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Visiting - Chapter One: The Visitor

(moodboard by the wonderful @cutesyscreenname)

Pairing: Professor!Ben (College AU) x OFC Lydia/fem!Reader (reader POV/2nd POV)

Summary: Seeking a change of scenery after her life falls apart, Lydia crosses the Atlantic and arrives in a small New England town, to spend a year expanding her intellectual horizons as a visiting professor of art history at a small liberal arts college. Her growing friendship with Ben Morales, professor of Hispanic literature, forces Lydia to confront the fallout from her past - and raises unexpected questions about the future.

Chapter Summary: It's late August, and Lydia has arrived in the US from Europe to take up her position as visiting professor of art history at Barrow College. Enter Prof. Benjamin E. Morales, literature scholar and (as he puts it) 'your very own welcome wagon'.

Word Count: 5.2k

Rating: Mature; will become Explicit in later chapters.

Content: Professor Ben College AU; smaller-than-usual-for-this-fandom age gap (she is 41 and Ben 47 when the story begins); canon is not a thing here; slow burn; discussion of infidelity and emotional abuse; discussion of self-esteem issues and body insecurity; strong language.

A/N: Meet Lydia as she meets Ben. See the Series Masterlist for an outline of Lydia's story and background. Pure, nerdy fluff as dork meets dork in a New England college town.

(One for the Big Night nerds, as it's referenced in the chapter: I literally only realised the name of the rival restaurant when I went to check that I'd got the descriptions right for this chapter... IYKYK.

A complete and utter coincidence, I promise.)

Taglist: @cutesyscreenname; @lunapascal; @fuckyeahdindjarin; @julesonrecord; @tieronecrush; @perennialdoll247; @vermillionwinter; @iamskyereads; @imaswellkid

The large, red-brick building is quiet, walls freshly painted and linoleum gleaming in the late August sunshine in anticipation of the impending start of the academic year at Barrow College. In the administration office for the Faculty of Arts, the faculty secretary - Susan, a woman in her late fifties, and the very image of seasoned efficiency - is preparing your new staff ID card, office key, and a plastic folder full of welcome documents and essential information.

While you wait, you survey the gallery of staff photographs on the wall, trying to quell the nerves in the pit of your stomach. The first day anywhere was never easy. First day as a visiting professor in a liberal arts college on the other side of the Atlantic? Ramp that difficulty level all the way up to eleven.

Susan emerges from behind the counter and hands you your ID card, ensconced in a dark green Barrow-branded lanyard, and the pack of documents. “Okay, Lydia. Normally this is the point where I’d bring you to see the head of the Literature Department,” she explains. “I know you’re an art historian, but Literature runs the visiting program. Always have, always will.” She shrugs and rolls her eyes. “This is the Barrow way.”

“So you’re not bringing me to see the head of the Literature Department?” you ask.

“Professor Arden is at a conference, unfortunately. But you’ll meet her next week,” Susan gestures towards the door, and you dutifully move into the main corridor. “In her absence, Professor Morales is going to run through the essentials with you. Don’t worry - Ben’s great, you’re in good hands. Can’t work a copier for love nor money, of course, but a real sweetheart.”

She points out some of the main teaching rooms in the building occupied by the various departments in the faculty, and you can’t help but be amused at how it all feels like a TV or movie set to your eyes. You’d grown up watching American high school and college shows and movies, and now, here you were: Green chalkboards! Those seats with the folding armrests! All that was missing were the standard-issue yellow pencils and those yellow legal pads everyone seemed to use.

Susan leads the way into a classroom, encouraging you to take a seat. Whereas the other rooms had been notable for their pristine uniformity, this seemed to be in use as a kind of temporary office. A laptop sits on the main desk unit, surrounded by piles of books and papers, covered in coloured tabs.

“This isn’t Professor Morales’ usual office, of course,” Susan explains, pointing to the ceiling. “Leak. His ceiling is being repaired so he’s working here for the moment. Usually he’s just round the corner in 315 - a couple of doors down from your office, in fact. Anyway: he’s running a little behind schedule, though that’s nothing unusual with Ben…I’ll go remind him you have an appointment!” Her voice fades with her footsteps as you take in your surroundings. You notice the chunky volume on the desk: War and Peace. You roll your eyes, thinking about all the times over the years that you’d seen Tolstoy’s masterpiece “casually” left in full view by academics keen to impress, not to mention the assholes you’d encountered as a graduate student, keen to get you into bed by convincing you of their intellectual ability. Whereas their copies were always a little too clean, though, this one was a bit dog-eared and worn at the corners. Maybe Ben Morales was that rare thing: someone who’d actually read it.

