“Fine.” And she left.
***
The day stretched on. Even during the undergraduate class, Mara was quick to leave, reminding the students about her office hours. I watched her exit the lecture hall, disappearing into the sunlight, wondering what made her that tense.
Now that the contest was over, had her mind changed? Switched? Finished? Should I have known that Mara was willing to say whatever I wanted to hear to get what she wanted, like the rest of the people in this world?
A student tapped my shoulder, and I dismissed the thoughts from my head. Mara wasn’t like that. She had gotten me to agree to the contest long before we shared those moments. And if she had a grander scheme, then I was a fool for believing in her. But I knew it wasn’t that. There was something else.
Later that night, I picked her up—opting for the usual sweater vest, perhaps to boast my age rather than to hide it. Mara had changed into a sundress—daisies decorating the bottom of the hem, short of her knees, the short sleeves and high neck covering her cleavage, but accentuating her curves. I held her thigh on the drive over, but we were silent. I wanted Mara to take the lead.
We parked outside of a house in Summerlin, two stories painted in an orange hue, a rock and rubble-decorated landscape. I grabbed flowers out of the back of the car, and Mara smiled for a second. Perhaps it was old-fashioned of me to continue with this kind of gesture, but I was okay with that.
We walked up the steps, and Mara looked at me.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said. “You can turn around now. Pretend that you never agreed to this.”
“You think I’m afraid of your mother?” I asked.
She laughed, a real laugh, and it made me forget about the thoughts I had had all day. “I’m afraid of my mom sometimes,” she said.
I knocked on the door and held Mara’s hand. She squeezed my grasp. Meeting her mother, though a big step for our relationship, didn’t scare me. I was at peace with who I was. And I was convinced that even with our age gap, we could overcome that. Even more so once I was no longer a professor at her university.
The door opened. A woman with brown hair and a round face like Mara’s. Familiar eyes. Her smile dropped when she saw me. The recognition was there. It wasn’t that I knew her from the dungeons or some sexual part of the past, but it was still a small fucking world. How I ended up with my dormmate’s daughter was beyond me.
“Nathan?” she asked.
“Diane?”
