"When you put it like that, it sounds stupid."
"It is stupid." But Cressida was smiling now, her posture relaxed. "You spent an entire semester teaching a class about how the gaze works, and you still assumed the woman who kept coming to your office hours to talk about queer theory was straight?"
"I thought you were being academic! Intellectually engaged!"
"I was intellectually engaged. I was also interested in you."
Eloise opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Her sweater jingled.
"You're standing in the hallway," she finally managed. "It's cold. Come in."
Cressida stepped inside. The office felt smaller immediately, the way it always did when she was in it. She was still dusted with snow, flakes melting on her shoulders, in her hair. The scent of jasmine mixed with cold air and wet wool.
"So," Eloise said, closing the door behind her. "All semester. You were…"
"Interested. Yes."
"And I was…"
"Staring at the ceiling. Looking at a spot above my head. Knocking things off your desk. Telling me I looked old."
"I said you looked mature!"
"You also spent an entire class calling on me like I'd invented feminist theory and then suggested I publish my undergraduate paper."
Eloise winced. "I was panicking."
"We all noticed." Cressida's smile widened. "Maya asked me afterward what had happened. She thought we'd either had a fight or started sleeping together."
"Oh god."
"I told her neither. She didn't believe me."
Eloise leaned against her desk, trying to recalibrate. The card was still in her hand. The phone number. Cressida, standing in her office in flat boots, having trekked through a snowstorm to leave a note and run away.
"Why didn't you say something?" Eloise asked. "During the semester, I mean. You could have…"
"Said what? 'Hi, Professor Bridgerton, I have a crush on you, please ignore the power imbalance?'" Cressida shook her head. "I wasn't going to be that person. The student who sleeps with her professor. Even if we both wanted it, even if nothing actually happened, it would have looked…" She stopped. "I have spent my entire career being looked at. Being judged by what people see. I wasn't going to give anyone a reason to think I'd earned my grade on anything other than my work."
"Your work was excellent."
"I know. But it wouldn't have mattered if anyone thought otherwise."
Eloise nodded slowly. She understood. Of course she understood. She'd been thinking the same thing all semester, from the other side. The ethics. The optics. The way it would look if anyone knew how much she thought about the woman who sat in her front row.
"The semester's over now," Eloise said.
"I noticed."
"Grades are in."
"I saw. Thank you for the A."
"You earned the A. The Sedgwick paper was genuinely one of the best things I've read from an undergraduate. Maybe anyone." Eloise paused. "The Killing Eve paper was good too. Not quite as strong as the Sedgwick, but it has promise." Eloise paused. "What's your major again? I should know this."
"Business. With a minor in art history."
Eloise tried and failed to keep her face neutral.
"I saw that," Cressida said.
"I didn't say anything."
"You didn't have to. Your eyebrows said it for you."
"My eyebrows are neutral. They have no opinions about business majors."
Cressida crossed her arms. "You absolutely have opinions about business majors."
"Fine. I have opinions. But in my defense, you just spent a semester writing papers on queer theory and the semiotics of fashion. You can see why 'business' is a surprise."
"It's practical.” Cressida took a moment. “My father's very adamant recommendation."
"And yet you're taking upper-level gender studies seminars."
"I take a lot of things that aren't required. Philosophy. Film theory. Your class. I’m thinking about trying physics next fall." Cressida shrugged. "Business will help me manage my career, or whatever comes after. But I wanted to actually learn things while I was here. Not just check boxes."
"Well, you're a business major who writes better feminist theory than many of my women's studies students." Eloise looked at the card in her hand, then back at Cressida. "I've been thinking about writing on Villanelle myself. The costume work, the performance of femininity as weapon. Your paper had angles I hadn't considered. If you wanted to collaborate. Expand it. Work through the ideas to see if there is anything truly eye-opening there. Publishable."
"You want to write an academic paper with a business major."
"I want to write an academic paper with someone who has interesting ideas. Even if she is a business major."
Cressida tilted her head. "Are you offering to be my research advisor or asking me on a date?"
