Chapter Fourteen
Leo
Life was suddenly great.
More than great, it was excellent, as though I were now seeing everything through rose-colored glasses.
Everything had taken on a nice sheen, and even the most mundane tasks were made tolerable now, because for the first time in a long time, life actually felt good. I knew I was walking around with a smile on my face. People noticed; on more than one occasion one of my colleagues would say something along the lines of how something good must’ve happened to me because I now seemed happy all the time.
I didn’t say anything to confirm or deny this, but I liked to think that sort of positive energy might be infectious.
Tonight, Jack and I were sitting at the Corkscrew, and he kept looking toward the door as though he was expecting Tessa to walk through at any moment.
“I really can’t believe that you’re going through with it,” Jack said. He rubbed his hand over his eyes and looked very stressed out, as though it would be his ass on the line if I were to get caught. “I really can’t. And that she just came in here like that the other day, and you two went and . . . I just can’t believe it.”
“Is this your way of fishing, trying to get me to give you details?”
“No!” he exclaimed. “I don’t want to know! I don’t want to know anything about it, actually! But now that you’ve done it, it’s over with, right? You’re not going to keep doing it?”
I scoffed. “This is the most exciting thing that’s happened to me since I left the magazine. I forgot what it was like to wake up in the morning and actually be excited about life. To look forward to something. There’s no way in hell I’m stopping that now.”
“You’re telling me you never looked forward to anything until this thing with Tessa? I don’t believe you, Leo. I’m calling bullshit on that.”
“Why? It’s true.”
“Because . . . well . . . look at you! It’s not like there’d be any shortage of women that you could get involved with.”
I knew that, when it came to dating, Jack did not have as much luck as I did (though could it really be called luck?), and that there was a part of him that was envious about it. And I didn’t want to make it sound trite, that just hooking up with someone wasn’t exciting enough, because I’d been there, done that, hundreds of times over. What I’d never had, though, up until now, was a situation like I did with Tessa.
“It’s more than just sex, though,” I said.
Jack raised his eyebrows. “You mean you like her?”
“Of course I like her. The novelty of hate sex wears off really quick, so trust me when I say, if I didn’t like her, I wouldn’t still be doing this.”
“I’ve never even had hate sex.”
“It’s fun like, the first couple of times. But after that, it just seems to get more and more tedious.”
“Well, I guess it’s good that you like her, anyway. Though that’s the only good I can see in it.”
“Oh, there’s plenty more good.”
“I just don’t want to see things get completely messed up for you, Leo. I know it’s all fun and good right now, but who’s to say that’s going to last? Who’s to say that someone isn’t going to find out about this and try to make your life hell? Or what if you get fired?”
“There’s so many what-ifs,” I said. “I really don’t want to sit here thinking about all of them. And who’s going to find out? You’re the only one who knows. Well, and my brother, but he’s happy for me. No one else knows. And I intend to keep it that way.”
“You might be planning to keep it that way, but what about her? You don’t know who she’s told. You don’t know if she’s suddenly going to decide that this whole thing is wrong and she doesn’t want to be a part of it anymore. Or—what if she says you forced yourself on her? What if she tries to play that card? It’s one thing to be involved with someone when it’s consensual, but it’s a completely different thing to have someone try to say you sexually assaulted them.”
I sighed and patted his arm. I was touched, really, that he was this concerned, but it was primarily because Jack was incapable of living a life that included any risks. The thing was, there probably were plenty of instances where he would have enjoyed taking a risk, but the stress of it would overshadow anything positive. I wasn’t going to sit there and dwell on the what-ifs, on the possibility that we would get found out, that Tessa would decide to say that I tried to take advantage of her. Could it happen? Sure, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibilities, but right now, I was enjoying things too much to take anything else into account.
“She wants the good grade,” I said. “I don’t think she’s going to do anything like try to say I forced myself on her. And I know you said you didn’t want details, but, trust me—this is enjoyable for her, too. I’d even venture to say that she’s having just as much fun as I am.”
“Just because something’s fun, doesn’t mean it’s good,” Jack said.
The fun part wasn’t surprising—what I did find somewhat surprising though, was the fact that I actually really liked her. Not just because we were having amazing sex, but I liked being around her, which I wasn’t expecting. In fact, I’d been assuming that once the sex had started to get routine (which it almost always did) that I’d have to think of some excuse to try to get rid of her.
In fact, lately, I’d been thinking that I wanted to take her out to dinner. Or do something along those lines, something that wasn’t just sex (though that could certainly happen, too). I asked to speak with her after class, and I waited until the room was empty before telling her I wanted to take her out.
“Out?” she said, a surprised look on her face. “Out where?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Out to eat somewhere. I’m not too picky.”
“Oh,” she said. “Okay. Well . . . that would be fine. Maybe it would be better to go somewhere that wasn’t in the city, though? I don’t want to risk someone seeing us together.”
“Sure. We can go wherever you want. Though if someone does see us, you can just tell them we were talking about an extra credit assignment for you.” I expected her to laugh, but she didn’t; she only gave me a tight smile and nodded.
