Chapter 11
The first morningof the first term goes as expected—a flurry of unfamiliar faces, like the past two weeks, but this time, there’s a comfort in knowing that we’ll be seeing these same people every day for the next five weeks.
The students are full of questions, and by the lunch break, I’m exhausted. I’m locking my office door when someone calls my name. Down the hall, Vincente approaches.
“Good morning?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say with a shrug, and we walk down the hall together. “Want to grab lunch?” I offer.
“Yes. We need to talk.”
That doesn’t sound ominous at all.
There’s a bar down the street from the university that we frequent. It’s a former cellar, popular with tourists and partiers later in the evening, but today it’s still early, so we have our pick of tables. We order wine and sit down under the arched brick ceiling.
Vincente gets right to the point. “You’ll never guess who’s in my Managerial Economics lecture.”
I school my face blank and sip my wine, a robust house red.
Vincente’s eyebrows raise. “You already know,” he accuses.
Damn it. I must be losing my touch. I used to negotiate employee contracts and mergers without so much as a flinch, but somehow, I’ve given myself away to Vincente?
My father would be so disappointed.
“You’re using that same face as when I told you the police arrested my son.” He leans in, resting his forearms on the table next to his forgotten glass of wine. “So, you know the woman you took home from the bar a couple of weeks ago is in our program?”
“Yes,” I admit. “I saw her the first day.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” Hurt flashes in a quick frown across his face.
“What is there to tell?” I ask, spreading my hands wide. “It was a coincidence, and nothing will come of it.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“Yes, briefly.” I should tell him she lives in my same building so that even if she wasn’t in any of my lectures, I’ll be running into her all year long. But I don’t. I don’t want to make this a bigger deal than it is; I don’t want to talk about all the things I’ve learned about her and scrutinize any future interactions I have with her.
Vincente hesitates before carefully saying, “You know that even though she’s older than most of our students, it would still be inappropriate to have a relationship with her?”
“Yes, of course. I said nothing is happening, didn’t I?”
Vincente leans back into the booth and sips at his wine. “Something already happened, Santo.”
He glares at me.
“I cannot undo the past,” I point out, which Vincente grudgingly accepts. We talk about other things—the caliber of students and how the new director is doing—and after our glasses are empty and our bellies full, we head back to the university. I’m already bracing myself—my last course of the day has one Emma Chance on the roster.