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She unpacks the three cookies, speaking as she goes. “I got their trio deal: cookies and cream for you, salted caramel for me, and figured a chocolate chip would be a neutral third. But I’m not sick, and I’m happy to share.”

I take a seat on the couch and accept a plastic spoon from Maeve. The first bite of the Oreo skillet cookie tastes insane. It’s sweet, it’s heavy as hell, and eating it feels like sitting by a fireplace in the winter with friends. It sparks visceral feelings of comfort and happiness. I catch Maeve as she takes her first bite of the salted caramel—she’s careful, making sure to get ice cream on the spoon, dainty in how she eats. She goes back after swallowing to clean the spoon before scooping up another bite.

We don’t really speak for a while. Then again, the cookies aren’t that big. I switch over to the chocolate chip one before finishing my own. Our spoons clink as we each dig out a bit. Even that minuscule impact ricochets back at me and leaves my muscles tense.

“So, while I have your attention, there was another purpose to this,” Maeve says.

She deliberately creates a moat around the middle of her salted caramel cookie. Strategy. I like it.

“We ought to grade a few midterms together to make sure we’re consistent in our interpretations, and, I’ll admit, I’d love you to talk me through a bit of your plan with Rocketman. I know that class isn’t for a few weeks, but I’d like to adjust my lecture to match yours better. You’re the expert on anything made after 2010, and I need to get a sense of what you’re thinking.”

I leave the core of my own cookie. “Well, it’s prime traffic time anyway, so might as well stay late.” The thought has my heart pounding. I’ll keep an eye on the time for Nobu.

Maeve smiles. “Great.” She looks back at her cookie, then flicks her gaze to me. “Do you want the last bite?”

She left me a core piece of her cookie? God, even that has my heart squeezing. I smile back. “Switch?”

But something makes me feel bold. I don’t slide her cookie over to my side of the desk; I reach over into her space and dig up the last bite myself. She does the same almost at the same time, and then clinks her spoon with mine before retreating to her space. I know it’s the cookie that tastes like salted caramel, but my insides shake a little imagining I’m tasting Maeve.

She tosses my empty tin into her trash and pulls out a stack of packets. She passes one to me, and I notice she’s double-jointed: her pointer, middle, and ring fingers fold as she slides the packet my way. A pen lands on top.

“Let’s grade maybe six or so, then decide what we’ll give to Ty?” she says.

“Perfect.”

I click my pen, and we get started.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Watching Maeve grade these midterms, it’s clear how considerate she is, how much she cares about her students. It’s rare for me to bump up against people who feel this much compassion for other humans. I follow her lead, and the marking goes remarkably quickly.

“So for Rocketman,” I say as I pull up YouTube, “we’re dealing with a very deliberate mix of diegetic and non-diegetic music, all of it attached to emotional moments rather than simply playing Elton John’s songs in chronological order. The film relies on fantasy and a campy, heightened world to represent Elton’s tumultuous emotions. To illustrate the point, I’ll rely mostly on set pieces. We’ll discuss the primary emotion being expressed in the scene and where the scene sits on a realism/fabulist scale.”

Maeve nods as she watches my mouse move across the screen. She’s on the couch with me, and the laptop sits on both our legs. Her thigh is pressed against mine, and I’m doing everything I can to ignore the heat that stretches from my kneecap to my stomach. “So what clips do you plan to use?”

“Hmm,” I say. I click on “Honky Cat.” “So here we have non-diegetic music, which uses a lack of cuts and long pans to represent time melting into itself. It’s like being in love, which Elton is in this scene. Even within the movie’s universe, movements, costumes, and facial expressions are more animated in this scene, especially Egerton’s expressions, and especially compared to Madden’s. You can see some darker themes haunt the whimsical scene—Madden eyeing the waiter is the biggest example.”

Maeve leans in, closer to me. “And the visuals in the background too, right? It’s never explicit, but you see it when Bernie breaks up with Heather.”

I smile. “Exactly!”

“You really know your technical filmmaking. It’s so impressive.”

I flush. “Just a bit from the directing.”

“I still need to see the TV episodes you directed. I bet they’re great.” Maeve takes her fingertip to the trackpad and clicks on “Rocketman.” “This song employed a lot of heightened reality, didn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah, it talks about your deepest pain coming to you in your darkest hours…”

I take a deep breath, hoping to steady the chills running through my body.

“But it’s one of the few songs that pauses to return to reality,” Maeve says, pausing the clip. “We exit his head to see how the real people around him are actually reacting to the suicide attempt.”

I smile briefly, despite myself. “Yeah, it’s a heavy scene. I know when I—”

Maeve sets the laptop aside, turns to face me. Our thighs pull apart, but she’s pressing her knees hard into mine. “When you…?”

I take a deep breath. “I’ve—I’ve just felt that devastated when it comes to mental health and fame. Winston wasn’t even the worst interview I’ve done. This one guy—”