You never thought you were the kind of person who would even apply for a year-long visiting professorship at a New England liberal arts college thousands of miles from home, let alone actually take it up. A combination of impostor syndrome and pressure from your then-partner to stay put - “but baby, what about my career?” - had conspired to convince you such a thing would be impossible.

That was then. This was now. Things had changed, and so had you.

You couldn’t not be changed by the brutal end, a couple of years before, to a fifteen-year relationship: a sudden departure, revelations of infidelity, endless days and nights of tears and numbness, feelings of worthlessness compounding a lifelong lack of self-esteem. It was bad enough without the various accusatory “explanations” offered by your ex-partner for their actions, all designed to make you feel like this was your fault, the consequence of your having been “too much”, too dull, too unattractive now, too stressed-out (never mind that you carried the can for everything).

Time and many, many hours of therapy helped you to move on. You knew now that you now had a kind of freedom and joy that had never been fully present in your relationship. You were proud to embrace your authentic self. Your friends and family remarked on how happy you seemed, how bright, how confident. They praised your achievements and growing academic profile, even as you never felt quite good enough - professionally or personally.

What they couldn’t see were the metaphorical defences you had built up around yourself: treacherous ramparts surrounding a huge wall of emotional stone, protecting the broken heart and fragile soul within. Your friends and family were enough, as were occasional hook-ups and one night stands as and when the opportunity arose. Even as you left the past for dust, you refused to countenance anything more.

You believed that you didn’t need anything more - and in a lot of ways, that was true. You liked your life now. You could do as you pleased. Better to have freedom and self-preservation than exposing yourself to the risks that come with emotional connections. You were nearing forty-two. Who’d want a forty-something art historian with too much baggage - emotional and physical, bearing in mind the body you’d come to feel increasingly unhappy with, all scars and stretch marks and aching joints and general discomfort?

More than that, and to your grim fascination, you never really…felt anything for anyone anymore. At times, you wondered if that part of your brain had been switched off. Sex without attachment or meaning was one thing; real attraction and feelings another thing entirely. Hell, you never even crushed on musicians or actors any more. You’d kind of made peace with it. Maybe this was your destiny.

You were ‘living your best life’, as your best friend put it. You were hailed for your strength and your optimism. You knew you were better off in this not-so-brave new world, unexpectedly single as you stared down the barrel of middle age. You embraced new opportunities. “You’re still young,” your mother had counselled. “Take the chances life presents, Lyd. See the world! Share that big beautiful brain of yours.”

Now you actually had to do it. Visiting Professor of Art History in a small college with a great reputation. A whole year at Barrow in which to try new things, expand your horizons, and enjoy your freedom.

Bring it on.

Nervous energy had kept you awake prior to your long-haul flight, and the time difference was starting to kick your ass. You were just on the verge of going in search of a weapons-grade energy drink when he sauntered into the room, wrangling a messy pile of freshly-printed course handbooks.

You suppress a giggle at the sight of him: not because he looked funny, but because he could have walked straight from the pages of a cheesy teen magazine story about unrequited love for a favourite professor. He’s tall, broad, dark, dressed in a pale blue Oxford button-down worn untucked over slightly faded black jeans, sleeves rolled up to expose his forearms. A pair of well-loved but evidently well cared-for black Doc Marten shoes. You guessed he might be a couple of years older than you, but not very many. Wavy dark hair that looks like it would turn into curls if left to grow out, streaked through with silver. Moustache, and what you guess you might call a sort-of beard - more of a scruff, really, and greying in places. Glasses - but of course! - and behind them what looked (because you were never great with direct eye contact, especially when first meeting) to be dark brown eyes. You’d almost think an unseen costume director had added the pencil he was gripping with his teeth as a final touch, for maximum Hot Professor Cliché effect.

He plonks the pile of handbooks on the desk and does an exaggerated exhalation of breath as he turns to face you, removing the pencil from his mouth and offering a wide smile. He advances towards you, hand outstretched, and you stand up to shake his (rather large, you notice) hand.

“Welcome to the department! I’m Ben Morales, comparative literature prof and your very own welcome wagon.” He smiles brightly, eyes crinkling. “You must be Lydia.”

