Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
T
he scorching rays from the afternoon sun seared through my long-sleeve cotton tee as I ran down the cobblestone path. I’d brought clothes for college that were suited for fall weather, it being early September and all, but I hadn’t anticipated an eighty-five-degree heat wave that would cause buckets of sweat to drench my forehead, chest, and upper back, then pool in the front of my underwire bra as I bolted down the central campus walkway. Being late on the first day of classes as a second-time-around student? Unacceptable. But also inescapable, because two things that hadn’t changed over the years were my poor sense of direction and my inability to interpret campus signs with arrows pointing all over the place.
The Computer Science Hall was new to me, situated near the science buildings, which I hadn’t spent much time in during my college years. The structure was mostly metal and glass, a sharp contrast to the adjacent set of ivy-clad brown brick buildings, where the music and art classes were held. The building planner had cleverly named all the classrooms
in the CS Hall in binary code: turns out that two-symbol systems humor isn’t all that amusing when you’re late for class and the 0s and 1s above the doors aren’t in sequential numerical order. At least not one that I could tell.
I found the location in the east wing of the second floor, Room 101011, which turned out to be Room 43. This classroom looked more like a large conference hall you’d find at some of the large tech companies, mixed with collegiate heritage furnishings: the chalkboards from long ago had been replaced with slick whiteboard walls, which contrasted sharply with the dark brown wood trim throughout the auditorium. The flip-down seats were the same, though they were modernized with padded cushions. And the best lecture hall upgrade in ten years? Fast Wi-Fi with a strong signal.
Even after all these years, the magnetic draw to the back row of seats was strong, like the gravity of the moon pulling the seas toward it. I fought my urge to fade away into the outer ring by opting to sit toward the middle of the pack of students. Maybe that would be the key to better grades this go-around.
A man in his late fifties jogged down the center aisle and plopped his leather satchel down next to the wooden podium embossed with a brass Carlthorpe insignia. The sparse, stringy gray-haired ponytail gave him an appearance of an aged musician, but his oversize black tee with the words I’
M
J
UST AN
OKAY BOOMER suggested he was not the rock-star type.
He cleared his throat. “I’m Dr. Stevenson. You can call me Doc, even though I have a PhD in computer science and not medicine. Or you can simply call me Professor.” He wrote
“Doc” and “Professor” on the whiteboard wall, as if those would be hard to remember and we should jot them down. I found myself leaning forward and squinting a little. Was this because I wasn’t used to reading someone’s handwriting from so far away? Or did I need new contacts? I forced my brain to not go down the “maybe it’s what happens to older people” rabbit hole thought spiral.
“Welcome to the Fundamentals of Code. What I want to do here is teach the basics of computer science, but in such a way that’s less academic and more practical and usable in the outside world. You might not leave here a programmer, but if you ever find yourself in a technical role, or a technically adjacent one, you’ll be able to understand and speak a common language with your product and dev teams.” His eyes shifted from his podium notes over to the door, which creaked open. “Perfect timing! Class, please say hello to the unusually punctual Jacob Cho, your teaching assistant. He’s a doctoral candidate and has been studying with me for, what, five, maybe six years?”
I nearly spat out my coffee. And I say nearly, because I was in the process of swallowing my iced drink as Jacob walked through the entryway, and it went down the wrong pipe instead, just as it did at Café LaLa. I drew loads of attention to myself with all the coughing, including the wide-eyed stare of the TA.
The TA who had on a red frayed baseball cap with a Carlthorpe “C.”
The TA Jacob Cho, also known as Jake Cho from my college days.
Ex-boyfriend Jake Cho, to be exact.
The same guy from the market, who was now staring at me quizzically while I tried to control my incessant hacking. It was impossible to not notice that he had transformed from scrawny to brawny over the years. And his unexpected head of salt-and-pepper hair made my senses spin. Everything about him—the broad shoulders, boyish smile, and unruly dark hair flecked with silver—stirred something inside me that I hated to admit. His khaki shorts showed off his taut, muscular legs, another unexpected discovery.
Jake Cho had grown into a hot older guy.
No, no, no. Lily . . . no. You can’t be hot for teacher.
A spark of recognition lit up his face as my coughing subsided. I could still read his expressions, even after all these years. The raised brow. The slight smirk.
What on Earth are you doing here, Lily Lee?
And he could read mine.
You’re in a computer science PhD program? But you were a liberal arts major, like me, Jake Cho. It’s Jacob now?
He shrugged.
Blood rushed to my head, making me dizzy. I looked down at my spiral notebook and focused on the horizontal college-ruled lines.
The professor continued chattering away about the expectations for the class while my heart resumed beating after temporarily seizing.
