Page 51 of Teach Me Your Ways

“Cece, I’m fourteen years older than you. That matters.”

She was quiet for a moment, staring at the label on her beer bottle. “Anything else?”

“The power imbalance. I hold your TA job in my hands. I control your recommendations, your reference letters—hell, I hold your academic future in my hands. That’s not fair to you.”

“And?”

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “And there’s the politics. Dean Carver, the donors, faculty politics—they’d eat me alive in ten seconds flat if anything came out. I can’t afford that kind of scrutiny.”

She was quiet for a long moment, peeling at the beer label with her thumbnail. The silence stretched between us, heavy.

“So we agree,” she finally said, not looking up. “This can’t happen.”

“Right. We agree.”

“I have my own reasons too.”

I took a long pull from my beer, waiting.

“My reputation,” she said, her voice getting stronger. “If people think I got this job because of the hot archeology professor I’m fucking—they’ll stop thinking I earned it.”

The word “fucking” hit me like a punch to the gut, especially coming from her mouth in that matter-of-fact tone. It took a little of the romance out of it.

“The TA job,” she continued, still peeling at that damn label. “If word gets out, I lose the position and the tuition discount that makes school even possible.”

I hadn’t even thought about that. Of course she needed the money. Not everyone had trust funds like half the grad students.

“And my future career.” She finally looked up, meeting my eyes. “No one’s going to hire me. I’ll have that ‘brown-noser who slept her way up the ladder’ stigma before I even get started. I don’t want to be the girl that got an A or a good job because she slept her way up.”

I nodded. “People tend to judge women more harshly for stuff like that. But for the record, sleeping with me has never helped a single person’s career.”

“I’m saying I don’t want special favors.”

“You think I’d give you special favors?” I asked with a quirk of my lips.

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to.”

I nodded, impressed despite myself. She’d thought this through more thoroughly than I had. “You’re right. All good points. A well-reasoned argument.”

“So it’s settled then.” She took another sip of beer. “Professional boundaries. No more… whatever that was.”

“No more,” I agreed.

“But we can be friends, right?” Her voice was soft.

“I’d like that.”

We sat quietly for several seconds. I half expected her to leave, but when she didn’t I decided to make the most of the time we had together. Something told me it would be the last.

“This is a cute place,” she said.

“Thank you. The house isn’t much, but the view is worth millions.”

“Yeah?”

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

I got up and walked to the curtains that shielded the sliding glass doors. I pulled them back and then opened the door. The ocean breeze blew in. We stepped onto the sand-covered patio. I gestured to the chairs. We sat down and fell quiet again with our gazes on the horizon. The moonlight bounced off the waves.