“I guess,” she said, though she didn’t sound certain.
“We don’t have to,” I said. Was it possible she didn’t want to go? Had I been misreading this situation the whole time, and she really was only doing this with me because she wanted the grade? “I just thought it might be . . . nice.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it will.” She smiled again, though it still seemed forced. “I’m sorry, I’ve just got some other stuff on my mind, is all.”
“Anything you want to talk about?”
She hesitated, her gaze going around the room as though she was expecting someone else to be there.
“No,” she said. “It’s fine. Yes, let’s go out somewhere. That sounds like a nice idea. You can pick; just let me know.”
“Okay, I will. Anything you’re totally against?”
She shook her head. “I’m sure whatever you choose will be fine. I’ve got to run, though. I have a ton of work I need to do.”
She rushed off, and though she had agreed to go out, it seemed as though she wasn’t as excited about it as I might’ve thought she would be. My phone started to buzz, and I looked at the screen. My brother. I usually didn’t take calls when I was at school, but since class was over and I had some time to kill before my next one, I answered.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” I said when I picked up the phone. “It’s barely been a week since I last talked to you.” Usually, we’d go months.
“Hey, bro,” Aaron said. “Just got some downtime for the moment and was thinking about you—thought I’d give you a call and see how it was going.”
I laughed. “You can’t fool me. I know you’re calling because you want to hear about how it’s going with that student of mine.”
“Well . . . a little curious maybe. And you know, I don’t think I mentioned it before, but I’ve decided to take a break from hooking up for a little while.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s just . . . something I’m doing.”
Which was probably code for he had another STD that the antibiotics hadn’t cleared up yet. “So you’re calling to live vicariously through me,” I said. “Ironic. Unfortunately, Aaron, I’m not the sort to kiss and tell, so maybe go log onto xvideos or something.”
“You’re not really doing her, are you? There is no student you propositioned.”
“Actually, there is. And I’m still not giving you details about it. I will tell you this much though—it’s going better than I would have thought.”
He groaned. “You’re killing me! But fine, fine, if you don’t want to share the details, I’m not going to force you. There was a reason for my call, actually.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. The team had this guy writing an article about us over here in Paris, at the new indoor skate park they just built, but he broke his arm last night, so he’s going to be out of commission for a little while. You want to fill in? They’ve got a couple other people they were thinking about asking, but I said I wanted to ask you first. You’d need to take about a couple weeks off; there’s an opening ceremony they want covered at the end of this week and then a couple promo events, too. It’s gonna be pretty off the hook, and I thought you might be interested. It’ll pay pretty well, too. How does that sound?”
Of course it sounded good, and there was a part of me that was ready to hop on a plane that very second, but more than that, I didn’t want to leave Tessa. I wouldn’t really be leaving her, though—It’s not even like we were in a relationship. We were . . . well, I wasn’t quite sure what we were, but call it a sixth sense or instinct, I had the strong feeling that if I were to take my brother up on this offer, it would mean the end of things between Tessa and me. Maybe in the time apart she’d realize what she was doing and wouldn’t want to do it anymore; maybe she’d meet someone else, maybe I would . . . I couldn’t ever remember feeling this sort of conflict over anyone before, and I wasn’t quite comfortable with the feeling, but it also wasn’t something I could just ignore.
“You know, I think I’m just gonna stay put,” I said.
“Really?” Aaron sounded surprised. “I thought you’d be psyched.”
“It sounds like a great opportunity,” I said. “It really does. And I definitely wouldn’t mind getting to chill with you, but . . . I really shouldn’t take that much time off of work.”
“You can bring your girl with you, if you want,” Aaron said.
“Maybe next time,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him that a week away with me might not be exactly the thing Tessa wanted to do, considering she seemed so unenthused about the prospect of going to dinner.
I put all of those thoughts out of my mind, though. That Saturday, I picked her up and
we left the city and drove up to Fairfax, where there’d be less chance of us running into anyone we knew. It seemed like there was something that she wanted to say, or that something was bothering her, but when I asked if everything was okay, she smiled and said that it was.
We went to this little Italian place and got glasses of red wine and ate bread and salad and lobster ravioli for me and linguini and clams for her, though she mostly just pushed it around her plate.
“Food okay?” I asked.
She nodded.
I gestured to my plate. “You want to try any of this?”
“No, I’m all set. It looks good, though.”
The conversation wasn’t flowing exactly as I’d imagined it. I took another sip of wine. Were we, perhaps, only compatible when we were fucking? Was it possible that she and I didn’t really have anything else to talk about?
“Is everything okay?” I asked as I put my wine glass down.
She nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry if it seems like I’m not having a good time. I am. This is really nice, actually.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it, but it seems like something’s been bothering you all night,” I said. “What’s up? Is this too much? Does it feel like too much of…I don’t know, like a relationship?” It hadn’t occurred to me that maybe she would want to just keep things physical. It hadn’t occurred to me that maybe she didn’t even like me, maybe hanging out with me was excruciating. It didn’t seem that way, but I could tell there was something on her mind. “If you’d rather just keep things strictly physical, that’s fine,” I said, though I found myself hoping she’d say she didn’t want to do that.