You return his smile, albeit shyly. “That’s me - though most people usually end up just calling me Lyd after a while. On rare occasions it becomes Lyddie, though that’s not much shorter than my actual name. My sister used to call me Lydularity but thankfully that didn’t stick.”

Shuuuuuut up, Lydia.

He grins. “Lydia, Lyd,” he turns your name over, as if becoming accustomed to saying it. “Your mom a Jane Austen fan?”

You huff a laugh and shake your head. “I wish it was that cultured, but sadly no. As my mother never fails to remind me: I’m named after a 1970s pop song. And not a very good one, at that. My view - not hers.”

“Well, at least it’s a nice name,” he laughs. “I’m guessing Susan has covered almost everything but I should make sure you have all the essential information you need before school starts - timetables, IT stuff, where the only drinkable coffee on campus is - actually, wait.” He picks up a blue coffee mug from the desk. “You want some coffee?”

You’d take anything at this stage to keep you even a little perkier. “Uh, sure. Yes please. With milk - I mean, creamer. Whatever it is. Half and half, is that what it’s called?”

He nods as he heads out of the classroom in search of coffee. “I normally take mine black, so I’m not up to speed on the creamer situation. It might just be some off-brand stuff. But hopefully you aren’t a connoisseur. Yet.”

You shake your head with a smile, watching him jog lightly out the door, mug in hand.

He has what your friends would describe as ‘chaotic energy’ - somehow both put-together and messy, with a million different thoughts presumably bouncing around in his head at any given moment. It was a relief. From what you’d read on the college website - there was no profile photo, you remembered - he had an exceptional track record as a scholar of European literature, recognised with any number of awards from peers and students alike. You’d even made a mental note to read some of his articles on magical realism and adaptation.

Because of his impressive profile, you were prepared for the possibility of him being in the mode of some of the more obnoxious men you’d worked with over your years in academia: intimidating, serious, keen to remind you that they were a ‘genius’, and rather vain. Ben, at least judging by your first impressions, seemed to be the complete opposite.

He swings back into the room with a mug in each hand: his own blue one and, to your surprise, a retro Sesame Street mug for you. You take the coffee from him at the desk, settling back into a front-row seat and smiling with bemusement at the beaming faces of characters you’d loved since childhood. As he sits down on the desk he notices your reaction and looks sheepish.

“Sorry, I hope you don’t mind the choice of mug-”

“My mom always says these guys taught me to read and count. Feels right to have my first real American college coffee in a Sesame Street mug”, you say quickly, raising the mug.

He grins. “Well, that’s a relief. That’s my favourite one.” He raises his own mug, reciprocating your gesture. “Uh… to the Children’s Television Workshop?”

You’ve sat through enough briefings and orientation sessions in your time to know how dull they could be. This, though, is less like a meeting and more like an overdue catch-up between old pals. The conversation takes various turns and digressions as Ben explains Barrow’s various quirks, traditions, and regulations. He’s expressive and demonstrative: a match for you in both talking with your hands and in unintentionally pulling silly faces. The longer you talk, the more relaxed you feel: here was one of your hosts, warm and funny, and already like a friend. Your residual anxiety about the visiting post fades.

It’s going to be a good year.

“And, in conclusion, that’s why you don’t buy filter coffee from the cafeteria after midday,” Ben says. “I think that’s everything? I’ll walk you to your new office. Oh, and - dinner at seven thirty?”

His invitation takes you by surprise, and it shows on your face. Ben looks a little confused. “I mean, if you want to have dinner with me. We normally take the new visiting professor out, just as a welcome gesture - you’re stuck with just me this evening, though.”

He shrugs apologetically. “Of course, maybe you’ve got plans with your family or partn-“

“Dinner would be great!” you interrupt, keen to avoid any discussion of partners and inevitable explanations. “Shall I just meet you here, or…?”

He begins to scoop up the course handbooks. “I can pick you up, if you want? The restaurant is in the next town over. Unless you’d rather I not pick you up. Because-“

You come up to the desk to help him gather the print-outs, shuffling them quickly into orderly piles. “No, that would be great. I mean, I still think it’s Tuesday of last week, I wouldn’t trust myself with following out-of-town directions just yet.”

He beams and leans over to pick up the rest of the handbooks, and you get a slight, sweet hint of his scent: clean soap, a cologne with top notes of bergamot, and an underlying warmth. Maybe even a touch of paper, of all things.

He smells good.

You step back and your eyes meet for a moment. Unthinkingly, you breathe in sharply as you look properly into his dark eyes for the first time.