A confirmed Jake Cho sighting after nearly a decade. Did he still have a million hobbies and side hustles—or had he changed over the years to be less scattered and more focused?
I had dreaded this day, when I would run into my ex. I’d had ten years to think it through: if I saw him—maybe at an airport, on a subway, or on the street—I made a promise to myself to avoid him. Never once had I ever played out a scenario in which I would be back in college as an undergraduate student in my thirties and have Jake as my TA.
He came to me in my dreams sometimes. Usually in nightmare form, like running into him at a wedding, or at a reunion, or once, at a Weight Watchers studio that I was leaving while he was walking into the boxing gym next door. But even with the occasional good dream, when my unconscious imaginings were happy, or romantic, or even hot-damn steamy, it always ended the same way. With Jake turning away and leaving me. Cue sad K-drama ballad music sequence.
Physically speaking, and to my absolute dismay, he’d changed for the better. While the professor continued with his lecture, I couldn’t help but steal quick looks at Jake. Damn, that thick, wavy hair. Curse his lean, broad, and tall body, and that boyish face with full lips accented with two sharp peaks . . . and those crinkly, flirty eyes with creases underneath that made him look expressive rather than exhausted . . .
I stared hard at my shoes while the professor spoke.
I can’t take this class. It’s JAKE, for God’s sake. Must talk to the registrar to beg my way into the stats class, stat.
“. . . Our goal is to teach students how to think algorithmically and solve real-world problems efficiently. Languages included in the coursework will be C, Python, SQL, and JavaScript, plus CSS and HTML, but not all of them will
be on your midterms or finals. To make things interesting, those who rank top of the class after key projects are turned in will be eligible for highly coveted summer-internship opportunities at Solv Technologies, one of the companies I advise. They’re looking for people who major in social sciences but are programmably inclined. Jacob, why don’t you introduce yourself and tell them more about Solv.”
I didn’t think “programmably” was a word but it wasn’t a hill I was willing to die on.
Jake/Jacob put on a serious face as he addressed the class. “I’m Jacob, a Carlthorpe alum. Recruiters from Solv will be on campus this semester to find top talent, so as long as you turn in homework on time, study for exams, and earn a top spot in the class, this could turn into a lucrative career opportunity.” The entire class ooohed and ahhed, me included. Solv was one of those reputable tech companies that offered catered lunches, had team off-sites at ski resorts, and lived and breathed diversity and inclusion. They had been at the top of
Fortune
’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list, for three years straight. The word on the street was that each job opening there had a thousand or more applicants. What a dream it would be to even get an invitation to interview there.
Pssst, Lily, he’s talking to these twenty-something-year-olds, not you. YOU have a career that you’re trying to get back to, remember? It’s too late for someone like you to start over like this. Plus, you’re going to statistics anyway.
Right. I needed to get as far away from this class as possible.
Specifically, away from my ex, Jake. And Jacob Cho, his hotter grad student persona.
One of the girls in front of me leaned to her left, whispering loudly to her friends, “I hope Jacob has office hours, I need to pay him a visit.”
Her friend laughed and elbowed her. “If I’d known CS grad students looked like him, I’d have started taking these classes first semester first year. He’s a little broody too. My favorite.”
I slunk down in my chair, avoiding any eye contact with the professor or with Jacob. My plan was to get through this class period, and then go to the registrar immediately afterward to get transferred into stats. Or calc. Even quantum mechanics and nuclear physics. Honestly, any class but this one. Reliving college was bad enough, but what in the fresh hell kind of nightmare was I living in now? My college ex was in a position where he could fail me out of school again if he wanted to. This was something someone at Netflix could adapt into an eight-episode horror miniseries.
The professor chirped, “And this marks the end of the first lecture. So now let’s get to the heart of what programming is, shall we? Jacob, would you please take these two boxes of chocolate and hand them to a couple of people in the room?”
Jake put his backpack down next to the professor and took the candy from his hands. He proceeded to walk down my aisle. Toward me. With each step he took, my heart rate jacked up higher and higher, like I had just started an intense cardio-heavy workout on too hard of a level.
He handed a candy box to one of the Jacob-obsessed groupies in front of me. Their entire squad squealed in delight. Jake continued down the aisle, passing my row, and I didn’t bother to turn around to see who else received the chocolates. Didn’t matter . . . I’d already set my mind on transferring out.
The professor said, “Okay, let’s begin. Mr. Cho, stay where you are.” Smiling at the audience, he explained the exercise to the class. “Please give Jacob a set of verbal instructions that will have him go to either one of the candy stations, take the box back into his hands, and return it to me. If you can do that, or contribute significantly to this exercise, you will not only get the candy, but you’ll get an automatic A on the first assignment.”
