Book Launch: Something of Yourself
A debut novel encompassing the American Millennial experience.
Chapter 1
Fluorescent lights buzzed above linoleum hallways. The only other sound in the government office came from the methodical tick-tick-tick of the analog wall clock. Each second, a judgment against the poor life choices that led Astoria Lyons to a dead-end job back in her hometown after college and the broken heart she carried with her.
Alone at the front desk of the local USFS Ranger Station, Astoria stared at the dot-com era relic of a hulking Compaq computer. Scanning the screen, she gave her resume and cover letter a final read before clicking “submit,” launching both documents into the void. Another application to another newspaper job that may not even exist, for all she knew. Another dose of unrequited hope.
Was it too early for the ham sandwich she’d brought for lunch?
She’d graduated from college in the spring. According to MTV, it was supposed to be the most exciting time of her life—road trips with girlfriends (she had none), an engagement ring (the man she’d carried on with for two years, who also happened to be her professor, had ended their relationship and shattered her world instead), maybe a new job in a new city (she scoured online job boards daily, to no avail).
But here she was, back in her hometown, enduring the mind-numbing irrelevance of a desk job where her primary responsibility was to answer phones that never rang.
Her father, Ace, had secured this gig for her. A timber industry lifer, he’d called in a favor with the local forest ranger—an old-timer who’d been kind enough to take her on when her student loans came due, and her journalism dreams began to fade.
I’m grateful for the job, she told herself, taking a dry bite of sandwich as tears pricked her eyes.
Truth was, she resented the dead-end gig with its limitless downtime and ample opportunity to dwell on her shattered heart and bruised ego, consider her shortcomings, and rage against the professor for all the ways he’d done her wrong.
She was mentally cataloging her flaws and his betrayals when his name pinged into her inbox, causing her to swallow too soon, the mass of ham and soft bread lodging in her throat. Head between her knees, she wheezed and coughed, willing it up and out of her esophagus and finally hocking it into the bin. Eyes watering, throat on fire, she hacked once more, then clicked to open the email.
“Good morning, Astoria. I’m thrilled to introduce you to a long-time cohort of mine, Anna Mae Alcott. Anna Mae works for a digital marketing agency in Nashville. She’s looking for someone with a knack for storytelling who understands digital. I told her you’re the best I’ve seen. I’ll let you take it from here.
My best —”
After sobbing in the ladies’ room for twenty minutes, Astoria returned, wiped her eyes, and typed a reply-only to this woman, Anna Mae, hoping the lack of response would leave the professor wondering.
“Good afternoon, Anna Mae. I’d love to learn more.”
She hadn't meant to fall in love with the professor. Not at first.
College was two years of pulling swing shifts at an all-night diner, serving her peers in a stained apron, hair smelling of grilled meat, face greasy like whipped cream.
By the spring of her sophomore year, Astoria decided she deserved to savor the freedom of her youth. She quit the diner, took out more student loans, and switched her major from English to Journalism, enrolling in an Emerging Media Studies course.
Rhododendrons blooming pink and red across campus, she walked into the lecture hall, selecting a seat toward the back. Situated with her pen poised over her notebook, she was taken by the young professor commanding the front of the room, hands on hips, chest out.
They locked eyes, and he smiled, his white teeth flashing against his golden tan. Her face flushed, but she held his gaze until another student approached the professor. He shifted his attention but glanced back at her once and smiled.
As the weather warmed and the days softened, many sought distractions beyond campus, but most of the students in the Emerging Media Studies course were female, and attendance remained strong. They filled the auditorium with energetic anticipation every Thursday afternoon at four o’clock.
In each lecture, the professor paraded about the room, telling stories about how the first job out of college was making music videos in Nashville, Tennessee. He painted the southern town as worldly, bustling, winner-take-all for anyone brave enough to take on the music industry, dropping famous country star names, sharing behind-the-scenes images of artists, and waxing on about the magic of creating content before the days of iPhones, MySpace, and Facebook.
Maybe it was the heady spring blossoming around her, but one afternoon, Astoria made her way to the front of the room after class. Her head felt hot; her vision was fuzzy. Voice cracking, she introduced herself. Locking eyes with her, the professor smiled as if to himself, then thanked her for saying hello.
“We’re going to have a lot of fun,” he said.
He left encouraging notes on her papers. As the weeks progressed, she selected a seat closer and closer to the front of the lecture hall, staring hard at the man lecturing in his button-down shirts, khaki shorts, and leather boat shoes. His tan hinted at family vacations on warm beaches, while his southern accent lulled her into a trance. There wasn’t a thing she didn’t like about him.
On a Thursday night at the end of the semester, while the rest of campus was out partying, Astoria was cramming for her last final in the recesses of the library when the professor left her a voicemail.
“You’ve exhibited a real mastery of what we’ve covered in class,” he said. “I'd love to discuss these topics you address in your final paper. Swing by my office tomorrow. I’ll be there after three.”
She barely slept that night.
Floated through her exam the next morning.
The afternoon finally gave way to three o’clock. Astoria’s heart raced as she walked down the hallway to the professor’s office. She knocked, feeling like she might pass out on the pea-green carpet in that musty old building. The door opened; the professor stood smiling behind it.
“Astoria Lyons. I’m so glad you came by.” He gestured for her to enter. They sat facing one another across his desk. They held eye contact; Astoria struggled to focus on what he was saying.
A purple and orange sunset held the world in a psychedelic haze as she floated across the quad an hour later. Could life be so beautiful? Maybe it was all in her head.