"I…" Eloise looked at the card in her hand. The phone number. "Both? Is that allowed?"
"I think we're past the point of asking what's allowed."
"Right. Yes." Eloise took a breath. "The research thing is genuine. I think you have interesting ideas and I'd like to work with you on them. But the…" She held up the card. "This. The phone number. You want me to call you to…"
"I want you to call me," Cressida said. "For dinner. Or coffee. Or whatever it is people do when they've spent a semester circling each other and finally have no excuses left."
"What do people do?" Eloise asked.
"I don't do this often."
"The dating thing?"
"The any of it thing." Cressida studied her hands. "I travel constantly. I work eighty-hour weeks. When people ask me out, I never know if they actually like me or if they just want to be seen with me. It's easier not to bother." She paused. "But you didn't even know who I was. You just thought I was a student with good ideas about Sedgwick."
"You are a student with good ideas about Sedgwick."
"And also a model."
"Yes, that too. But that's not why I…" Eloise stopped herself before she could say something she couldn't take back. "That's not why I spent the whole semester trying not to stare at you."
"The ceiling tile above my head would disagree."
"The ceiling tile was a coping mechanism."
Cressida laughed. Eloise loved that laugh. She felt it inside, just like the first time.
"So," Cressida said. "Dinner?"
"Yes. Definitely. I would like that very much." Eloise glanced at the window, where the snow was still falling, thicker now. "Though possibly not tonight."
Cressida followed her gaze. "The roads."
"They'll need to plow. I was already going to wait it out here." Eloise looked around her tiny office, at the single guest chair, the stacks of books, the forbidden kettle. "I could make tea. If you wanted to stay. Until it's safe to drive."
"I took the T."
"From where?"
"Cambridge. I have an apartment near Harvard Square."
"That's…" Eloise did the math. Red line to Park Street, green line to here, in a snowstorm. "That's at least forty-five minutes. In good weather."
"Believe me, I know."
"I have a car. I could drive you home. When the roads are clear."
"You don't have to do that."
"I want to do that. It's the least I can, I mean, you came all this way, in the snow, to…" Eloise gestured at the envelope, the card, the phone number. "I can drive you home."
"Eloise." Cressida's voice was warm but firm. "The T will be fine once the snow stops. They'll have the tracks cleared. And I'm not going to make you drive to Cambridge and back in this weather just because I made an impulsive romantic gesture."
"It wasn't impulsive. You said you planned it."
"I planned the envelope. I didn't plan the snowstorm."
"So let me drive you."
"No."
"You're very stubborn."
"I've been told." Cressida settled back in the chair, unbuttoning her coat. "Besides, if you drive me home, I'll have to invite you up for coffee, and then neither of us will get any sleep, and I'd rather do this properly."
Eloise's brain short-circuited briefly at "neither of us will get any sleep." She recovered. Mostly.
"Fine. The T. But you're waiting until the snow stops."
"I was planning to."
They looked at each other. The snow kept falling outside the window. The radiator hummed. The office smelled like jasmine and wet wool and the particular mustiness of old books.
"I should confess," Eloise said.
Cressida's expression shifted slightly. "What?"
"After you left my office. That last time. The jasmine." Eloise felt her face warming. "Your perfume lingers. You probably know that. And I didn't open the window. For days. I just sat here breathing it in and thinking about…" She stopped. "That's probably creepy. That's definitely creepy. Forget I said anything."
"It's not creepy."
"It's a little creepy."
"I chose that perfume specifically because you noticed it," Cressida said. "The first day of class. You leaned toward me when I walked past and I saw you catch the scent. So I kept wearing it. Every Thursday." She paused. "That's probably also creepy."
"It's strategic."
"It's something."
They were standing closer than Eloise had realized. When had that happened? Cressida had drifted toward her, or Eloise had drifted toward Cressida, or gravity had simply given up on keeping them apart.
"So we were both being creepy," Eloise said.
"Mutually creepy. Yes."
Eloise nodded. "That's reassuring somehow."