Holy moly, those are quite something.

And that’s when it happens. A tiny flicker of electricity crackling across your brain. It’s so fleeting that you don’t even register it, not immediately. It’s only much later on, alone and thinking about the first time you met, that you find yourself conjuring up the memory of his scent and of those beautiful brown eyes.

“They just love the colouring books you left for them, Lyddie!” Your mother is talking to you via FaceTime, recounting the latest adventures of your little nieces in loving detail.

You aren’t really listening. It’s past 7.30 and you’re deeply conscious of not being late for your dinner invitation, keen to hide your usual chaotic inability to be ready on time for anything from your new colleagues for as long as possible.

You crane your head to look out the front window of your apartment, just in time to see a car pull up outside. Your mother is still narrating exactly what your older niece drew at preschool in the 48 hours since you’d left for the US.

“I gotta go, Mom! The dinner, remember? I love you -“

“Call me when you get in!”

“I won’t, because time zones? Okay I have to go byebyebye -“ and you end the FaceTime call as you close your front door and skip lightly down the stairs to the entrance hall of the building.

It was difficult to know what to wear to something like this. Academic welcome dinners and events were often relatively informal, and Ben had not struck you as the kind of man who’d be gravely offended if you turned up in jeans and a long-sleeved tee. But you didn’t know a lot about the restaurant, so you erred on the side of caution: a mid-length, indigo chambray button-down dress that you’d made yourself, fitted around the waist with a v-shaped neckline; rose gold vintage-style flat sandals in the late summer heat; and - just in case it got chilly - a red cropped cardigan that was another of your creations, hand knitted a couple of years before.

Ben is leaning against his car when you appear at the main door of the apartment building. He’s changed, too: a soft-looking white shirt has replaced the blue Oxford he was wearing earlier. His sleeves are rolled up, and this time the shirt is tucked into his dark jeans. He’s wearing light-coloured suede desert boots and sunglasses. He gives you a little wave as you walk down the path to meet him, moving to open the passenger door for you before settling in on the driver’s side.

“Hope the apartment is okay?” he asks as you adjust your seatbelt and tuck your purse at your feet. “I think they’ve been putting visiting profs there for years. God knows what secrets it holds by now,” he adds dramatically.

You put on your own pair of sunglasses to shield your eyes from the evening sun. “It’s pretty nice, honestly. I’m still waiting on a lot of stuff to arrive, but I’ve got the essentials and working wifi. What more could you want?”

He smiles as he pulls away from the kerb. “Good to hear. So you’re on your own, or is your-”

“Just me!!” you chirrup, slightly too enthusiastically. “Free and easy.”

Uh, cringe much, Lydia?

It’s quiet for a few moments and you start to wonder if you should start talking again before it gets even more awkward. You’re just about to open your mouth when he starts tapping the touchscreen on the dash.

“Do you mind if I put on some music? Not to halt conversation, don’t worry! I just usually have a soundtrack for most things: driving, writing, grading…”

You grin. “Music would be great - I’m a fellow playlist curator. My writing ones are fickle, though.”

At the next red light he taps and swipes before selecting a playlist. “Hope you are okay with middle-aged dad tracks for driving.”

Ah, he’s a dad. You hadn’t noticed a ring but that obviously didn’t mean anything.

“How old do you think I am? I’m middle-aged, I’ll have you know. And my musical tastes have been middle-aged since I was a teenager.” You feign being affronted and he huffs a laugh.

“In that case, I can subject you to the full rigours of the playlist.” He taps play, and a smile spreads across your face as you recognise the steady opening bass riff of ‘Fortunate Son’ and start to nod along.

“Oh, man - Creedence? Okay, I see what you mean about the dad tracks,” you admit, bobbing your head to the rhythm as John Fogerty’s voice rasps through the speakers. “In a good way, though!”

Ben taps the fingers of one hand on the steering wheel as he drives. “Plenty more where that came from. Unfortunately, this is only a twenty minute trip, and this playlist is at least five hours long, but I can email you over the link if you’d like?” You nod, watching the surroundings change as you travel out of town, trying to take it all in: the neat houses, the tall trees and woodland that line either side of the route, the road signs pointing out local tourist spots.

You’re heading for the next town over - a bit larger than Barrow and, as Ben explained on the drive, better appointed when it came to options for a nice dinner out.

“Perils of a college town,” he’d added, “we have a great diner, a couple of good cafés and takeout places, but the main clientele are students looking for a sort of Man Vs Food experience. And we usually don’t want to hit the visiting prof with that right away.”