My classmates shouted out a wide range of instructions, which Jacob took literally. “Move forward” made Jacob walk all the way down the aisle and out the door. “Turn right!” caused Jacob to spin in circles clockwise. Our directions became more nitpickingly specific as Jacob twisted, turned, and ran all over the room. Eventually, the class offered instructions that resulted in Jacob moving in teeny tiny increments to eventually work his way to the fangirl one row ahead of me.
My chest tightened as he drew closer and closer. I didn’t want him to get her chocolates.
Was this ridiculous? Yes.
Petty? Absolutely.
But something inside me kicked into gear. Adrenaline? Grit? Maybe just good old-fashioned jealousy? Good grief, whatever it was, it made me want to win this thing.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw a brawny dude near the aisle holding the other box of candy. Only one or two commands were needed to get Jake over to the girl, but I’d never been known to take the easy way out.
Clearing my throat, I projected my voice and gave my instructions. “Turn one hundred eighty degrees to the right and stop. Walk twenty-five paces forward and stop. Turn ninety degrees to the left. Walk three paces ahead and stop.” I knew Jake’s shoe size from college. And his underwear size, but that wasn’t needed for this exercise.
Jacob walked away from his fangirl and, with my commands, ended up right next to the guy who held the other box of chocolates. I couldn’t help but grin at my tiny nerdy achievement.
Soon, others in the class offered instructions to have Jacob pick up the candy and deliver the box of sweets straight down the aisle to the professor.
Doc nodded as he received the candies from his TA. “Well done. This was by far the best attempt in all my years of teaching this exercise about how computers take things literally.” He moved his head right and left, scanning the lecture hall. “The young gentleman in the Red Sox shirt, please stand.” It was the guy who gave the instructions after mine, the ones that made Jacob reach out and take the candy box. “The young woman in the black-and-white stripes?” She was the one who “programmed” my ex to walk down the aisle and stop next to the professor. “And the woman dressed in the black long-sleeve tee, with just past shoulder-length black hair.”
Me. That was me. And he didn’t call me young. Damn it.
I stood slowly.
“Attention, students, these three will be the ones receiving the first As this week. As for everyone else, you’ll have to earn your first assignment grades the old-fashioned way.”
I avoided looking at Jake’s face. I knew the moment I gazed into his eyes, my life would change in an instant. Kind of like what would happen to people when they saw Medusa. One of my worst fears could come true that as soon as I laid my eyes on Jake, my heart would melt and I would fall for him all over again.
The moment class ended, my glance swept over to my ex. I saw with clear eyes what he’d become: a brainy, attractive man who had successfully reinvented himself. Did I mention attractive? It was like I had googled “How do you fill out a shirt?” and all these hot 3D renderings of Jake appeared. No wonder those female students in front of me had gone gaga over him. He was hot.
The Jake I knew back then was directionless. Cute, but gangly. Tall, lean, and wiry.
This was Jacob 2.0. Still tall, but now he had an athletic, trim body, and he was looking right at me.
Holy hammer curls.
Lily, under no circumstances are you allowed to fall for Jacob Cho. Stop it.
Doc waved to students as they exited. “See you at the next class!” He turned around and wiped “Doc” and “Professor” from the whiteboard. “We’ve got a good group this
year, don’t you think, Jacob? That exercise went really well for this group in particular, thanks for coming up with it.”
Jake looked in my direction and said to his advisor, “I’m curious to see how this class goes.”
Did he absolutely, positively recognize me? He had to, right? At my last high school reunion, everyone pretty much looked the same after ten years. Sure, I could maybe use some HIIT classes or a few thousand burpees to bring me closer to how I looked back then, but everyone from high school knew it was me. But then again, I was only one of four other Asians in my class, and I was the shortest one, so maybe that was partly why.
But did I want him to recognize me? No, I definitely did
not
want to walk down memory lane with Jake after class. It was humiliating enough to have to come back to Carlthorpe to complete my bachelor’s degree. And to have Jake be my TA, having that leverage over me? Jake Cho? He’d seen me naked, for God’s sake.
NO. THANK. YOU. My cheeks burned as I grabbed my TUMI bag and ran out the back door.
Over at the registrar, the line moved as quickly as anything else with the same level of democratized, bureaucratic inefficiency. The DMV. Post office. The non–TSA PreCheck line at the airport. One by one, students ahead of me reached the front of the line and talked to administrators behind the Plexiglas windows. When it was close to my turn, my phone buzzed with an email notification.
A message from my editor. Subject line: Checking In.
How’s the book coming along? —K.
