Heroes (Hollywood Heartthrobs #1) Read Free Page A

bench next to Adam.
    “Worn
out already?” she asked.
    “Nah,
but I need to hop in the shower and head back to the department. Prof. McKee
will have me drawn and quartered if I don’t get those papers graded to hand
back to Monday’s class.”
    “It’s
not the freshman seminar, is it?”
    “Tragically,
yes,” Adam answered, his face drawn in an outlandish frown.
    “Well,
at least they’ll be short,” Jessie offered.
    “Short
and uninspired. I swear, these kids think they’re the first ones ever to
determine that you get more pages if you enlarge the margins. I want to tell
them, look sport, I was young once, too. You don’t know how lucky you are in
research.”
    “Eh,
you have a bunch of young tyrants to answer to, I have one old one,” Jessie
answered. “But no, I don’t envy you.” Her research stipend stipulated that she
needed to be available a certain number of hours to assist Professor Neville
with his forthcoming book on the history of the English sonnet, but she still
had time to work on independent papers.
    “So,
we going to talk about the conference, or did you lure me here just to kick my
ass with a sword?” Adam asked.
    Jessie
made a face.
    “Okay,
drawing on my years of experience as your best friend, I’m going to deduce that
you’re very nervous about the conference but don’t want to talk about it. So,
I’ll just skip to the good part and tell you that you are brilliant, your paper
about the significance of God’s instructions to Raphael in Paradise Lost is blazingly insightful, and no one with half a brain at this conference is
going to say anything different.”
    Jessie’s
focus of study was poetry and drama of the English Renaissance, sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. After publishing a paper on John Milton’s Paradise
Lost last year, she had been invited to participate in a conference on
Milton in Chicago the following week.
    Adam
went on. “Jess, you wouldn’t have been invited to the conference if your paper
wasn’t well received. I know it’s stressful that they gave the keynote position
to someone who is, A, a lying, cheating asshat and, B, interpreting Paradise
Lost differently than you, but academics disagree all the time. The fact
that they think the argument he published is interesting doesn’t mean your
argument is any less valid. It just means whoever he stole this idea from was
also interesting. Your panel is an opportunity to discuss both
interpretations.”
    “I
know. Thanks, Adam. And I really am excited. This is the first time a scholarly
conference has ever wanted me as an actual panelist. It’s just… well… we both
know that I would be a lot less nervous if said asshat wasn’t going to be on
the same panel.” Her excitement about the conference had taken a substantial
hit after hearing that Prof. Richard Pinkman, a Milton scholar with whom she
had an unpleasant history, would be giving the keynote address and participating
in the same panel to which she had been invited. She had nearly backed out of
the conference, until Adam had talked her out of it.
    “Jess.
Go to the conference. Keep your enemies closer, know the competition, all
that.”
    “I
know, Adam, and I’m going. You should be proud of me, I actually got Neville to
agree to let me go a few days early to hit up a few of the university libraries
in Chicago before the shindig starts on Thursday. I’m driving down Sunday
afternoon.”
    “Great!
I think a few days in Chicago will be good for you.” Adam said, heading off to
the locker room. “Who knows, maybe you’ll meet a guy who hasn’t been dead for
four hundred years.” Jessie rolled her eyes at him. “You should wear that blue
dress with the white trim.”
    She
was mildly annoyed by that. “That is sexist. I’m there to work; no one is going
to notice what I’m wearing.”
    “Trust
me, Jess, people will notice. You look lovely in it, but mostly it makes men
underestimate you.” She laughed. “I’m serious. You show