The Love of Her Lives: A BRAND NEW unforgettable and utterly emotional summer romance (Must-read Rom

Mid-November, ten years ago

I twisted in my white university-issue bedsheets, which were damp from our perspiration. I unstuck the sheet from my bare thigh, and draped my leg over his, pushing my torso into the side of his body. I rested my head on his broad shoulder and traced a fingernail delicately down the smattering of hair over his chest.

“Picking out the grays, are we?” he muttered into my hair, a smile in his voice.

I lifted my face to his. “Far too many to pick out, unfortunately.” I touched my lips to his mouth, briefly. “But fortunately, I like my men older.”

“Hey,” Rufus said with a laugh, feigning offense. “I’m only thirty-seven. I’m not that old.”

“Well, I’ve just turned twenty, so technically you could be my fa—”

Rufus shut me up with a kiss. “Don’t say it. Or if you do, you’ll get a paternal spanking. I can be very strict in my punishments. Just ask the drama group.”

I pulled back to grin at him. “I don’t think I’d mind that kind of punishment at all.”

He laughed, but untangled himself from my embrace to sit up on my tiny twin bed. Thank God I’d gotten a single room again this year. It would’ve been almost impossible to maintain our secret relationship if I’d been sharing.

Well, not that it was exactly a relationship. Not while he was still living with the beautiful philosophy professor. Amy.

But I got it. Rufus and Amy had been together forever, over a decade, and he couldn’t leave her — she needed him. Given all her mental health problems.

Plus, considering relationships between students and professors were very much frowned upon, it’s not like we wouldn’t have had to be secretive anyways.

“I have to go,” Rufus said, swinging his bare legs off the bed and pulling his boxers and black pants over his pale skin. “If I stay any longer, everyone will be back from the Black Friday party and I won’t be able to escape without being spotted.”

What he didn’t add, I silently observed, was that Amy would be expecting him home before midnight, knowing he was at a student party. Still, it wasn’t even eleven p.m. yet.

He pulled on the black sweater he’d been wearing for the residence party, as one of only a handful of faculty considered cool enough to be invited to the all-black theme party. It wasn’t actually Black Friday today — that was two weeks away — but as everyone would be home for Thanksgiving on the day, the party was traditionally held in mid-November instead. Just for the hell of it.

Everyone was still in the downstairs lounge, with not a soul to be seen in my fifth-floor corridor as I stuck my head out of the door, pulling a robe tightly around me. “Coast’s clear,” I told Rufus as he gathered his winter coat. He gave me a quick, slightly apologetic kiss on the cheek, muttered, “I’ll text you,” and slipped quickly across the hallway into the stairwell that nobody ever used except in fire drills. Lucky my room was right there, otherwise he’d be taking a huge risk if he had to navigate even a short length of the residence corridor. There would be serious questions asked if he was discovered upstairs. It was dubious enough that he was attending a student party — but at least that could be explained away with a laugh.

I wondered, not for the first time, whether Rufus had wielded any influence on my room placement this fall semester. He was pretty friendly with Ted in housing services, after all. But surely he wouldn’t have exposed his motives in that way? Maybe it was just luck.

Still, despite my room’s convenient exit route, we’d inevitably been taking massive risks ever since we’d started sleeping together in the spring semester. There were always just so many damn people around.

Our affair had started with a flirtation at a party before my freshman-year winter holidays, when he’d finally noticed me. The Notables had been invited to join the theater department’s lavish festive gathering, to entertain students and faculty for an hour or so with holiday songs, in exchange for access to what was widely acknowledged as one of the best parties on campus. It was held on stage after the drama group’s closing performance of It’s A Wonderful Life, and it was truly like having a Christmas party in George Bailey’s Bedford Falls home, with the Notables singing carols from the steps of the wide, garlanded staircase.

Rufus, leaning against the fireplace mantel like the master of the house, had grinned up at me as we sang, not once taking his eyes off me. Of course, his partner Amy wasn’t there. Amy seemed to never be at these kinds of events, despite Rufus being at the very center of the university’s theater galaxy.

After we’d all drank a lot of mulled wine, he’d approached me in the corner between the enormous Christmas tree and the darkness of the wings. We’d been so deep in conversation about music and movies, we hadn’t even noticed the party winding down. Eventually, after a few raised eyebrows, I had to accept a friend’s offer of a ride home to my dorm. There were only a handful of people left, it was snowing outside, and it would have looked suspicious if I hadn’t accepted.