Oh no.
My stomach lurched as I snoozed the email. I could deal with it later in the evening. What was I supposed to say to her?
Dear Katherine,
I owe you a longer update, which will come at a later date, but I’m thinking we might need to switch the title from
HOW TO LAND YOUR DREAM JOB
to
HOW TO LAND YOUR DREAM JOB BUT THEN FIND OUT YOU DIDN’T PASS BACKGROUND CHECK AND NEED TO GO BACK TO COLLEGE TO FINISH YOUR DEGREE, PLEASE SEND DOUGHNUTS.
If you like the sound of it, I can send you my complete manuscript after I graduate (if I graduate, for real this time) in a few months.
Sincerely,
Lily the Loser
“NEXT!” The closest window became available and the woman behind the glass wildly flapped both arms, with the intensity of someone waving down a plane for an island rescue. Her gesticulation ended as soon as I made eye contact and approached.
“I wanted to check my waitlist status . . . I’d like to drop CS and add stats, if that’s an option now.” I left out the fun fact that the TA was my ex.
She nodded eagerly and typed on her keyboard as I gave
her my student ID info. “I’m afraid you’re still on the waitlist for the statistics course.”
Click, click, click
. “There aren’t any other classes with open spots that meet your degree requirement. Stats is your best bet because you’re number two on the list. My advice to you is to attend the classes you want and wait it out. We usually have a few students who don’t show up at all for class and drop courses right before midterms. Spots
will
open up, it’s just a question of when and how many.”
I knew what she said logically made sense. In fact, I remember dropping a class or two myself throughout college under the same circumstances. The main issue was that I didn’t want to attend another class if I wasn’t guaranteed a spot, but I knew that it wasn’t something in her control.
She offered a sympathetic smile. “Mark the date in your calendar, six weeks from today. That’s the last day class registration can be changed without penalty. Good luck to you.”
I thanked her for her time and sighed as I left the building.
Six weeks.
The cobblestone walkway leading to the main campus gate was lined with folding tables and chairs. Students crowded the path, so it was practically impossible to cut through. As I squeezed by, I had time to read the tabletop signs and posterboard signs on display.
C
OME
J
OIN THE
D
EBATE
T
EAM
!
Q
UEENS
G
AMBIT
IRL! F
IRST
C
HESS
C
LUB
M
EETING
T
HIS
T
HURSDAY
!
T
HE
C
ARLTHORPE
C
OURIER
NEEDS YOU
! W
E
’
RE LOOKING FOR
S
PORTS
, E
NTERTAINMENT
/L
IFESTYLE
,
AND
C
AMPUS
L
IFE REPORTERS
!
A snort escaped my nose when I passed by the Asian Student Association table. I didn’t mean to laugh, but it was just funny to me that more than a decade ago I was sitting in this exact spot, trying to recruit new members. And that Jake was helping me do it.
K-pop blared from the Bluetooth speakers as the club recruiters cried out, “All are welcome! You don’t have to be Asian!”
A tap on my shoulder got my attention. “Hey! Would you be interested in joining? Our first meeting is tonight, and we’ll have pizza and snacks.”
I thought about making a racial profiling joke, but I held my tongue. “No thank you.” Though I was curious about how the organization had evolved since I left school, I was not in the mood to crash the club to find out.
One of the guys approached. “We have a fashion show in the winter. We need models for that.”
That comment actually made me burst into a fit of laughter. The fashion show was not something we had back in the day. And I wasn’t qualified to model anything other than pajamas and sweatpants.
“I’m sorry, I could have sworn you said you wanted me to model.”
He grinned. “I did. My name is Ethan. And you are?”
Were we really doing this? “I’m—” I hadn’t thought about this before. Did I use my real name in college? People could easily google me and discover my backstory. Too risky. “Lil.”
Worst. Spontaneous. Name. Ever.
“Lil?”
“Yeah, it’s my rapper name,” I joked.
“Like Lil Nas X? Lil’ Kim? I like it.” Well, he laughed at least.
It occurred to me that “Lil” paired with my last name, Lee, would end up with “Lil Lee”—pronounced . . . Lily.
Boy, was I an idiot.
Ethan pitched me on the Asian Student Association, the very organization in which I was VP of communications over a decade ago. Back then, we didn’t have enough of an Asian population to form subgroups, such as Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino organizations, like other big universities had. I had hoped by now that those individual groups would have come to fruition.
I looked down the row of tables and didn’t see a Korean Student Association. “So is the Asian Student Association the only Asian group at Carlthorpe?”
