And now we return to our plot originally in progress.
Happy Star Wars day, nerds!
CL100: Critical Thinking in Education
Elizabeth tapped on the door to the room Lee used as an office and smiled when he looked up at her with a grin.
"Elizabeth!" he cried. "Come join the party!"
She stepped in and was surprised and not-at-all displeased to see that there were several other people there.
"This is the place to be tonight! Good evening Rosemary," she said, grinning at her friend.
"Jack." She fluttered her lashes coquettishly at him and he winked at her before returning his attention to his laptop.
Elizabeth turned to greet the last person in the room and froze as she realized who it was.
"Charles!"
Charles Kensington looked up from the sheaf of papers he held in his hand and gave Elizabeth a bland smile.
"Miss Elizabeth Thatcher, what a surprise to see you here."
Lee looked curiously between the pair. "I didn't realize you knew each other," he said.
"Yes," Charles began. "Our-"
"Charles tried to recruit our Elizabeth to Spanish Club in her first week," Rosemary butted in, quickly, "but I seduced her away to my organization instead."
Lee smiled and shook his head. "Somehow, I'm not the slightest bit surprised." He returned his attention to Elizabeth. "Kensington here is Gowan's other Grad Student, so I've got him looking over some of these papers for me. If you want to stick around, I'll look at yours as soon as I'm done with Jack and Rosie's, but if you've somewhere to be, I'll probably give it over to Charles."
"Oh, I'd planned to stay," Elizabeth said. "Cleared my schedule and everything."
Lee laughed. "Thought you might. Well give it here."
Elizabeth stepped forward and held out the stack of paper she'd been clutching to her chest as though it were made of solid gold.
Lee raised an eyebrow at her once he'd gotten a good look at it.
"Tell me you don't think you're going to turn in a college paper with those margins and spacing," he said.
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes at him. "It's quadruple-spaced and I made the margins wide so you can write notes. I know how to format a paper, Lee, I'm not a fool."
"Just checking. Go sit and find something to work on. I've got more red ink to spill on ol' Jack's paper. Here's hoping yours isn't as bad as his."
Jack didn't look offended. "I was gonna work on it a couple nights ago, but I got distracted," he said, glancing quickly at Elizabeth.
Unseen by Jack and Elizabeth, Lee and Rosemary shared an amused look.
"Always good to know you're giving this class your utmost attention," Lee murmured, as Elizabeth set up her own laptop beside Jack's, but low so that they couldn't hear.
Quiet reigned in the room for a quarter hour, punctuated by the tapping of laptop keys and the occasional shuffle of paper. Finally Lee stood and moved to the seat across from Jack.
"Jack, Jack, Jack," Lee said, shaking his head.
Jack took the paper Lee held out to him and glanced down at the red ink across the front.
"That bad?" he asked.
"No, I'm teasing you," Lee said. "It's fine, but I want you to get at least two more sources for your conclusions on page four, okay? Your conclusion is fine, but your argument is thin. I know the resources are out there, use them, okay?"
"Okay," Jack said.
"Also, you use commas like a high school fanfiction writer. Learn what a comma splice is and never do it again, got it?"
Jack laughed. "My English teachers tried to beat that into my head for years, it never stuck."
"Perhaps they should have used a baseball bat," Lee promised, but both men were laughing.
"Okay," Lee said, "that's all I have to say on the matter. You're free to go whenever-" he glanced at Elizabeth, "-or stay as long as you like."
"Actually," Jack said, turning to Elizabeth and taking her hand, "do you mind if I go?"
"Oh!" Elizabeth said, surprised and rather disappointed, though she tried to pretend otherwise. "No, that's fine."
"Only, Carson mentioned earlier that he had something he wanted to show me," Jack explained. "You'll be here for another hour, at least-" he glanced at Lee.
"Something like that," Lee said with a shrug.
"-So I can get back in time to walk you home," Jack finished. "I'll be back by eight."
"You really don't have to," Elizabeth said, blushing.