Cressida smiled. The snow was gone from her hair, the careful styling undone. Eloise liked it better this way. Her brain supplied several unhelpful suggestions about what she could do next, most of which were inappropriate for an office on a college campus where anyone might walk in, even if the building was technically closed and the campus was technically deserted and there was technically no professional barrier between them anymore.
"Tea," Eloise said, stepping back. "I should make tea. Before I do something inadvisable."
"Inadvisable?"
"We just agreed to go on a date. Our first date. Which should probably happen before I..." She gestured vaguely. "You know."
"Before you what?"
"You're not going to make this easy for me, are you?"
"I sat through an entire semester of you lecturing to the ceiling. I think I've earned the right to make you squirm a little."
Eloise laughed, surprised by it, and turned to fill the kettle. Her hands were shaking slightly. She hoped Cressida couldn't see.
"Earl Grey or English Breakfast?"
"Whatever you're having."
"Earl Grey, then. It's better."
She busied herself with the kettle, the mugs, the small ritual of tea-making that gave her hands something to do and her brain something to focus on. Behind her, she heard Cressida settle into the guest chair, the creak of old leather.
"Tell me about the Killing Eve paper," Eloise said, not turning around. "What would you want to expand?"
"You want to talk about my paper right now?"
"I want to talk about something that isn't how much I want to kiss you, and your paper is the safest topic I can think of."
Silence.
Eloise turned. Cressida was watching her with an expression she couldn't quite read.
"You want to kiss me," Cressida said.
"I've wanted to kiss you since the first day of class. That's not news."
"You never said it before."
"You were my student before."
"I'm not your student now."
"No." Eloise leaned against the counter, the kettle heating behind her. "But I'm also not going to kiss you for the first time in my office during a snowstorm when we haven't even been on a proper date yet. "That's not..." She paused. "We agreed to do this right. Your idea."
Cressida was quiet for a moment. Then she smiled, slow and genuine. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay.” Cressida confirmed. “We'll do it right. Tea now. Dinner when the snow clears. Kissing at a later date, to be determined."
"That sounds very organized."
"I like to plan. Remember?"
Eloise remembered. Cressida in this same office, so many weeks ago, asking about her final project.
"You planned this," Eloise said slowly. "Coming here today. The envelope."
"I considered several approaches. The envelope under the door was the least terrifying option."
"What were the other options?"
"Emailing you my phone number, but that felt impersonal. Waiting for you to contact me, but you're clearly too ethical to make the first move. Showing up at your apartment, but I don't know where you live and also that seems like stalking."
"So you settled on sliding a note under my door and fleeing."
"It seemed romantic at the time.In retrospect, I might as well have passed you a note in homeroom."
"I think it's charming."
"You think everything I do is charming. You've made that extremely clear all semester."
"That's not…" Eloise stopped. It was true. It was embarrassingly true. "Okay, fine. Yes. I find you charming. And smart. And interesting. And incredibly attractive in a way that made it very difficult to teach a class about the gaze while trying not to demonstrate it."
"Incredibly attractive?"
"Don't let it go to your head."
"Too late."
The kettle clicked off. Eloise poured the water, let the tea steep, carried both mugs to her desk. She handed one to Cressida, their fingers brushing. Cressida's hands were still cold from outside.
"You're freezing," Eloise said.
"I walked from the train station."
"In this weather?"
"The buses weren't running." Cressida wrapped both hands around the mug, absorbing the warmth. "I wanted to get here before I lost my nerve."
Eloise sat down in her own chair, across the desk from Cressida. This was the arrangement they'd had all semester. Professor and student. The desk between them like a boundary.
"The desk feels weird now," Eloise said.
"It does."
"I could move."
"You could."
Eloise stood, picked up her chair, and carried it around to Cressida's side of the desk. She set it down close enough that their knees were almost touching and sat back down.
"Better," she said.
"Much."
Outside, the snow kept falling. The light through the window had gone gray and soft. The radiator clicked and hummed. They sat together, drinking tea, knees almost touching, not quite brave enough to close the last few inches of distance.
"I think this is the longest you’ve been in my office," Eloise said.
