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“This was your senior year. You could have lived with your hockey buddies, probably should have, but you put me and Lav first. So I hope that whatever’s going on with you, it’s because you’re putting yourself first for once.”
I stare at my younger brother. “Are you high?”
He rolls his eyes. “No. I’m not dumb enough to do that when we’re going to see Mom and Dad. I’m just saying, you’re a good brother.”
“Oh. Well, thanks.”
He pulls me in for a hug I don’t expect, then pushes me toward the stairs, telling me I need to shower off my stank.
River’s words stick with me as I get ready for convocation—and not the ones about the stank. I’m ready for this chapter of my life to be over.
Thirty-Five
Awkward Conversations
Clover
Ifeel ill, like I might toss my cookies at any moment. I’m trying to stay engaged in conversation with my colleagues, but it’s a challenge when my boyfriend and his parents are less than a hundred feet away and currently celebrating the fact that their son has graduated college.
Professor Longley—a man in his mid-forties, who has on more than one occasion this semester asked if I’d like to have coffee, and I’ve always been busy—is droning on and on about the different kinds of coffee beans and how the ones they use at some café downtown are the best. Mary Connor, one of the sociology professors, is hanging on his every word. I wish he would get a clue and askherout, since it’s clear she’s into him.
It makes me question what the hell I’m doing and how this thing with Maverick can ever work. But I remind myself that I have one more week in my contract, and then I’m finished. Then we’re just two people in a relationship.
I excuse myself to the bathroom. My mouth is dry, my palms are sweaty, and I’m ridiculously jittery, as though I’ve consumed a gallon of coffee and followed it up by chugging a bottle of maple syrup.
I use the ladies’ room, gather my senses, and exit, prepared to excuse myself to my office. I need to get out of here so I don’t start second-guessing myself and what I’m doing more than I already am. The hardest part has been watching Maverick and his parents talk to his professors from this semester, knowing that they’re discussing how bright he is, probably asking if he’s interested in pursuing a master’s, despite being aware of his NHL future. I can’t approach them, speak with them, tell them how amazing I think their son is, because of our relationship.
He can do anything he wants. Be anything he wants. The world is at his fingertips. And instead of hanging out at bars on the weekends or talking to girls his own age, he’s playing Scrabble with me in the evening, readingPsychology Today, and having sex all over my house.
“What am I doing?” I chastise myself. I step out into the hall and almost run into another woman.
“I’m so sorry.” I stumble back, and my mouth goes even drier. Because I’m standing face-to-face with Maverick’s mother.
She’s a tiny woman, slight and curvy with long, wavy auburn hair. I realize I’ve seen her daughter on campus, Maverick’s younger sister, because she looks almost exactly like her.
“I was wondering if I could have a word.” Her expression is pinched, uncertain.
Saying no is not an option. Not if I want an actual relationship with Maverick, and even though I’m questioning myself today, my heart already knows what it wants.
“Of course.” I glance down the hallway. There are conference rooms to the right. “We can go in here; there’s more privacy.” I use my faculty card to unlock the door and turn on the lights, ushering her inside before I follow and close the door.
She clutches her purse in her hands. It’s ornate, decorated with beads, and looks like a math textbook. Her gaze moves over me. “You don’t look old enough to be a professor. If you came to a liquor store and I was working the cash, I would definitely card you. Even if you were buying a fifty-dollar bottle of wine.”
“Fifty-dollar bottles of wine are a little above my current paygrade.”Oh my God. Did I just lip off to my boyfriend’s mother?
She shakes her head. “I would never work the cash register at a liquor store. It would be super depressing to see the same guy come in every day and buy Colt 45. Mouthwash would be a better option than that shit. It tastes like lighter fluid that’s been marinating in a toilet.”
“I will take your word for it.” I wait, because obviously she didn’t pull me in here to talk about malt liquor.
“What exactly are your intentions with my son?”
“Can you be more specific?”
She blows out a breath. “Are you reliving your twenties because you missed out on them the first time around? That ex-husband of yours seems like a bit of a bomb waiting to go off, and you had to have been young when you met him. Early twenties, maybe? So you took a pass on all the fun stuff because you settled down with a douchecanoe, and then you saw my son and thought he would be a good way to get your rocks off for a while? Or maybe he’s a ticket to a life of leisure?”
“Wow. Okay. Um, my ex-husband is the worst choice I’ve ever made.”
“That’s saying something, since you’re sleeping with one of your students.”