"I know, but I'll be back by eight anyway," Jack said.
He packed his bag quickly as Lee returned to his desk to begin marking up Rosemary's essay, and dropped a fleeting kiss on Elizabeth's temple as he left the room.
"You two are so adorable I'd like to go blind," Rosemary said to Elizabeth once he was gone.
"Don't most people vomit?" Elizabeth asked, unoffended.
"Honestly, Elizabeth, when was the last time I did what 'most people' do?"
Elizabeth opened her mouth, then closed it again when she had to admit she had no answer.
"What are you working on?" Rosemary asked.
"Studying for next week's Psychology quiz," Elizabeth said. "You?"
"Screenwriting. Will you read this bit and tell me if it makes any sense at all?"
Rosemary turned her laptop toward Elizabeth and pointed. Elizabeth frowned at the screen for a long moment.
"The syntax is very strange," she said. "It's… It's almost as though the character is translating from another language into English as he speaks."
"Actually," Rosemary said, sounding surprised, "that's exactly what he's meant to be doing."
"Oh!" Elizabeth said. "In which case, it's very effective."
"But can you understand what he's trying to say there… in English?"
Elizabeth frowned at the screen again. "No," she said after a minute. "I'm afraid it's too much style, not enough substance."
"That's what my screenwriting teacher keeps saying," Rosemary said, sadly.
"Rosie?" Lee said, interrupting them. "I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but why does your paper keep referencing back to pre-war Germany?"
Rosemary gestured at her computer. "My screenwriting class."
Lee raised his eyebrows at her, and she sighed.
"I'm adapting a Phillip Kerr novel to the stage," she explained slowly, as though to a child.
"I have no idea who that is," Lee said flatly.
Rosemary rolled her eyes. "He wrote a series of noir detective novels set in the Weimar Republic, so that time and place have been on my mind."
"You couldn't have just said that straight out?" Lee asked.
Rosemary glared at him but didn't answer, allowing a prickly silence to come up between them.
"It sounds like a wonderful play," Elizabeth said, her tone studiously bright to alleviate the awkwardness. "Is it going to be performed?"
"No," Rosemary said. "It would make a brilliant stage production, but we haven't got the rights. For now it's just an academic exercise."
"Maybe someday," Elizabeth said warmly, returning her attention to her own work again.
After another ten minutes, Rosemary grunted in pleasure.
"Read it now," she said to Elizabeth, flipping her computer around.
Elizabeth's blue eyes scanned the screen quickly and then she met Rosemary's eyes and grinned.
"Much better!" she cried.
"I entered what I wanted to say in Google translate, translated it to German, and translated it back to English," Rosemary said with a giggle.
"Good idea, it obviously worked."
"Rosie?" Lee said, interrupting the girls, "I've got your paper."
Rosemary turned slowly from Elizabeth, closed her computer deliberately and finally, with hands folded primly across her lap, gave Lee her attention.
Following this performance, Lee looked rather sheepish, but made no mention of it as he passed Rosemary her paper.
"It's a good paper," he said, "references to Weimar and all. I've made a few notes and corrections, but nothing too bad."
Rosemary said nothing, just continued to look at Lee with her eyebrows raised.
Lee sighed. "It's a good essay up until page three when it becomes no longer an essay but an outline of an essay. It's a good outline, but obviously not finished."
"You did say you could bring what we had finished," Rosemary said. "I'm sorry to not be quite as prepared as Jack, but I do still have another week."
"Yes, but I wondered if you wanted me to look over your completed paper once it's done," Lee said.
"I thought you said you were going to start midterm prep at your next office hours," Rosemary said.
"I am. I'd thought maybe I could make some extra time on my night off. I'll host it at my apartment, and you're welcome to tell any other students whose essays you know are also unfinished. Perhaps I'll even have food available."
Elizabeth ducked her head behind her laptop screen to hide her smile.