He shrugged. “Sort of? There’s an official Chinese Culture Appreciation group. We have unofficial clubs like the Korean Pop Culture Stan Club, which I helped cocreate, and the Taiwanese Foodie Club, which I also founded—I’m half Korean, half Taiwanese. These smaller clubs don’t have the numbers yet to secure organizational funding. We’ve been pushing hard to get that changed the last few years. I’m a fourth-year student now.” Ethan smiled. “Are you a senior too? I haven’t seen you around before.”
And the first of the awkward conversations about my undergrad status had arrived: Did I come clean with my
real situation, or play along that I was indeed a senior, without revealing more? On the most technical level, I was a fourteenth-year student. Omission wasn’t necessarily lying, especially if it was for something minor and nonharmful like taking classes on campus to complete a degree, right?
“I took time off. It’s my last year here, hoping to graduate this semester.” All of this was true.
He grinned. Ethan was really cute for a young twenty-something-year-old. He was at the age where most guys were in peak form. Thick black hair, lean but muscular physique, chiseled jaw, and bold fashion choices. He wore a fitted tee to reveal his dedication to the campus gym. If I was in college, I would be starry-eyed smitten. Well, I
was
in college, but you know, not like—
“Wait, aren’t you in that CS class with Doc? I thought you looked familiar.”
Oh wow, that had come right back to haunt me like a murderous machete boomerang. “Yeah, but . . . I’m trying to transfer into stats instead. CS isn’t for me.”
More specifically, awkward encounters with Jake Cho weren’t for me.
His right eyebrow shot up. “Wait, why? You got that free pass already for your first assignment. I was actually wondering if you wanted to be my group partner. Well, one of my group partners. I have some friends in that class and we’d love to have you join. Please?”
I mean, how could I say no to this college-aged Daniel Dae Kim clone? “I’ll think about it, I just came from the registrar, the stats class is full anyway.”
“Well, if you’d join us, I bet you’d want to stay. We have
study sessions in the Commons. Give me your number and I’ll make sure you have the meet-up info.”
I didn’t remember making friends—or groupmates—so easily the first time around. Non beginner’s luck, I guess.
“And while you’re here, you sure you don’t want to join ASA? We have our first meeting soon,” he added with a smirk.
I blurted the words, “Maybe another time,” even though
OH HELL NO!
was screaming in my head.
My phone buzzed with a text.
Hi. It’s Ethan. I’m standing right here heyyyoooooo
I tried to swallow a laugh but it came out anyway. He had an easygoing, goofy sense of humor.
Ethan smirked. “That’s me. Oh, take a T-shirt. I can tell by your face that you’re leaning toward no, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy free stuff.” He handed me an XL men’s tee.
I held the shirt by the shoulders and shook out the fabric. A gasp escaped me.
“What’s wrong?”
I shook my head. “It’s nothing. It’s just that this tee is so soft and the logo is, um, neat.”
Neat? Did college kids even say that?
I certainly didn’t, unless I was at a bar and ordering a whiskey for Mia, which was why it was so bizarre it came out of my mouth.
The ASA logo featured prominently on the shirt was over ten years old. I knew, because I designed it.
Ethan examined the tee. “Yeah. The color logo is nice too. A few guys tried to redesign it, but the original looked better. It’s simple but still stylized. A classic.”
He held out his hand. Unsure of how to handle this interaction, I extended my hand and timidly shook his. Ethan explained, “That’s our handshake agreement that you’ll be our group member in CS, at least until you officially abandon us for stats. You’ll round out our group to four people. It’s a good number. And a good group.”
I didn’t see any harm in that. “Sounds neat. See you around.” My shoulders scrunched to my ears as I walked away.
Neat? Again, Lily?
Could I survive being in Jake’s CS class? Not taking computer science in undergrad was always something I regretted, mainly because there were so many job opportunities for graduates with CS backgrounds. Was it possible to take the course and try to compartmentalize it, separating the class from my ex? Maybe this could be a good learning experience. And a personal growth experience. So what if Jake was there? I didn’t have to talk to him—back in college, I never talked to my TAs. I never went to office hours. And I still made okay grades . . . well, until senior year. Could Ethan and his friends ease my discomfort in a way that being a lone person couldn’t? So what if Jake was likely one of those nurturing, helpful, encouraging teaching types and I was missing out on my education by not engaging with him? All I needed was a passing grade.
It was nice to be asked to be part of a group. Throughout my entire life, being asked to join a group or team was always flattering in some way. Someone wanted to be in my company, or, like in this case, wanted me for my brains. But
maybe this was what I was missing out on the last time I was a senior.
I texted Ethan:
When’s the first group meeting?
Next week after class.
Welcome aboard!
With a slow smile spreading across my face, I headed back to the apartment.