You chuckle, watching as the green of the trees gives way to painted timber houses, brick, and stone as you enter the town. It’s not long before Ben is pulling up near a small restaurant whose hand-painted sign reads LINO - RISTORANTE.

“This place is always worth the drive over,” he explains as you step into the restaurant’s small porch and open the door. Lino’s is small but beautiful: dark, vintage-style wooden furniture and white linen tablecloths; wood panelling on the walls; a candle in those old-style chianti bottles with the little wicker baskets on each table. It’s almost full on that weeknight evening, the gentle hum of conversation and cutlery accompanied by a soft soundtrack of Italian classics.

It’s weirdly familiar, and it takes you a moment to realise why. Settled at your table, you look around with a grin. Ben raises an eyebrow. “You okay?”

“This place, it’s - it’s just like the restaurant in…”

“Big Night.” He chimes in with you and does a little air punch, unable to hide his delight at the reference. “Someone else gets it! Finally!!”

You laugh and take a sip of your water. “I’m pleased. But clearly more people need to be introduced to that movie, huh?” “Fuck yeah!” He looks a little embarrassed at how excited he is, pinking around the ears and dropping his head to look at the menu. “Sorry, I’m getting carried away. Just so thrilled that someone else had that reaction, too. You’re the first to get it!” He looks back up at you and offers a shy smile.

Here’s the thing about notionally professional academic dinners, especially with people you don’t know that well: they are almost always like an hours-long conference presentation, with the added complication of having to eat while discussing your current research. You’d lost count of the amount of times you’d ended up aimlessly stirring your coffee after several hours listening to other people drone on about their praxis and theoretical grounding late into the evening, sure that they’d written you off when you tried to swerve the conversation around to lowbrow topics like music or (heaven forfend) television. Because serious intellectuals don’t watch television, unless it’s important and worthy programming (in other words: dull).

Ben had left a good impression from earlier in the day, but you were still a little nervous in case dinner was where you were expected to ‘prove yourself’. As it turned out, you didn’t really talk about work at all. Instead, you’d spent the best part of two hours eating astonishingly good Italian food while letting your inner film and music nerd run riot, in the company of a man who had rapidly revealed himself to be just as much of a geek as you were. The topics of conversation shifted organically as you ate, changing as if scheduled to coincide with each course.

Antipasti: favourite movies. Top fives compared and debated across various categories. You’d established a shared love of international cinema, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (“You have to read Bob Balaban’s book about being on set with Truffaut!” you’d exclaimed, sending chunks of tomato flying off your bruschetta in your enthusiasm), and Indiana Jones (“I do feel increasingly icky about Temple of Doom”, he’d confided). And unanimously agreed that the Muppet Christmas Carol is, in fact, the best adaptation of Dickens’ story yet made.

Main courses: music. He talks about his collection of vinyl records, built around a core of albums that had belonged to his dad. You swap tales of favourite live music experiences, from stadiums to tiny basement venues. He is far too impressed when you let slip that you can play guitar and sing. (Of course he’s impressed now. After all, he hasn’t heard you yet.)

It’s been a while since you felt so at ease with someone you’d only just met, and the sense of safety reassures you that coming here was the right thing to do. As you finish your tiramisu and sip on espresso to round out the meal, you chat casually about yourselves and your careers.

“So what made you go for the visiting gig?”

You thoughtfully sucked the last bit of mascarpone cream off your spoon. “I’ve never lived in the US - I was here for a couple of conferences but only for a few days, and I always wanted to spend more time here. And I needed a change of scenery and a new challenge. I guess I’d needed it for a while, but then after everything that went down it felt much more urgent, you know?”

He looks a little puzzled. “Everything that went down?”

“What I mean is, it’s been a shitty couple of years,” you clarify. A deep breath. It’s still weird telling people about this. “Long story short: my partner basically walked out on me, they were having an affair, blah blah blah. Fifteen years together, I never saw it coming, left on my own. But that’s done now. In the past.” You wave your hand lightly through the air, as if swatting away a particularly irritating insect.

He looks genuinely sorry for you. You brace yourself for the inevitable expression of sympathy, the “plenty more fish” lines, or just the awkward silence that comes when you’ve shared too much, too soon.

“And how are you, now?” he asks. That’s all he says. Emphasis on the “you”.

