2025
“I give my time to the people who are most important to me. Odds are that person isn’t you.”
- Connor Cobalt, We Are Calloway (Season 7 Episode 10 – Hamlet & Hogwarts)
[ 42 ]
January 2025
Manhattan Medical Hospital
New York City
ROSE COBALT
I breeze through memories and land on one day.
Over thirteen years ago, I hurried across Princeton’s campus, my umbrella catching the afternoon rain. All my exam and paper due dates rattled in my head on loop, and I walked faster. Heels against wet pavement. The Princeton library in view.
Up the stairs, through the door, I shook out my black umbrella and stiffly checked my phone, hoping for a reply. Connor Cobalt was the top contact in my messages, but he didn’t respond to the ones I previously sent.
I inhaled a strained breath. I hated that I sent him five texts. Five. All in quick succession. It would’ve been better if he responded, but it’d been two hours, and he was utterly silent.
We’d started dating not long ago, and it couldn’t have been worse timing.
Lily had just told me that she was a sex addict. Thanksgiving was approaching, hence all the college due dates raising their swords at my armor. The last thing I wanted was to be consumed by Connor Cobalt and dating. It was a betrayal to my sister and my studies.
This was my senior year. Don’t lose focus now, Rose.
Just to ensure that I hadn’t sent anything humiliating, I glanced over my texts and walked further into the library.
The last one he’d sent: let me take you to lunch – Connor
I’d replied with five frenzied messages.
Text #1: You can eat alone. I don’t have time for food and drink and dates. My sister is my number one priority, and she needs me. Do you know what I did last night? I spent five hours researching sex addiction and contacting professionals in the field. And I’m no closer to helping her than I was the day before.
Text #2: I will not go to lunch with you.
Text #3: I have a French paper worth fifteen-percent of my grade due tomorrow. I haven’t even read Franz Fanon’s “Les damnés de la terre” yet, and now I’ll have to skim the book. (I never skim.)
Text #4: I don’t even have study materials for my Strategy and Information final tomorrow. My economics professor decided to “up the final to November” to alleviate the stress on the first week of December. I loathe him. I’m not alleviated. It’s worth fifty-percent of my grade, and now I have less time to study. His logic is ridiculous. He also added extra reading supplements and teased us about specific questions from these textbooks. Which means I have to take time and go to the library. I’d withdraw, but withdrawing admits defeat. I will not be defeated by a professor.
Text #5: disregard all previous texts except the second one.
I still couldn’t believe I told him that I actually considered withdrawing from an upper-level econ course. He’d never admit that to me.
You should’ve never started dating him, I kept thinking.
Rereading the texts only rusted my joints, my neck strict and shoulders rigid. I slipped my phone in my Chanel bag and strutted past the checkout and returns. The library smelled like old hardback bindings and worn pages. I entered the common area of the first floor, ceilings vaulted, bookshelves lining a couple walls. Wooden tables and chairs were scattered in the middle.
I needed to log onto the library’s database and figure out where my books were shelved. They most likely weren’t on the first floor. I stopped by a short bookshelf and scanned the library for a free computer, people quietly studying.
My narrowed yellow-green eyes flitted this way and that. And then they froze. Right on serene deep blues, six-foot-four feet of arrogance and intellect, and a perpetually assured grin.
Connor Cobalt leaned against a wooden table, skyscraping bookshelves back-dropped his stoic frame. I’ll never forget how he stood out among an ancient, grandiose library. I’ll never forget how he appeared taller and more omnipotent than the towering hardbacks behind him.
I took a heartier breath and strutted towards Connor. When college exams and the texts made me feel frazzled, my wardrobe flooded me with confidence. Black skirt, sheer tights, booties with five-inch heels, a blazer over a loose white blouse, topped with a sleek pony and a Chanel handbag—I was ready for battle.
As I neared, Connor stepped from the table, his wardrobe equally put-together: navy slacks, leather belt, expensive loafers, an Oxford collar button-down and tie beneath a gray sweater. He had always dressed better than most men, but I wouldn’t dare compliment him.
I spoke hurriedly and hushed. “Did you slip and fall and forget that your allegiances are to Penn, not Princeton?”
He almost laughed like I couldn’t see what was right in front of me.
“Richard—”
“My allegiance is to you, Rose.”
My heart skipped a beat, too stunned to move. He calmly took my wet umbrella and placed it in a chair. That was when I noticed the textbooks across the table. I passed him and picked up a few, my eyes widening in more realizations.
These were the four books I needed. “How…?”