“It’s not that,” she said. “That has nothing to do with it, actually. I really like getting to spend time with you—please don’t think that I’m not enjoying this.”
I smiled. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“I’m having a good time. I promise you, it’s not that.”
“What is it, then?”
She hesitated, and in that silence I tried to figure out what it was she was going to say. She was really a lesbian? She had an STD? She had a boyfriend? As it turned out, none of that. “I got this letter,” she said. “And at first I thought it was from you. You know how you had slipped that note into my paper that one day? I thought it was like that, except you’d sent it to my apartment this time.”
“No, it wasn’t me. Who was it from?”
“I don’t know. There was no signature.”
“Well, what did they want?”
“They wanted me to write a paper. They gave me the topic and everything.”
I didn’t say anything right away; I was waiting for the grin to break out on her face and her to tell me she was joking. But that didn’t happen; she just continued to push the pasta around on her plate. “Wait—what? You got a random anonymous letter from someone who wanted you to write a paper?”
“Yes. And I’m going to do it. There was an email address to send it to. They gave me a week.”
“Why would you do that? I would’ve told them to go fuck themselves. Just because you get some random letter in the mail from someone who—”
“The letter wasn’t so random. They sent it because they knew what was going on between us. And they said that the only way to ensure it didn’t get out was if I wrote the paper.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
She shook her head. “I wish I was.”
I didn’t say anything for a second, letting what she’d just said fully sink in. So someone did know about this, after all. And they were now trying to blackmail Tessa by having her write their papers?
“Fuck that,” I said. “No fucking way you’re going to write that paper. Just because someone’s threatening you. No way.”
“I knew you were going to say that. Which is why I didn’t want to tell you about this, but Lindsey told me I should.”
“Lindsey.” I nodded. “So you’ve told Lindsey what’s been going on.”
“Of course I did! She’s my best friend. But she’s the only one that I’ve said anything to.” Tessa frowned. “Don’t try to blame this on me! Who have you told?”
“No one,” I said. “Well, okay. I told my friend. And my brother. But I know for an absolute fucking fact that neither of them said anything.”
“I don’t know then,” Tessa said. “I don’t know who might have found out—maybe someone saw us together.”
“I don’t see why anyone would give a shit about that. People should mind their own business.”
“I know, but that’s the only thing I can think of. And I’m going to write the paper because there’s no way I can let word of this get out, okay? I just can’t. I don’t think that you want to let it get out, either.”
“But you were planning on not telling me?”
“I was considering it.”
“I’m glad you did. Tell me if you get any more of these letters, though. Write them this one paper if you feel you must, but don’t write any more papers. You’re just playing into their hand.”
Her eyes widened. “I sure as hell am going to write another paper if that’s what they want.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes. Because if word gets out about this, we could both be kicked out of the school. If I get expelled, I’m even more screwed than I was before. And you don’t want people to find out about us, do you?”
“I mean, it’s not my first choice, but fuck that, Tessa, that’s total bullshit if someone is essentially trying to blackmail you. No fucking way.”
“But there’s nothing you can do about it!” she said, and I could hear the anxiety in her voice. She took a deep breath. “What are you going to do about it?” she asked, her voice a little calmer.
What was I going to do about it? Well, fuck. I didn’t know. But this wasn’t one of those situations where you could just go along with what they wanted. That would be letting them win. Hell no.
“We’re going to figure something out,” I said. “I’m not exactly sure what.”
“That’s because I’ve just got to write the paper. And I mean, I guess so far as things go, it’s not the worst thing in the world. I can do it. It’s not like I haven’t written papers before.”
“Okay,” I said, “and then what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that’ll be it? Maybe they just need this paper, and once they have it, they’ll stop.”
“And are you saying that we should we stop doing this? Pretend the whole thing never even happened?”
“I thought about that, too,” she said. “And there is a part of me that thinks we should just stop. I knew it was wrong to begin with, and I chose to go ahead and do it anyway. And now someone’s found out, which is the last thing we wanted to have happen.” She paused and looked down at her hands.
Great. I tried not to let any emotion overtake my face; if she wanted to end things, I’d agree, even though I really didn’t want to.
“But . . .” She looked up, and there was a tiny smile curling the corners of her mouth. “They already know, whoever it is. Stopping now isn’t going to change that. I assume they must have some sort of proof, otherwise they wouldn’t be so forward about it. And I’ve actually been enjoying this more than I can remember enjoying anything.” She blushed. “I know it started as one thing, but it’s turned into something else; it’s turned into the one good thing I seem to have going for me at the moment, and I really can’t bear the idea of having to put a stop to it right now.”
I felt a smile spread across my face, even though the situation wasn’t that funny. I was pissed as hell that someone was trying to fuck with her like this, but I was relieved to hear her say that she wanted to keep going with it.
“I’m happy to hear you say that,” I said.