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“He did that. He told me.”
“Really? Wow.” I let out a laugh, a bitter one. “I hope you realize it’s illegal, what you did. It’s a criminal offense. You could go to jail. All I need to do is report you. You sent me the photo, I’m sure the cops can trace your phone from that.” Although I’m not sure about that last part.
“I didn’t send it to you,” he says quickly. “He did.”
“Geoff?”
“Yes. He gave me his cell that night.”
“Hiscell?”
“Yeah, to take the photo with.”
Which is why I didn’t see it when I returned the next day and I scrolled through Ryan’s phone. It was never there in the first place.
I’m going to be sick. I sit there, fingernails digging into my palms. It’s amazing how you can go for years with an idea of someone. You might not know what they think of you exactly, but you have a firm idea of what kind of relationship you have, then one day you wake up and find out it’s completely different. Before Geoff cornered me in the storage cupboard the other day, I really, really thought he liked me—professionally, and yes, perhaps with a little, understood-not-to-be-acted-on flirting involved too. Realistic between colleagues who got on so well, I always thought.
Turns out he really,reallyhates me.
“Did he send you to the restaurant, too? That day you stood outside watching me?”
“No! I just happened to walk past and I saw you, with your kids and your husband, and I felt bad. I thought about going in to tell you what was really going on.”
I give a startled laugh. “You filed a sexual harassment complaint against me, Ryan. You can’t be feeling that bad.”
He looks puzzled. “I didn’t file a complaint. Why would I do that?”
“For the same reason you did everything else, because he asked you to.”
“No, no. He didn’t ask me to do that and I wouldn’t have done it if he had. He knows I’m out.”
I think about this for a moment. Suddenly, I wonder if Geoff made it up, and the more I think about it, the more I suspect that’s right. Surely complaints like that are handled by HR, not by another professor, even if he’s the chair. God. I’m such an idiot. I almost reach for my phone but realize it’s too late to call them now.
I think back through the weeks of torment he’s put me through. The scratch on my car, the text he sent me in the middle of my lecture.WHORE. Geoff thinks I’m a whore not because I had sex with him, but because I didn’t.
I lift my bag from the floor.
“What are you going to do?” Ryan says, and I’m thrilled to detect a note of panic in his voice.
“I don’t know yet.”
Halfway to the door I turn back to face him. “Do not say a word to Geoff, you understand? As far as he’s concerned, I know nothing. If I find out you’ve told him that I know, or that we even spoke, I swear to God I will turn you over to the police. Am I clear?” My mouth is so tight I can barely speak.
Then a voice rings out from behind the door: “Everything all right in there?”
I lean close and point a finger so close to his face I could almost stab him in the eye. “I can’t imagine you’d want your mother to know you’re involved in some sordid blackmail scam, either. So don’t test me, Ryan.”
I sit in my car and I cry, because I’m so stupid and I’m humiliated and I think of my mother, because I always think of my mother when I get this overwhelming certitude that deep down, I’m a bad person and I deserved this. I think of that day when Geoff undid the top button of my shirt and I wasflattered. I thought it wassexy. So what did I expect? I give myself a pass and look what happens: bad things, that’s what. Just like Geoff said.Bad things happen to women like you.
Thirty-Four
I get home, and Luis is instantly at me, itching for a fight.
“Where were you? What happened with Matti this afternoon? I got all these calls from the soccer club, from you… what the hell? Where were you? Did you forget? Did you have your phone off?”
He waves his phone at me then drops it on the table.
“I’m sorry!” I repeat, for the umpteenth time. I reach for a bottle of red and check it against the light. I grab a tumbler from the shelf and set it on the table.