"The semester's over. No more professional consequences."
"It's not that." Eloise looked at her tea, at the steam rising. "It's that I know now. That this isn't one-sided. That you came here, through a snowstorm, to give me your phone number." She looked up. "That changes things."
"What does it change?"
"Everything. Nothing." Eloise shook her head. "I don't know. I've never done this either."
"The dating thing?"
"The wanting something this much and actually getting to have it thing."
Cressida set down her mug. Reached across the small distance between them. Took Eloise's hand.
Her fingers were warm after the tea. Eloise looked at their hands, intertwined. It was such a small thing. Such a simple gesture. People held hands all the time.
But this was Cressida's hand in hers, and it didn't feel simple at all.
"So," Cressida said. "Tell me about your dissertation."
"My dissertation?"
"You said the paper was a safe topic. Your dissertation is also a safe topic. And I want to know." She squeezed Eloise's hand lightly. "I've heard bits and pieces all semester, but never the whole thing. What are you arguing? What's the through line? Why does it matter?"
Eloise stared at her. "You actually want to hear about my dissertation."
"I actually do."
"Most people's eyes glaze over after the first sentence."
"I'm not most people."
No, Eloise thought. You're really not.
She started talking.
The snow fell for three more hours. By the time it stopped, the roads were impassable and the trains had been suspended. Cressida texted someone (her agent? a friend? Eloise didn't ask) to say she'd be late. Eloise texted her mother to say she was fine, she was at the office, she'd be home when the plows came through. She would call her then.
They talked about the dissertation. About Killing Eve, and Villanelle's costumes, and the semiotics of fashion as armor. About Cressida's plans for after modeling, how she might find another career, how much she enjoyed just learning new things, just thinking. About how strange it felt to want a future that didn’t rest on how she looked. About Eloise's family, the overwhelming Bridgertons, the way she'd fled to academia partly to have one thing that was just hers.
Eloise made more tea. She scrounged up an unopened box of cookies. Cressida took off her coat, revealing a cashmere sweater in deep burgundy. Not cream this time. Warmer. Richer.
"I like this," Eloise said, gesturing at the sweater. "The color."
"I wasn't sure what to wear. For leaving an envelope under a door and running away."
"You look beautiful."
Cressida looked down at her mug, but she was smiling.
At some point, Eloise's hand found Cressida's again. At some point, Cressida moved her chair closer, closing those last few inches. At some point, the conversation drifted into comfortable silence, the kind where neither person felt the need to fill the space.
The plows came through around eight. The sound of them rumbling past broke the spell.
"I should go," Cressida said, not moving.
"Probably."
"The trains will be running again."
"Probably."
Neither of them moved.
"Dinner," Eloise said. "Tomorrow? If you're free?"
"I'm free."
"There's a place near my apartment. Italian. Nothing fancy, but the pasta is good and they don't rush you."
"That sounds perfect."
"Seven o'clock?"
"Seven o'clock."
They stood. Cressida gathered her coat. Eloise watched her put it on, button by button, the practiced grace of someone who knew how to wear clothes.
At the door, Cressida paused. Turned back.
"Thank you," she said. "For the semester. For the class. For…" She gestured at the space between them. "This."
"You're welcome. For all of it."
Cressida leaned in. For a moment, Eloise thought she was going to kiss her anyway, office be damned, first date be damned. Her heart stuttered.
But Cressida just pressed her cheek to Eloise's, brief and warm, her breath soft against Eloise's ear.
"Tomorrow," she said.
"Tomorrow."
Then she was gone, footsteps echoing in the empty hallway, the door clicking shut behind her.
Eloise stood in her office. The tea had gone cold. The window was dark. The room smelled like jasmine.
She looked down at the card still on her desk. The phone number.
She picked up her phone and texted:
This is Eloise. In case you wanted to save my number too.
The response came before she could put the phone down:
Already saved. See you tomorrow.
Eloise smiled. Set the phone aside. Looked around her office, at the books and the papers and the kettle and the chair where Cressida had been sitting.
Tomorrow.
She could wait until tomorrow.