But the spark had been ignited, and I knew it wouldn’t take much to start the flame. I’d known the danger, how utterly dumb I was being, but still I’d encouraged it. With the Notables now honorary members of the theater department, our singing group was regularly invited to the larger events. Each time, Rufus and I made eye contact and flirted, subtly but relentlessly, and eventually there was another post-show party at the theater, just before spring break.

This time, after a lot of drinks and even more flirting, I’d stayed behind with Rufus, slipping into the wings with him as the last partygoers gathered themselves and arranged rides to residences. The excuse was that he’d give me a ride home, but we both knew that there was more to it. As Rufus was shutting the theater down, I waited alone on the stage, which this time was barren save for some large, plain blocks that had variously served as beds, tables, and desks in the minimalist play that had just closed.

Rufus had left a single spotlight on me, before he joined me on the stage, silently unbuttoned my dress, wordlessly removed my lace underwear, and fucked me senseless on the hard fiberglass surface.

Ting-ta-ding.

I was brought back to the present with the sound of a text. I closed my dorm-room door, tugged my robe belt into a loop, and flipped my phone open.

Aww. He was missing me already.

But it was from Bonnie.

Where RU? You disappeared and it’s like Night of the Living Fucking Dead in here with everyone all in black and drunk as hell. You didn’t go to bed already?

Sorry, Bon. I’d had too much tequila and wasn’t having fun anymore. Looked for you to tell you but couldn’t see you. Catch you for breakfast. Try to have fun! Night xoxo

That part about looking for her before leaving wasn’t true, of course. Rufus and I had deliberately, separately, slipped away around ten p.m. to go up to my room.

I hated lying to Bonnie. Absolutely hated it. But I was giving her the gift of plausible deniability. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.

It didn’t make me feel any better.

* * *

After the Black Friday party, I only had to wait a week before the next social event at which I knew Rufus would be there. I’d washed and blow-dried my dark hair until it shone, spritzed on some light fragrance — I had to smell great, but didn’t want to be trying too hard — and donned a deep blue sweater that was a little tighter than usual. Kinda sexy, but not too much for a night of casual drinks after a rehearsal.

The Notables wouldn’t normally be invited to random post-rehearsal drinks, given we weren’t performing in this year’s holiday show, a period murder mystery. But the invitation, unexpectedly, had come from Ben — to both me and Bonnie.

Having taken a year after graduating to write a play, Ben had persuaded his former professor Rufus to allow him to intern as a stage manager for a year, and Rufus had promised to consider Ben’s play for production.

Which meant that Ben was now around for all the theater group stuff.

Great, right? After all, I adored Ben. I adored the whole Mason family.

But I didn’t know how to feel about Ben being around Rufus so much, and attending the parties. I felt like Ben would... what? Smell me on Rufus?

It turned my stomach to think of Ben, and by extension, Bonnie, finding out about our affair.

Bonnie and I were already on our third margaritas in the bar — our fake IDs doing an effective job of presenting us as a year older than we really were — by the time the cast and crew showed up at 9:30. Ben immediately sat beside us, giving both me and his sister a warm hug and enthusiastically introducing Bonnie, who hadn’t hung out with the drama crew before, to all his friends.

That was one of the things that was great about Ben. No pretense of playing it cool, of not adoring his sister. He was so sweet.

Rufus, devastatingly handsome in a turtleneck sweater, his salt-n-pepper hair a little longer and curlier than usual, showed up as one of the last of the group — much to my dismay. All the seats near me and Bonnie were now taken, which meant I’d have a hard time getting any conversation with him tonight. Unless I got up to go to the restroom, then managed to “lose” my current seat to someone else, and sat near him instead...

Then I noticed the redhead he’d walked in with wasn’t a cast member. It was his partner, Amy, the gorgeous but — according to Rufus — severely depressed philosophy professor.

Amy never came to these social things. What was she doing here?

He had his arm around her waist, and was murmuring something in her ear as they entered and looked around the bar for a seat. Amy looked up at him with clear, shining eyes, and he beamed back at her.

Shit.

Rufus resumed scanning the room, and eventually locked eyes with me. His expression visibly dropped. He clearly hadn’t been expecting to see me there. He gave me an unreadable expression, just for a moment, then ushered his partner to the other end of the long table. He sat on the same side as me, on the banquette facing the room, so I couldn’t even catch his eye again.

A clenched ball of something dark lodged in my stomach. This is what it felt like to have an affair, to be lying to everyone around you, and for your lover to be lying to his partner. It was the first time I’d really felt it.

I stayed quiet the rest of the evening, hating being there, but for some reason not wanting to leave. Maybe because I didn’t want to let Rufus off the hook, make it easy for him.