Rosemary had told her a few weeks ago that, by university rules, she and Lee couldn't date while he was a GA in a course she was taking. It seemed Lee had found a way to circumvent the rules- Rosemary's only friends in the class were Jack and Elizabeth, both of whom were finished, as well he knew. He'd found a way to ask her to dinner at his place while still making it into classwork.
"I- um- I-" Rosemary stammered. Elizabeth had never seen her so flustered.. "I… I suppose we… that is… I'd love your thoughts on my finished paper."
Elizabeth peeked around her computer screen to see Lee and Rosemary, but as she did so, she caught sight of Charles Kensington watching them with a look that could only be described as disapproving. He seemed to notice her regard and his face went immediately blank for a moment before he smiled at her. Elizabeth did not smile back.
Rosemary and Lee didn't seem to be noticing much outside of themselves, both were pink about the ears and smiling foolishly.
"Elizabeth!" Rosemary cried as though suddenly remembering she was there. "I… um…" she glanced down and seemed to notice that she had closed her laptop. "I thought I might help you study!" she cried.
"Oh you don't have to do that," Elizabeth said, surprised. "It's just reviewing my notes and-"
"I can run through your flashcards with you," Rosemary interrupted.
"Flash cards? I don't-"
Rosemary narrowed her eyes. "Don't lie to me. Any girl who re-formats her papers so they can be edited has made flashcards for every test in every class she's ever taken. Where are yours, Hermione?"
Elizabeth's mouth curled into a bow as annoyance and amusement warred on her face. Finally amusement seemed to win out and she ducked down to her bag and withdrew a case with 3x5 cards in it. She held out a stack of orange cards to a grinning Rosemary.
"What are the blue ones?" Rosemary asked.
"Early Childhood Education," Elizabeth said, eyes narrowing.
"And green?"
Elizabeth glanced at the box in her hand. "These green ones are biology. I have some darker green ones that are for my public speaking class."
"Pink?"
Elizabeth sighed. "The pink ones are where, when I'm doing research, I write down a reference that I want to use and approximately what it said so I don't lose it when I actually get around to writing the paper."
Rosemary laughed delightedly. "And Jack thought that dating you would make him a worse student. Sounds like you're going to show him how it's done."
Elizabeth wrinkled her nose, but looked pleased. "You wanted to quiz me?"
"Yes of course," Rosemary said, finally managing to bring herself under control. "Let's see what we have here. This one looks nice, 'what event is considered the founding of scientific psychology?'"
"German philosopher Wilhelm Wundt founded the first psychological laboratory in 1879," Elizabeth answered without hesitation. "Skip to the ones marked with a '4' in the corner."
Rosemary flipped through the cards until she came across one she seemed to like. "Parietal lobes," she read.
"Puh-rye-uh-tal," Elizabeth pronounced. "That's the portion of the cerebral cortex that receives sensory input for touch and body position."
Rosemary rolled her eyes and skipped several more cards. "Dual processing," she tried.
"Information processed on separate conscious and unconscious tracks," Elizabeth said.
"Why do you even bother studying?" Rosemary asked. "You know it all."
Elizabeth smiled. "I only know it because I've studied it. Why don't I quiz you for a bit?"
Rosemary snorted. "I haven't made flash cards for any of my classes!"
Elizabeth pulled a stack of yellow cards from the box she still held. "These are for this class. What do you say?"
Rosemary sighed and rolled her eyes, but settled back to be quizzed.
"Do you want terms or definitions?" Elizabeth asked.
"Terms are easier to remember, give me the definitions," Rosemary said.
"What is the ability to produce a good using fewer inputs than another producer?"
Rosemary frowned in thought for a long moment. Elizabeth glanced up to find that both Lee and Charles were watching this performance rather avidly.
"Don't you two have papers to be marking?" she asked sharply.
"Absolute advantage!" Rosemary cried, then turned and gave a triumphant look at the two men, both of whom had bent their heads back over their papers straight away.
"Excellent," Elizabeth said, flipping through her cards. "Okay, this one's harder. List the unemployment types. There are three."