“I’m… well, I’m a lot happier, I guess? I think I’m much more myself. I don’t want to ladle more of this on you but I’ve realised there were things there that weren’t right. And that I carried a lot of, well, stuff that I shouldn’t have. So I feel…free?”

You do not tell him about the ramparts and solid walls that you’ve built around your emotional core, the crumbled blocks and shards of your past all too ready to trip and pierce anyone who tries to get too close.

“And I’m free to do cool shit like come here for a year, and watch whatever the hell I want on TV and not be judged for it.” You grin and pull a silly face, hoping an injection of levity into proceedings will help move the conversation on.

He leans in conspiratorially, a cheeky smile dancing across his lips. “So we should be grateful to them for being a dick, because we got you here as a result?”

You arch an eyebrow and look at him in mock seriousness. “Let’s not give them any credit, shall we?”

He laughs and drains the last of his coffee. “On a nicer topic,” he proposes, “is there anything you really want to do while you’re here? And I don’t mean courses or sections you want to teach. Stuff you want to do while you’ve got your year on this side of the pond.”

“Once I’ve settled in a bit, I want to explore. See some places. Add to my tacky snowglobe collection from places I’ve been,” you grin. “There’s so much, though - New York, Boston, DC…” You suck on the inside of your cheek as you think. “What I really want, though, is to go west. Even just for a week.”

He nods, raising his eyebrows. “Some kind of manifest destiny thing, or…?”

You roll your eyes. “Thankfully, no. A combination of my own film nerdery and growing up on a regular diet of old-school Westerns on rotation in the house, thanks to my dad. It’s got this allure, you know? The West. Especially California. So yeah, that’s on my bucket list for next summer, before I go back.”

“I’ll give you some recommendations, if you’d like?” Ben looks a little shy. “That’s where I’m from - the Bay Area, specifically.”

“No way! Tell me everything. So how did a Bay Area boy end up in the dreaming spires of a New England college town?”

This is how you find out that Ben Morales is 47, came to work at Barrow over a decade ago after a couple of postdocs and short-term posts, and is the eldest of three siblings. His younger brother and sister both live in their hometown, close to their mother who has lived alone since his father died a few years ago. You get a sense that their proximity helps alleviate some of his eldest child guilt about being on the other side of the country. He dotes on his niblings, showing you photos of them from time spent out west during the summer and speaking about them with evident pride and amusement.

He is not, as it turns out, a dad.

He listens attentively as you talk about your family: your parents, your little nieces, your sister and her partner, and the relatively tight-knit little unit that exists between you. “It’s not like we see each other all the time, not since I had to move for my job,” you explain. “But I don’t know how I would have got through everything without them. And being so close helped me be independent, on some level.”

He nods. “I get that. I mean, when I went on my year abroad to Málaga I was the first person in the family to go anywhere outside the US or parts of Mexico, and this was huge.” He smiles at the memory. “I know that my mom was freaking out. The whole neighbourhood knew she was freaking out. Until I moved to the east coast the furthest she’d ever been was to visit her family in Texas or just over the border.” His expression shifts, more thoughtful. “But she and my dad never wanted to let me feel I couldn’t do it. You know?”

He’s so genuine and earnest. It makes perfect sense why he would be such a good professor, and why his students have been so keen to nominate him for award after award.

The server comes over to take the empty dessert plates and espresso cups, and Ben asks for the check.

You fire off a message to your mom as you’re heading to bed:

Just letting you know I’m home. Dinner was great. Made the right choice coming here - already met some lovely people and they’re so welcoming. Talk to you over the next couple of days. Love to Dad x

You plug your phone in to charge and lie back on the pillows, feeling content and excited for the year ahead. You’re on the cusp of sleep when your screen lights up again, and you reach for your phone. If it’s your mom, it’s a weird time to be replying.

It’s not your mom. It’s a message from Ben Morales.

You’d asked to swap numbers when he dropped you home earlier. After all, he was the only colleague you’d met, and if you had some sort of major emergency it couldn’t hurt to have someone to call.

BEN MORALES: Hi Lydia, it’s Ben. Just wanted to say it was really great to meet you and we’re so lucky to have you with us for the year. And thank you for the book recommendation! Just give me a yell if you need anything. See you tomorrow - get some sleep! B

There’s a picture attached - a screenshot of the order he’d just placed for a second-hand copy of Bob Balaban’s Spielberg, Truffaut and Me, his diary from the making of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

You can’t help but smile.

(bookshelf divider by @animatedglittergraphics-n-more)

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