A Dead Heart Needs No Farewell

The night I failed my tenure review, I bought a roasted sweet potato at the campus back gate.

I took a big bite, scalding my tongue numb, and the tears came right behind it.

I texted my boyfriend, Russell Stephens.

【I'm having a really bad day, but this sweet potato is good.】

Nothing came back.

The failure and the loss had nowhere to go, and I wanted Russell to comfort me, even just one line.

【Are you done with work?】

The screen finally lit up.

【Are you texting me because you want me to pull some strings for you?】

Russell was the dean of a private university, and the halo over his head shone too brightly. Everyone in academic circles knew him.

To avoid any appearance of impropriety, we had never gone public about our relationship.

He'd reminded me more than once.

"I don't want people thinking you got where you are through me. At work, I'll treat you the same as everyone else."

Yet Elaine Fox could post photos of the two of them together on social media without a care in the world.

【So grateful to Dean Stephens for the guidance that got me shortlisted for the tenure review. Hope everyone will look out for me from here on.】

An ordinary-sounding line, and underneath it nothing but a way to flaunt how close they were, to smooth her own path.

The tears splashed onto the screen, and the sticky sweet potato lodged in my throat until I couldn't breathe.

It hit me all at once: in Russell's eyes, maybe I wasn't even worth as much as a roasted sweet potato.

1.

I tossed the sweet potato skin into the trash.

Still, I couldn't stop myself from going back, wanting to know exactly where I'd fallen short.

Five years of teaching. Countless papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Six years running, top three in the department in student evaluations.

Even if I didn't make tenure, there was no reason I should have been cut in the first round.

I had just reached the foot of the administration building.

And there was Russell, crouched down, tying Elaine Fox's shoelace without the slightest hesitation.

"You don't need to be too nervous about the tenure defense. Nobody on the second-round list can threaten you."

His voice was flat, but the favoritism ran through it, forceful and plain.

"But I still don't have any ideas for the defense topic..."

Elaine's voice went soft to the bone.

It stirred Russell's protective instinct on the spot.

"It's fine. I'll work out the direction for your topic tonight. Follow that line, and even if you fall apart up there, the review panel won't give you a hard time, for my sake."

I stood frozen a little way off, taking in every word Russell said.

He was willing to stand behind Elaine, to become her backing without counting the cost.

And me?

For five years, Russell had ordered me again and again never to mention my relationship with him to anyone.

At this school I walked on thin ice, so wary I didn't even dare go near the dean's office.

Coming and going from work, I got out of the car two blocks early.

I lived like an invisible person, terrified that any achievement of mine would get stamped with the label "connected hire."

So why did Elaine get to be his exception?

The November wind poured in at my collar.

Watching this, I clenched my fists without thinking, and my heart had long since frosted over.

I meant to turn and go, to leave myself a little dignity.

But Elaine's eyes had locked onto me from the start, and the moment I took a step, she called out loudly in my direction.

"Vanessa Hughes, you're still here too?"

Russell turned then and saw me. There was none of the guilty flinching I'd expected.

Instead his brows drew together on instinct, that look on his face as if to say I'd ruined the private moment they'd just been having.