Connor leaned his ass on the table again, mostly—I realized—to be at the same height as me. I was angled towards him, a black textbook in my hand called Game of Strategy. His fingers skimmed my wrist, my skin on fire like never before.
Then he flipped open the book, letting me hold it. Highlights, notes scrawled carefully in the margins, he turned to the very first page with a name in the upper corner.
Connor Cobalt.
This was his copy.
“The course isn’t called Strategy and Information at Penn, but I realized it was just advanced Game Theory. I’ve already taken those courses, and I assumed the reading material would be identical.”
He was right.
And he saved me at least forty-five minutes of hunting through the library. “Thank you,” I said under my breath, still outright dazed. He’d been my rival since I was a teenager, and I’d yet to fully understand what it meant to have him as a teammate.
We’d been on a handful of dates before this, mostly fueled by quick wit and my glares. He’d been extremely supportive of my Calloway Couture runway show, but today was different. I didn’t ask Connor to collect these books. I didn’t ask him to meet me at the library.
I blinked out of my stupor, unable to look at him directly. I set the book down. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” It sounded more hostile than I really meant.
“Yes,” he said, “and I’m already here.”
I swallowed as my iron walls lowered for him. They had never lowered for anyone before. “I have a French paper due first, and I need to wait for a computer.”
He stood straighter. “You can use my laptop. I’ll buy you a coffee, and when you finish your paper, we can go through the game theory textbooks.”
Before he moved, I said, “I don’t need Connor Cobalt the Tutor. I’m perfectly capable of studying on my own.” My lungs burned hot. I could barely breathe. I could barely meet his eyes without being overwhelmed by sentiments I’d never met in my life.
Very deeply, he replied, “I’m not Connor Cobalt the Tutor right now.”
I hesitated to ask. Rose Calloway does not cower. I lifted my chin, locked eyes with his, and questioned, “Then who are you giving me?” He changed for people. It was a fact we both acknowledged and understood.
Connor waited to answer, tension jutting out my collarbone. Tension constricting muscles in his arms. “You have Connor Cobalt the Boyfriend.”
Boyfriend.
In a hushed voice, I asked, “And how much of him is real?” How fake was he being with me?
Connor began to smile. “Terribly real, darling.”
Darling.
It was the first time he called me darling.
At that, he walked away and only looked over his shoulder to re
mind me, “I’m buying you coffee. I’ll be right back.”
Slowly and incredibly dazed, I sunk into my chair and removed my blazer. I found his laptop and just clicked straight into a blank document. I wouldn’t snoop. I valued my privacy too much to be hypocritical and destroy his.
I tried to focus on my notes. FRE 371: World Literatures in French. I had pages and pages, and I began skimming the Frantz Fanon text. By the time Connor returned with two steaming cups of coffee, I’d written a thousand words.
I told him I was halfway through, and he spent that time reading over my ECO 418: Strategy and Information notes. He only distracted me once. When he leaned forward in his chair and slipped a pencil behind his ear.
I glanced over and watched his calculated eyes graze over my handwriting. I could barely admit it then, but I can now: it turned me on. Even his fingers lightly gliding over my notes turned me on.
After a full minute, he caught me staring. In French, he asked, “Fini?” Finished?
“Presque.” Almost.
I typed out the last line, emailed myself the paper and then pushed his laptop aside. He slid his chair closer beside mine, our arms brushing. Connor pulled all the reading material towards us, and we began to talk about sequential bargaining under asymmetric information and applications for perfect Bayesian equilibrium.
Two hours flew by. My pencil broke while I wrote out a complicated formula to an equation. He slipped his pencil out from his ear and held it to me.
I lost all thoughts. My heart sped rapidly, and my chest collapsed in a shallow breath. I pushed my notebook to him before he noticed. “Can you finish the line? I’ll find a pen.”
He lingered for a second and then accepted my request. Connor finished the formula, and I dug in my handbag for a pen.
What the hell is going on? my iron walls seemed to shriek. This was unlike me. Letting him stay. Letting him help. Letting him near.
I didn’t want to push him away. I wanted Connor right here next to me.
I found my pen. I placed it on the table, and his arm extended over the back of my chair. He started talking about the equation, but I couldn’t think straight.
“Rose?”
I glanced at him, just slightly.
He studied me with noticeable affection behind his blue eyes.
“Continue,” I told him, my voice stilted.
“No.”
My eyes flamed. “No?”
His hand encased my cheek and jaw, large and assured. My pulse beat my veins alive. His other hand rested on the outside of my thigh, climbing towards my ass.