"Frictional, structural, cyclical," Rosemary said immediately, making a song of it. "I remember that one-"
"Because you can sing it," Elizabeth finished for her. "Yeah, we can remember almost anything with a rhythm. We talk about that in Early Ed all the time."
"I should put all these terms into one of those patter songs like Modern Major General," Rosemary said, taking the cards from Elizabeth's hands and starting to look through them. "Trade deficits are caused by unequal tariffing," she started, finding a card and trying to set its information to her rhythm, "and jobs go obsolete because of new technologies-" she stopped singing and looked at Elizabeth. "'Technology' and 'tariffing' don't rhyme."
"You should probably also keep like information with like," Elizabeth said. "Keep all of your tariff and open economy stuff in one stanza and move to unemployment in a different stanza."
"Mmmm," Rosemary continued to look through the cards, pulling a some out at random and setting them on her table. "I think it could be done."
"Probably," Elizabeth agreed, "but unless you've decided you want to teach the subject to kids, I'm not sure it's a great use of your time. Patter songs stay in your head forever."
"I'd be pleased if I could keep what I've learned in my head through the midterm," Rosemary said, sighing. "I've never been great at holding onto things that don't interest me."
Elizabeth patted her arm. "You'll be fine. Lee is going to go over the study guide next week, and I can run flashcards with you as well, if you want. You'd be welcome to come to my house."
"You're sweet, Elizabeth," Rosemary said.
Elizabeth smiled back and turned her attention to getting her flashcards back in their box,
"Actually, that is a really good idea," Rosemary said.
Elizabeth froze. Something about Rosemary's tone made her feel like she were a rabbit who had just heard the swoop of an owl's wing over head.
"What is?" she asked, warily.
"Studying at your house!" Rosemary said as though this were obvious. "We should all get together and study for midterms, and your place is perfect- much bigger and more comfortable than any of the dorm rooms. If we all do it together, it'll keep us honest. We can quiz each other if necessary, and it makes it feel more like a party than work."
"Who is 'all'?" Elizabeth asked. She didn't have many friends at school yet aside from Faith, Rosemary, and Jack.
"Me and Jack, of course. Carson, I think. Doug. Maybe Jesse- I swear that boy never studies. If I could convince his girlfriend, Clara, I could probably get him though. Dottie, I think. I'll ask around."
Elizabeth felt a little faint, imagining so many people in her little house. For goodness' sake, she only had one bathroom!
"I would… er… I'd have to run it by Faith," she hedged.
"Oh, I'll ask Faith myself!" Rosemary said, pulling her phone from her pocket and scrolling busily away. "Don't you worry your pretty head about a thing, Elizabeth. I'll manage everything."
Elizabeth wondered if there were three more terrifying words in the entire English language.
"Elizabeth?"
Elizabeth blinked and looked over at Lee who was hiding his smile with difficulty and waving her paper gently in front of him. He crossed the room to her and sat in front of her, passing the pages over.
She flipped through the pages quickly and raised an eyebrow at him. "Did you read it?"
Lee chuckled. "I did, and it was brilliant. Well researched, well argued… well, except for the conclusion which read distinctly as though you smashed it out five minutes before printing it out for me," he gave her a cheeky grin, "but I have a feeling Elizabeth Thatcher wasn't about to turn that in anyway. I did make a few marks on your footnote and bibliography formatting." He rolled his eyes. "I so wish high schools would just stop teaching MLA as almost no one uses it once they get to college and it just confuses things when we switch you to APA."
"Right," Elizabeth said, turning through the pages more carefully. "I'll work on those."
Elizabeth wasn't paying attention, but Lee appeared to be gearing himself up for something.
"It's a really excellent paper, but I have to recommend you don't turn it in to Dr. Gowan," he said, finally.
"What?" Elizabeth cried.
"What do you mean?" Rosemary asked, paying attention to the conversation again.
