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“Maybe you shouldn’t.” I turn back to my task. I stop chopping carrot, look over at him, and give him a frank once-over that makes him blush. “Maybe I can’t help myself.” I lay the knife down and turn to face him. “Maybe those cards are still on the table, and I’m hoping for something that might not ever happen.”
He nods and looks away. “I’m trapped.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it. Maybe I know what to do. Maybe I have the key that can set you free.”
He glances at me with an unreadable expression and looks back into the dining room.
“Levi, do you know what happens to me if I lose this job?”
“You get a new one!” I offer.
He laughs without mirth. “A new one. Okay. Then let me tell you a little story. Do you know how many people applied for the job I am holding down right now? Two hundred ninety-seven. All of them with advanced degrees. Of them, sixty-four made it to the second round. All with doctorates in hand. Seventeen made it to the third round. When I was flown out here for the interview, I was one of five finalists.”
“Good for you.”
“Oh, no no no. Let me make it painfully clear.” He turns and looks at me directly for the first time. “If they fire me for any reason—which they can do with no cause whatsoever during this first year—my visa goes back in the box and I will be deported back to Canada, where there are exactly four universities running the kind of program I would need and I have already been turned down by two of them. They still aren’t paying me for taking on your class and I don’t dare make a fuss about it. My student loan debts are a thousand a month, because I just had to go to an American university rather than one financed by the government of Canada. And now, you’re here to save me. You.” His voice breaks. “Oh, lucky me.”
“Hey.” I advance on him. He shrinks from me. “Don’t talk like that.”
He looks at me. He’s trembling. “There are so many other fish in the sea, you know. Why me?”
“Because you’re the one I fell in love with.”
“Don’t say that. Please.”
“Bastien,” I say, reaching for him.
“Don’t.” He shies away from my touch.
I curl my fingers in. “Why?”
“Because it’s not enough. I touch you and all I can think of is the need to touch you again. And it’s wrong.” A tear trickles down his cheek. “I can’t even look at you. La séduction d’un étudiant est moralement répréhensible. I know that.” He swallows. “I’m not a brave man, Levi. I talk a good game about it when there’s a research goal telling me I can be daring, but, personally, I’m not. I follow the rules. I conform. I do what I’m told and I calculate the risks before doing anything. You’re a risk I can’t even begin to assess. I need to take that risk like I need to breathe. And I don’t know what to do.”
I freeze. “Say again?”
“Walking away from you was the single stupidest…” He exhales and takes a deep breath. He swallows audibly. “I need you. And I’m afraid of you. I’m more miserable than ever before in my life and I want to shout from the rooftops because I am flooded with joy. I don’t know who I am or what to do. The only thing I know is that you’re everything to me and I can’t bear for you to hold me even though I’m screaming for it inside.” He palms away the tears. “Tell me what to do to make this stop. Tell me what to do to make it last forever. I can’t bear it a second longer and I am terrified of the world after it stops. Tell me what to do, Kitten.”
“Baby boy.” I go to caress his cheek, but he pulls away, one last time, before he closes his eyes and lets me touch him. His whole body shudders. He puts up his right hand and, hesitantly, puts it on my chest.
He stares at it in horror. “This is wrong,” he says, but he doesn’t remove his hand. He puts his other hand around my waist. “It’s not all right.”
“Look at me,” I command. “We started out before you worked here. And before I started here. We were free agents. We have just as much right to be together as any other free people would. They can’t prevent us from being together because we made that choice before we came here. They literally have no legal right to. It’s in black and white in the faculty manual.”
He looks at me sharply. “You checked out the manual?”
“Of course I did. I love you.”
“You know, there are different ways of interpreting that policy.”
“And, like I said, if they insist on the other ways, then they should have fucking written them out. If they come after us, we’ll sue them back into the Stone Ages.”
He stares at his hand, then he leans forward and kisses my chest, just above the heart. He looks up at me once, and then his hands seem to be everywhere. One hand rucks up my shirt, the other is unbuttoning my jeans, somehow his teeth have found my right nipple, then he is kissing the side of my ribs near the armpit, and the clavicle, like he’s just trying to insert every patch of skin he can find into his mouth separately. I cup his ass and lift him so that he clings to me, and back him against the wall. “Bastien! Baby boy! Stop!”
He pulls back, breathing heavily. “I’m sorry. I lost control.”
“No, no, no! I just need to hear one thing from you before we go forward. I need to know where we stand.”
“Well, right now, you’re the only one actually standing.” He wraps his legs around me.
