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“I don’t know. Intimacy issues?” The beer flies from my mouth and spews all over my coffee table.
“Ma!” I manage to yell between coughs.
“What? I don’t know, Aidan. Tell me.”
“She’s a student,” I sigh.
“Whose student?” she asks, but I can hear the tone in her voice. I think I know what you’re trying to say, but I’ll give you a chance to correct me for my assumption. Correct me, Aidan Michael.
“My student.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Aidan. Is she even legal?”
“Yes, Mother!”
“Aren’t you teaching first year students?”
“She’s nineteen,” I grit out.
“And you’re how old? You know what, don’t answer that, I don’t need the reminder of how old I am.” I roll my eyes as I think about celebrating my mother’s forty-fifth birthday for the umpteenth time. She and I are going to be the same age here soon. “Sweetheart, I would never judge you. But isn’t that usually…frowned upon?”
“Now you understand the reason for my sigh, don’t you?”
“Watch your tone, Aidan.”
I swallow the lump in my throat, preparing myself to say the words aloud. “I love her.”
“What’s the problem then?”
“The whole her being my student thing?”
“Well, can’t you just hide it until she’s no longer your student?”
“No, Mother, I hadn’t thought of that.” My voice is laced with sarcasm. “Teachers are prohibited from relationships with any students at all. So, I can’t be with her until she graduates four years from now. And the dean of our college is already onto us. I can’t hide our relationship for four years, Ma. I wear my feelings for her all over my face.”
“Oh, honey.”
“She said she’d quit…but I can’t let her do that. She’d regret it and then she would eventually resent me.”
“More than she’d regret not being with someone she loves?”
“She’s young. And she thought she was in love once before. Who knows if she really loves me.”
“Don’t use her age as a reason to push her away. I’ve been in love with your father since I was seventeen.”
My heart constricts hearing her words. I know that’s part of the reason why I may have unrealistic expectations about love. My parents have been in love since they were teenagers and even now, thirty-five years later, they are still wild about each other.
“You’re the exception, not the rule.”
“You are exceptional, Aidan.”
I smile, hearing her words. Maryanne Reed always knew just what to say when I felt like shit. Skyler would love her. “Thanks, Ma.”
“Now tell me about her, Son.”
I should have stopped after the third whiskey.
Definitely after the fourth.