"Gowan literally wrote the book on capitalist theory," Lee said. "You've been using it as a textbook. You can't turn in what is effectively an anti-capitalist argument to him and expect him to appreciate it."
"It's not anti-capitalist!" Elizabeth argued.
At the same time, Rosemary said, "he doesn't have to agree with her to grade her paper. Teachers do it all the time."
Lee took these arguments one at a time, starting with Rosemary. "Teachers do, but Gowan is… opinionated. He doesn't take well to people disagreeing with him." He turned to Elizabeth. "You argue that one of the central tenets of capitalism is not only wrong, but morally dubious. That's not anti-capitalist?"
"My grandfather made his fortunes in the industrial revolution," Elizabeth said with an ironic twist of her mouth. "If anyone can speak to the benefits of laissez faire capitalism, surely it's me?"
"Your father and grandfather may be pillars of industry, but you are a public school teacher at heart," Lee said. "You're going to be in a union." He laughed as Elizabeth smiled. "I think your father may have accidentally raised a socialist."
"Bite your tongue," Elizabeth said, smiling puckishly. "He's already horrified he raised a Democrat, find out the other and he'll disown me."
"My lips are sealed. But this paper-"
Elizabeth shook her head, face going stubborn. "Dr. Gowan can't fail a well-reasoned, well-researched argument just because I don't agree with one of his book's theses. That's not how teaching works! His opinions can't dictate his grades."
"His opinions shouldn't dictate his grades, Elizabeth," Lee said. "You've been in this class long enough to know that Gowan is a class-A asshole."
"It's too late," Elizabeth said. "I can't write another paper in a week. Not one I'd feel good about turning in."
"I don't care if he's the most stubborn, intractable man on the planet," Rosemary objected. "He cannot fail Elizabeth's paper just because he disagrees with her. Not if she's done the work and made a good argument. That's not what education is about." She looked at Elizabeth and her face fell into stubborn lines. "If he fails Elizabeth, we'll take him up on disciplinary charges."
Elizabeth looked suddenly nervous. "Oh no, I couldn't possibly do that!"
"You can," Rosemary said, quite certain. "I'll be there to help."
Elizabeth frowned, then shook her head. "It doesn't matter. He can't possibly fail me. No one becomes a teacher expecting every student to agree with them on every matter."
Lee looked dubious, but said nothing.
"It will be fine," Elizabeth said, looking down at her paper. "It will be fine," she repeated quietly, as though trying to convince herself.
"Shoot, is that the time?" Rosemary cried. "It's a quarter after eight! I've got to get back to the dorm right now, I've got games with my residents in ten minutes. I'm going to be late!"
Everyone startled and looked at the clock which, sure enough, showed 8:15.
"I'll give you a ride back to the dorm, Rosie," Lee said. "My car's just out back, it'll be faster than trying to run."
"I'll take you up on that," she said, shoving her laptop and books haphazardly into her bag. "I figured Jack would come up to get Elizabeth if we weren't done by 8. Wonder where he is."
"Maybe he got a call and is outside answering it," Elizabeth said, hitching her bag over her shoulder. "His brother calls at odd hours sometimes."
"Tom doesn't keep normal hours," Rosemary agreed. "You ready?" Elizabeth nodded. Rosemary turned to Lee who also nodded. Then she noticed that Charles was also standing with his own briefcase in hand. "Oh, are you coming too?" she asked, looking surprised.
"I thought I would," he said. "Shall we?" He gestured the girls to the door and they, after exchanging an amused look, set off together followed quickly by Lee and Charles.
In the chilly dark in the front of the library, they were surprised to find no Jack. Elizabeth took out her phone to check, though she had already done so twice since seeing the time. There was no message from him.
Rosemary, quicker with her phone even than Elizabeth, had dialed his number and was waiting for him to pick up already. After a moment she made a disgusted noise and pulled it away from her ear.
"Not picking up," she said. "The inconsiderate-"
"I can give you a ride back to your place after I drop Rosemary off, Elizabeth," Lee interrupted quickly.