Fall semester of her junior year, she landed the editor role at her university’s paper. A fire ignited inside her when she learned the professor would oversee the newspaper’s staff. He saw her flush every time he entered the room, and she knew he saw her, so she started looking straight at him, holding his gaze and letting him see her glow.
She didn’t care what the other students on the newspaper staff might say. Whenever the professor laughed at her sarcastic wit in an editorial meeting, her peers rolled their eyes, but she indulged in the rush, beaming back at him while everyone else in the room dissolved into the background.
Despite her love-drunk obsession, or perhaps inspired by it, Astoria thrived in her new role. From leading editorial brainstorms to translating the print version of the school’s paper into an online edition, she’d never felt so alive. She wanted to pursue a career in journalism after graduation. In the meantime, the harder she applied herself, the more time she garnered working alongside the professor. It wasn’t long before the tension became unbearable.
A rainstorm slapped against the windows. They were working late to get the weekly edition to print. Two lowball glasses of bourbon waited on the desk. Alcohol was prohibited on campus, but the professor kept a bottle in his desk drawer for nights like these. That’s what he’d told Astoria, grinning as he dislodged the cork stopper—thunk!
Hunkered at a large desk littered with marked-up preprint spreads, she re-read her editorial letter. The professor leaned over her, his left hand resting on the back of her chair, his right hand dangerously close to hers on the table. The bourbon and the smell of his cologne—something of black licorice and soft leather—made Astoria throb.
He analyzed her headline longer than necessary. Heat radiated from his body, and she sat there holding her breath, staring at their hands next to each other on the desk, wondering how he’d react if she shifted her wrist half an inch, finally making contact. Electricity ran down her neck and arms and spine and between her legs. What would happen should their currents meet? Intoxicated as she was—more figuratively than literally—she wondered if the instantaneous voltage might be more than she could handle.
After finishing the bourbon, but not the paper, he offered her a ride home. Sitting in his Audi with the engine running, their bodies and breath, and that dizzying cologne steaming up the windows, they focused on the windshield in silence. His fancy car warmed right up. Astoria couldn’t take it any longer. It was dumb, she decided, to keep pretending.
“You know I want more than a ride home,” she said. Rain streaked down the windshield. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands and swallowed hard. Without looking at her, he slipped the car into gear.
Sitting on the toilet in the professor’s bathroom after they finished that first time, Astoria smiled at the mottled specks of blood on the toilet paper. Marks of achievement, like his red pen on her papers, they left her feeling like she finally mattered.
She hadn’t told him she was a virgin. At twenty, the label had become a burdensome reminder of the loneliness of growing up a dreamer in a small town. She wanted to be done with all that, like a semester of boring math classes.
She assumed the professor would move along, perhaps out of shame or fear of losing his job or to pursue his next target.
But he surprised her, driving them to his place whenever they stayed late at the paper—nights turned into weekends, which turned into weeks. They drank his bourbon on Friday nights. He told her stories about the South while they listened to Taj Mahal CDs. Saturday mornings, he made Bloody Marys to soothe their hangovers while she burned the scrambled eggs in his white-tiled kitchen. Sundays, he brought her coffee, croissants, and print newspapers, which they read in bed until noon.
She became a fixture in his apartment, and it became their playground—a place of exploration and indulgence where she danced across the hardwood floors in her socks and his button-downs, smiling seductively, shimmying, beckoning him to consume her again. Afterward, he made them cocktails while she studied his well-appointed bookcases, running her fingers across the spines.
After almost two years of this thrill-turned-habit-turned-addiction, she allowed herself to see their arrangement as her perfect scenario. Sure, worry pricked at her mind whenever the professor spent holiday breaks at his family’s vacation home in Florida, never remotely hinting at an invitation for her to join. But she ignored the trolling concern, just as she downplayed the professor’s disinterest in meeting her father, even though her hometown was less than two hours away.
Silently, she accepted that their outer worlds needed to remain separate until she graduated. They had to protect the professor’s reputation. She understood. In the meantime, the professor was helping her bridge her working-class upbringing with a future she hadn’t been able to envision on her own.
She began imagining their future together, daydreaming of cocktail parties in his apartment with its leather furniture, tall windows, and exposed brick. In her fantasies, she played the hostess, offering refills while cohorts from the college congregated in tight circles, laughing and drinking themselves out of their academic pretenses, enchanted by the dynamic professor and his charming muse.
She conjured a plan: they would live together after she graduated. He’d pursue tenure at the university. She would get a job at the local daily, then a regional role with the Associated Press. Eventually, they would go on Sunday drives to see her father. The professor would love the pastoral scenery and quaint working-class community—a welcome escape from the stuffy confines of his university. They would travel. She would become worldly while maintaining proximity to her humble beginnings.
Yes, she told herself, she really could have it all.
She allowed this vision to blossom and bloom until one afternoon, a few weeks before graduation. An icy spring rain slapped at the windows. With his back to her, the professor uncorked a bottle of wine.
“So, Astoria,” he said casually. “Where will you be moving after you finish your last exam?”
The question was a dagger. A dark tunnel closed in around her vision as she processed his words. Hot tears streamed down her cheeks. The world was collapsing around her.
He faced her, a glass of wine in each hand.
“Come on, Astoria.” He held forth a glass like a peace offering for an argument he’d already won. “You’ll never amount to anything if you stay here. You have to go make something of yourself.”
The most painful part of all: she believed he was right.
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