And because I ached for him. For his attention. A secret smile, even just a flirtatious glance. I’d gotten so used to him making me feel like I was the only woman in the room, like he couldn’t take his eyes off me, no matter how wrong it might be. Now I felt invisible, a ghost.

I had to communicate with him somehow. But a visit to the restroom, including some prolonged hovering near the doorway and pointed gazes in his direction while I was standing chatting with someone else, yielded no results.

On my return, I sat back down at the table, frustratedly downing my fourth drink way too fast. Ben was mid-flow in a story about a show he’d been in as an undergrad, with several female cast members hanging on his every word. He seemed to be enjoying himself. Bonnie, more observant, gave me a puzzled look, but turned back to her conversation with the lighting guy.

It was no use — I’d have to text Rufus.

I tried to play it cool.

Hey handsome. Are you ignoring me? I hope not!! Meet me by the accessible restroom at exactly 10:30. I’ll go wait there a few minutes earlier. ;) M xox

No reply.

But then, maybe he couldn’t reply, with her right there. He’d probably just say nothing and come to the bathroom.

At 10:27, I excused myself again and headed for the restrooms. I fixed my lip gloss in the women’s mirror, then stepped back out into the corridor next to the accessible washroom. But 10:30 came and went, according to the clock on the wall, as did 10:35. I’d foolishly left my phone on the table, so I couldn’t send another text to see where he was. I waited ten full minutes before I could no longer reasonably stay hanging out suspiciously in the restroom corridor, and returned to the table. By this point, I was almost shaking with frustration and hurt.

I sat heavily, and slurped down the last of my drink. Bonnie and Ben, sitting opposite me, were now the only ones left on our section of the table.

Why were they staring at me like that?

Ben broke the silence.

“You got a couple of texts.”

Oh shit.

My flip phone was open on the table. Open to the text messages, displayed in big, easy-to-read type for all to see.

“We didn’t mean to look,” said Bonnie, her expression severe, “but it was doing that annoying beeping and I thought it might be important.”

I glanced down at my phone. Two replies had come in since I’d been away from the table.

RUFUS CELL [10:29PM]

So sorry, sexy girl. You know I can’t with Amy here. I’ll make it up to you, I swear. Let’s meet up off campus sometime soon. A whole night in a city hotel, just us. I’ll make an excuse to be away. Just can’t talk tonight.

RUFUS CELL [10:32PM]

Miss you and your sweet pussy. You know I’m crazy about you, right? xo

Fuuuccckkk.

I couldn’t even look up from my phone at my two most important people, who were silently bearing down the harshest imaginable judgment on me. I shook my head and stared at the cardboard coaster on the table instead.

“Life’s Good on Bright Side!” the coaster’s logo mocked, its happy, illustrated couple sipping on Bright Side coolers on some tropical beach. I picked at its corner with my fingernail, separating the damp fibers.

“I’m so sorry,” I finally said, my voice tiny.

Bonnie sat back in her chair with an audible sigh. “Seriously, Mill? A professor? And a married one at that? What the hell are you—”

“He’s not married,” I objected, pathetically. “Just... you know. Cohabiting.”

“Oh. Well.” Bonnie had a mean, sarcastic tone I hadn’t heard before. “That’s totally fine, then.”

“I’m gonna fucking kill him.” Ben’s voice was uncharacteristically dark. I looked up at him, but he was glaring furiously down the long table at Rufus, who was laughing loudly.

I reached my hand out toward Ben, but he ignored me. “Please. Don’t do anything, or say anything. Let’s just go, okay? I’ve had too much to drink anyways. Take me and Bon back to the dorm?”

Ben finally turned to me, an unrecognizable fire in his hazel eyes. His gaze met mine, and the fire smoldered a little. “He’s an asshole. And you’re a goddamn idiot.”

“I know.” I shook my head, and a tear dropped unexpectedly from the corner of my eye. I brushed it rapidly away and rose, grabbing my winter coat. “I know. Let’s go.”

I gave Rufus a backwards glance as we left the bar, and he graced me with a flash of a look in return. A tiny, sheepish, fraction of an apology.

We were silent on the return back to the dorms, with me in the back of Ben’s car, no words coming to me that wouldn’t make this situation worse. It had never been awkward to be in their company before.

Had I just screwed up my best friendships ever?

In the rearview mirror, Ben scowled as he pulled up outside our residence. I opened the door to the frigid November night and got out without a goodbye, as Bonnie got out of the passenger seat. As I was closing the door, he said one thing.

“Swear you’ll end it.”

The door slammed before I could even respond. Ben drove off, the exhaust pushing great plumes of steam in the night air, leaving me and my best friend in a deep, heavy silence.