"That's the complete opposite direction," Elizabeth said. "Besides, I'm sure Jack will be here any moment. I'll wait for him."
Rosemary hesitated. "Are you sure you'll be alright?" she asked. "I mean, it's late and cold and-"
Elizabeth laughed. "It's eight o'clock, Rosie! And the library doesn't close for another four hours! I'm pretty sure I'm in about the safest spot I could possibly be."
Rosemary still looked hesitant. "Well-"
"I'll stay with her if that will make you more comfortable," Charles said.
"No!" Elizabeth said quickly. "Like I said, I'm fine here. No one will bother me, and if they do, I can just go back into the library."
"Your friend shows admirable loyalty in her concern for you," Charles said, making Elizabeth wrinkle her nose slightly at his patronizing tone. "I've nowhere to be just now, so if it helps everyone feel more sanguine, I'm happy to remain."
Elizabeth met Rosemary's eyes, and the older girl shrugged. "I would feel better, if I'm honest," she said.
Elizabeth sighed. "Fine, fine. Now get out of here, you're going to be late even in the car at this point."
Rosemary looked shocked and quickly hurried a waving Lee away, leaving Elizabeth and Charles alone in the yellow light of the library.
Elizabeth sat gingerly on one of the cold stone benches that flanked the entrance, and Charles sat beside her, nearly halfway down the bench, leaving fully two feet of space between them. It was a more-than comfortable distance to leave between two nodding acquaintances, and yet Elizabeth still felt constricted by his presence. She wanted to pull out a book to read so she could pretend to ignore him, but the light was bad for it, and she didn't really feel like going inside.
"We've missed you in Spanish Club," Charles said. "I am sorry you didn't join. How is your Intro to Spanish class going?"
Elizabeth was startled at how much he'd remembered about her. "Well," she said. "You were right, he does prefer to be called Miguel. You were also right that it's not at all unlike French. I get the two mixed up in my head sometimes."
"Yes, you may find that never really goes away, but if you ever travel in Spain, rather than Central or South America, you'll find that many Spanish speakers will understand if you slip a French word in on occasion," Charles said.
"Yes," Elizabeth said, "I'm sure that's the case. I'm a bit more worried about my future students, many of whom English will be their second language and Spanish their first. Hopefully I don't confuse them terribly by speaking French when they need Spanish."
"So Coulter was telling the truth?" Charles said, sounding a bit surprised. "You are going to be a public school teacher?"
Elizabeth shrugged uncomfortably. "The hope is to someday be a principal or administrator, but yes, my passion is the public school system. I mentioned it in my paper quite a bit, that's how he could tell."
"I am curious at what you found to object to in Dr. Gowan's theses," Charles said. "I've always found them quite sound."
"Oh?" Elizabeth said. "Well, my paper mostly objects to the idea that capitalism rewards necessity or work or even innovation."
"What?" Charles asked. "Of course capitalism rewards work!"
"Not in my experience," Elizabeth said. "Take my father and I, for instance. He went public with his company when I was a child and has essentially not had to go into the office since. He makes his money through investment and makes between $2 and 30 million per year. I, on the other hand, will objectively be doing significantly more work than he does daily, and am likely never to make more than $65 thousand."
"Your father did the work of building his company-" Charles objected.
"My grandfather actually did that," Elizabeth said. "But even then, what actual work did my grandfather do? The people who worked in his factories, his employees, made pennies a day. My grandfather grew fat on their work." She shrugged. "It is the same all over. Those jobs which are objectively necessary- teachers, police officers, nurses, janitors- are paid a pittance while jobs which are far less objectively necessary- hedge fund managers, football players- are wildly overpaid."
"The market has deemed them necessary!" Charles cried, apparently having found a crack in her argument. "They are paid what the market will bear! If we decided that football players weren't worth millions of dollars, we would stop paying them that!"
