Fuck it. Jo wasn’t about to back down now. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, crossing her arms over her chest and planting her feet. “It is.”
“Did you not receive my reply?”
“I did, but—” But what? But she’d thought she might be able to get her way through sheer force of will and personality. Thought she’d butt her head against the problem at least a few more times, because people got tired of dealing with her. They always got tired of dealing with her, and being exhausting and tenacious was how she got things done whenever someone slammed a door in her face. Whenever someone tried to tell her no. “But I’m here to argue my case in person.”
“Well, then.” Dr. Galloway tugged her glasses off and folded them before setting them down on her desk. “Please. Be my guest.”
All the words she’d rehearsed on the plane and in Roberto’s van seemed to shrivel as she called them forth. “I am… I… You’ve assigned me to a female advisor.”
“That I have.”
“And I’d like to request that I be switched to a different one.”
“Do you find yourself uncomfortable working for women, Ms. Kramer?”
“No! No, of course not.” It was ridiculous to think about. Almost as ridiculous as the idea that she’d be trying to make this case to a woman. A woman named P.J.
Seriously. How was she supposed to have seen that one coming?
Dr. Galloway tapped one short-cropped nail against the arm of her chair. “Because our nondiscrimination policy is quite clear on this point.”
“Nondiscrimination?” she croaked. As if Jo were the one trying to discriminate? It was laughable, and if this woman knew an iota of her history, she’d never dare suggest it. “I’m happy to work for a female advisor. Only…” She trailed off, uncertain how to say this.
How to explain the look that had been in her tenth-grade counselor’s eyes as she’d suggested that Jo should consider a field of study more suited to her sex. The way her physics teacher had never learned her name. The way the department chair at her university had scowled as he’d told her that maybe the lone female professor in their group might be able to find some work for her when he couldn’t be bothered to.
The way her father had always looked at her whenever she’d asked him for anything. Anything at all.
“Only…?” Dr. Galloway prompted.
Fuck it. There wasn’t really any way Jo could mess this up any worse than she had so far. “Only, I wasn’t sure if you were assigning me to a female advisor on account of my being female myself.”
It had happened before, and it burned, every time.
Dr. Galloway’s expression was one of very, very thinly veiled amusement as she arched her brows higher. “Ms. Kramer. You are one of six women enrolled in our undergraduate research assistant program this summer. Four of the nine resident scientists who were kind enough to take on students happen to be women. It would sadly be mathematically impossible for at least one of our female students not to be paired with an advisor of the same gender.”
The breath Jo sucked in made a whistling noise, a sound that echoed the one currently happening inside her head.
Six women. She was one of six women here this summer, and the very thought of it made something loosen in her chest.
Three years of undergraduate physics and astronomy and math and computing courses, and not once had there been six girls. Hell, in general, there had never been more than one. She’d only ever had one female professor in all that time, and now there were going to be at least four.
She wasn’t about to let her guard slip—it was entirely too tightly ingrained in her for that. But for the first time in a decade, the armor she surrounded herself with seemed to lighten. It made the junction of her shoulder and her neck pinch a little less hard, and her lungs filled in a way they rarely did as she let herself inhale.
Seeing Jo’s posture relax, Dr. Galloway smiled, her lips teasing upward with a knowing look that wasn’t about derision. No, Jo recognized derision entirely too well, and this was something else. Something Jo didn’t know exactly what to do with, but something that felt… safe, almost. It was a novel concept.
“Will there be anything else?” Dr. Galloway asked.
“I… um… no. Just that.”
“Well, thank you for being so accommodating with accepting your assigned advisor. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I do have some work to finish up before our welcome session this evening.”
“Right. Of course.”
“Roberto?”
“Sí?” he said, stepping forward.
“If you would be so kind as to deliver Ms. Kramer and her belongings to the girls’ residence?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thank you.”
It was a dismissal if ever Jo had heard one. Her cheeks felt warm, embarrassment at the way she’d acted—at what she’d assumed—almost as hot as the climate.
But that was how things had gone for her—how things had always gone for her. You could only be discouraged or shunted aside so many times before you learned to expect the worst of people.
It burned to admit that she was wrong. But a person did what she had to do. “I apologize for—” she started.
Dr. Galloway waved her off. “Not an unrealistic presumption, unfortunately. I’ve been there a time or two myself, as you can imagine.”
“Um. Yes.”
Dr. Galloway started to spin around to face her computer screen again, and Roberto stepped to the side, holding out a hand for Jo to go ahead of him. Gritting her teeth, Jo nodded and plotted her retreat.
She’d only just turned away when Dr. Galloway called after her. “Oh, Ms. Kramer?”
Jo paused. “Yes?”
“Do try not to accuse Heather of sexism the first time you meet her. I think you’ll find she’s not quite as understanding about that kind of thing as I am.”
Jo’s stomach churned. “Right.”
With that, she put one foot in front of the other and let herself be marched back to the van they’d left waiting at the front of the building. The whole time, her neck tingled, shame and anger both twisting her up.
Shame at her behavior. At her presumptions and the way she’d let her temper get away from her. Anger at all the people who’d made her feel like she had to go in swinging every time—at her professors and her father. At herself.
“The other girls are already here,” Roberto said. He visibly stopped himself from getting her door for her.
“Great.” It wasn’t, though. She was in no mood to play nice with other people right now.
But maybe that was for the best. There wouldn’t be any hiding or mistaking. They’d know right off the bat what kind of bitch they were dealing with, and they could skip right over that awkward moment when people tried to be her friend.
She had neither the time nor the inclination to be anybody’s friend. She was here for ten weeks, and she was here to do her job. In her first five minutes, she’d managed to make a bad first impression on the person running the program and on the guy she’d have to talk to any time she needed a ride off-site for any reason. But that was fine. Totally fine.
Gazing out the window at the mountains in the distance, she sucked her lip ring tight between her teeth. The first impressions she’d given them weren’t wrong. They were just irrelevant.
And she’d work as hard as she needed to prove it.
Adam McCay was lucky. So, so lucky. He just had to keep reminding himself of that.
Mopping sweat off his brow, he folded up the last of his shirts, tugged open a drawer, and dropped them inside. He straightened back up and surveyed his room. Four white walls and a couple big, screened windows with clunky wooden shutters. A closet and a dresser.
And it all looked unbearably empty. None of his usual posters or prints. None of his usual anything, but there hadn’t been space in his suitcases for much except books and clothes. It didn’t really matter, though. Just ten short weeks here, and then he would get to go home.