His hand finds the small of my back as we head down the stairs together.
“To be honest, it’s more that I’m not sure you’ll come with me if you know where we’re going,” he admits.
I throw my head back and laugh. “What a promising start to the evening.”
We make our way to the closest metro station and head downtown. Julien announces that we’re getting off when we arrive at the McGill University stop.
“We’re going on campus?” I ask as we wade through the crowd exiting the station and then start heading for the main entrance to the university grounds.
“Indeed we are.”
Despite being spread out across several streets in the heart of downtown, McGill has always had a kind of Hogwarts castle appeal to me. The old buildings are gorgeous, all grey stone columns and pediments with wide, tree-lined lanes between them. The buds on the branches are just starting to unfurl into tiny yellow-green leaves.
“I wish Concordia was this pretty,” I muse. My own school is very much an urban university, tucked in among all the high rises and office buildings. “I used to come study here sometimes.”
“You never thought about switching schools?”
I scoff. “You don’t go to McGill to study English. This is a doctors and lawyers kind of school.”
“They also have some excellent professors of economics,” Julien add slyly, directing us toward one of the newer buildings.
“What exactly are you leading me to?”
“I promise I’m still taking you on a real date tonight,” he assures me, “but before that, I wanted to catch this lecture.”
We reach the door to the building, and he holds it open for me before leading me down a hallway inside.
“I used to come hang out on this campus too,” he tells me. “I would sit in on lectures from time to time. At first I was just curious to see how it would compare to Cambridge—”
“Oh, of course,” I interrupt, putting on a posh British accent. “We must assure ourselves that the plebeians are not becoming overly educated.”
“Precisely,” he jokes, mimicking the same accent for a moment. “But really, I just wanted to see what it was like, and that’s how I found this guy. His name is Doctor Josh Phillips.”
“Sounds legit.”
“You sort of remind me of him.”
I’m doing a lot of scoffing tonight. “I remind you of a professor of economics?”
“He wrote this book calledThe Human Factor. It challenges many widely accepted economic theories by arguing humans will never completely prescribe to a rule that’s been worked out with data on a page because they’re...well, human.”
“And that reminds you of me?”
“It reminds me of you because he finds a way to see an element of humanity in everything, even when other academics start tearing him down—which they do, a lot, but he also built a multi-million dollar media company before selling it and getting his PhD, so I don’t think he really gives a damn when people say he knows nothing about business.”
“I’ll admit you’re intriguing me,” I reply. “Are we allowed to just walk in on this lecture?”
“There’s over a hundred people in the class. We’ll be fine.”
We slip into the lecture hall with a group of passing students and take seats in the middle of the room.
“This brings back memories,” I comment, flipping the little table thing down in front of me once I’m settled.
“Let me guess. You were a front row kind of girl?”
“If I’m going to a class, then I want to actually hear it,” I shoot back. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. I always sat in the front row at Cambridge.”