"Even with football players," Elizabeth said, standing and beginning to pace, "the players themselves make very little money when compared with the sports industrial complex that is built around them. Who makes the real money in football, eh? The owners, managers, and executives of the NFL, right?"
"But-"
"But they've created the industry, yes I know," Elizabeth interrupted, gesturing as though she wanted him to move ahead more quickly, "but that's really my point, you see? Capitalism rewards making money, not work, not industry, not innovation. Hedge fund managers, team owners, and men who invest their money in stocks create more money in the economy, and are rewarded by capitalism. CEOs make stockholders feel rich, so we pay them more than the desk jockeys who do the actual work every day. Football team owners bring in advertisers and sponsorships, so we pay them more than the men cracking their heads open for our entertainment.
"Schools can't make money, that's not what they're for, so capitalism undervalues them, where if we really did reward necessity, they would be palaces. There would be no underfunded hospitals. But there are, so there's no way that capitalism can possibly reward objective value." Elizabeth shrugged and gave him a twisted smile. "That's what my paper's about."
"That is extremely dangerous. Lee was right to warn you. You should rewrite it."
Elizabeth's spine straightened and she looked down her nose at him like the Thatcher she was.
"I will not rewrite it," she said imperiously. "My argument is grounded in facts and my essay is well-written. I think I'm right, though I am not such a fool as to think there's no chance that I'm not. I don't have to be right though, I'm 19, I'm going to hold a lot of incorrect opinions in my life. I am, however, due a respectful audience, particularly from my teachers, whether they agree with me or not."
"Damn straight!"
Elizabeth turned at the sound of the voice. "Jack!" she cried, grinning up at him.
"Hey beautiful, sorry I'm late," he said then, without anything else said, he wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her hard on the mouth before God, Charles, and anyone else who might care to look.
Charles cleared his throat awkwardly. "Yes well… if you're here to escort Elizabeth home, I shall get on with my evening."
Jack lifted his head briefly, and gave Charles a cheerful smile. "See you 'round, Chuck," he said, before dropping his lips to Elizabeth's again.
Several minutes later, Elizabeth turned her face away from Jack's.
"Not that I mind," she said breathlessly as Jack continued to kiss her cheeks and down her neck, "but what on Earth was that for?"
Jack wasn't against PDA, necessarily, but he usually wasn't quite so blatantly possessive about the matter.
"That guy grew up thinking you were writing 'Mrs. Charles Kensington' and 'Elizabeth Thatcher-Kensington' in little hearts on your notebooks," Jack murmured in her ear, making her shiver. "Now he's thinking it might have been smarter if he'd been writing 'Charles Thatcher.'"
Elizabeth laughed and tried to squirm away from him, but Jack held her fast.
"First, that's not how last names work most of the time. Second, Charles doesn't even like me. I'm too much a socialist, as you might have discovered if you'd stuck around Lee's office hours."
"Hmmm, you clearly didn't see how he was looking at you, Elizabeth. That man thinks you hung the moon. Not that I can quite tell him he's wrong," he added, grinning, before kissing her again.
Elizabeth pulled away, half-breathless. "Now stop that. What did Carson want to show you?"
"New video game," Jack said, trying to get back at her mouth. "I lost track of time watching him play the the first bit."
"Nice to know that Carson's video game was more interesting than hanging out with me tonight," Elizabeth said, continuing to dodge him.
"Now cut that out," Jack said, taking one hand from her waist and anchoring it in her hair so that he could kiss her again. "If I'd known it was a video game, I'd never have left," he said against her mouth.
"Mmmm," Elizabeth said, sinking into his kiss again for several long moments.
"You know," she said, when Jack came up for air again, "we're still out in front of the library."
Jack looked up at the glass front of the old building without much interest. "Fancy that," he said before ducking his head as though to kiss her again."
"Stop that now, I'm serious," Elizabeth said, giggling and ducking his kiss and squirming out of his arms in earnest. "Walk me home, Jack, and if you're a perfect gentleman on the way, I'll invite you inside for a cup of coffee and a goodnight kiss."
