Chapter 14
Back when Nick was still married, he loved his weeknight routines.
He’d finish work a little earlier than Kathryn, settling into the kitchen and picking out a record, something he knew his wife liked—Ziggy Stardust, Beauty and the Beat, anything Nina Simone.
Kathryn would get home from her marketing job, put her arms around him, and kiss him on the shoulder blade.
“What are we making?” she’d ask, dipping her finger into marinara sauce before getting out a cutting board and starting on the salad.
Dinner, dishes, an episode of whichever critically acclaimed drama they were making their way through.
Maybe it was the most ordinary of ways to spend their weeknights, but it was comfort and safety and joy, and as much as Nick liked his job, he always looked forward to coming home.
Then she started getting home later and later.
Until one evening, when he innocently asked if she’d had a lot of work to finish up, she confessed that no, she hadn’t.
She’d been having drinks with a coworker, and drinks had turned into dinner, had turned into feelings she hadn’t expected, though she’d been trying her best to ignore them for months.
“I think I’m in love with him,” Kathryn said, eyes full of tears. Nina Simone sang innuendos about sugar and sweetness, and Nick felt his whole world shatter around him.
The Nina Simone records were the first ones he donated to Goodwill.
The devastation had been twofold. How had he allowed it to get to this point, where Kathryn didn’t just have a crush but fully loved someone else? And how had he not noticed? They were supposed to know each other better than anyone else. Shouldn’t he have realized she was drifting?
A year later, and he still can’t forgive himself for being the kind of person who gets left like that.
Lexi plants a hand on his shoulder. “Still in your therapist’s office?” she asks gently.
Nick runs a hand down his face, stretches out his legs on the chaise longue. They’re in the backyard next to the pool, Audrey at the barbecue firing up another couple hot dogs. Lexi has some paperwork in her lap, and Nick is dangerously close to his wallowing limit.
He did have therapy this afternoon after classes, where his therapist, Isabel, urged him to consider trying to date again.
He wants to know when it stops feeling awkward, two strangers agreeing to meet up to see if they like each other enough to do it again.
Or if it’s always like that, and he’ll just have to get used to it.
What he can’t get past, really, is the overwhelm of starting over. No inside jokes or years of shared memory. Unpacking the ugly bits of your life to someone new, hoping they won’t change their opinion of you.
At least he’s no longer worried about running into Kathryn with her new boyfriend.
They got that out of the way pretty quickly, their carts almost colliding in the pasta aisle of Trader Joe’s.
Awkward introductions, Kathryn’s face turning the color of the roasted red pepper pesto.
Some bonus self-loathing to take home with his groceries.
“I’m good,” he promises his sister, which isn’t unlike what he promised Isabel.
He wants so badly to be the optimist, to keep any lingering pain from breaking through, even though Lexi is the last person who’d judge him.
And he loves these weeknight routines too, the evenings with his family.
He just wishes he could see what’s beyond them.
What his life might look like once he has a place of his own.
Ever since Monday, Nick’s been rattled. One thing is clear that he couldn’t see in the lust haze of his office: it can’t happen again. And that’s why he hasn’t mentioned it to his therapist or his sister. Because it did not—cannot—mean anything.
God, it was like someone else had gained control of his body.
He still can’t process what the hell actually happened, and he really can’t let himself process how good any of it felt.
Absolutely not. He thought his morals were ironclad, but evidently all it took was I think I make you flustered to topple them. And send him into an ethical panic.
Their message chain has gone silent, and he misses that boost of oxytocin her texts gave him. Which makes him unsure if he genuinely likes her, or if he was rebounding in the most stereotypical way. A younger girl, and a forbidden one at that.
Sure, Behavior and the Brain has been a bit uncomfortable, the two of them avoiding eye contact, Ramona arriving the moment class starts and leaving the second it ends. But that’s only fifty minutes, three times a week. He can handle that.
Then there is the question of her panties.
Throwing them away seemed wrong—that tiny scrap of silk and lace probably cost more than the monthly mortgage on his old house.
He can think of a thousand obscene things to do with them, and maybe he’d be less tightly wound if he did two or three, but the fact of the matter remains: she is his student.
Perhaps he had a moment of weakness and indulged a fantasy, but he’s stronger now.
Even if he can still feel her, warm and trembling in his hands.
But every time he imagines what could have happened if someone had opened the door…
In the end, he tucks Ramona’s panties in the back of his dresser and tries his best to forget about them.
—
Nick waves hello to the librarian in the life sciences department.
“Morning, Sara!” he calls out, relieved to be back to his usual sunshiny self.
His Psychology of Sleep students were on it today, and that felt amazing.
Plus, he loves this library, with its endearingly retro carpeting that hasn’t been updated since the ’90s and windows that look out onto the botanical garden. Always a place of solace.
Sara waves back, and he wanders the aisles searching for a book on sleep, humming a Velvet Underground song. Yesterday was just a temporary lapse back into gloom.
“Oh—sorry,” a female voice says when she bumps into him from behind, and all that solace twists itself into anxiety.
As forcefully as he can, he pushes it away. Optimism, he reminds himself.
“Wilder! Hello,” he says, probably too enthusiastically. Are his chinos wrinkled? Did he miss any spots while shaving? “What are you doing here? You don’t have class on Thursdays, do you?”
“Looking for a book for my marine biology paper. I heard this rumor that libraries are these cool places where they just let you borrow the books for free?”
Ramona runs a hand through her hair, and he wishes he didn’t remember how soft it is. It’s the first time they’ve been truly face-to-face since Monday, and she is so stunningly high-definition, proof that his memories haven’t been able to do her justice.
How is she so…calm? Normal? Or maybe she’s just an expert at hiding it, the way he really, really hopes he is.
She reaches out to graze the top book on his stack. “Looks like a real page-turner.”
“It has its moments,” Nick says.
“Guess I’ll have to wait until I’m in one of your advanced classes to find out. If you let me pass this one, that is.”
It must be a skill, really, for 50 percent of what she says to come out sounding flirtatious. He’s not sure if she’s doing it intentionally.
“I’m glad I ran into you, actually,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck with his free hand. “I’ve been wanting to talk, but…”
“Class isn’t the appropriate place and we both know what happened in the office last time?”
A rough laugh. “Something like that.” Suddenly he’s unsure how to properly carry these books. In one hand, casually hanging in front of his body? Tucked under his arm? Why does this girl make him so infinitely useless?
He’s aware of her watching him as he shifts his books from one arm to the other. He should be in control here. Campus is his domain.
A few students at a nearby table have been eyeing her, stealing glances between pages of their textbooks.
So he reaches for her elbow, gently guiding her down the next aisle and around the corner.
Maybe the library isn’t the appropriate place for this talk either, but he feels better having it in such a public location.
More certain that he won’t devolve into an overly hormonal ape just because of the way she smirks at him.
“Look—I don’t know what got into me,” he says, keeping his voice low. “And it’s not that I didn’t…have a good time.” Everything in his brain shouts that he’s a fucking liar. Good time could describe his last trip to the dentist.
Ramona presses her lips together, like she’s trying to hold back laughter at his choice of words.
“I had a good time too. In case that wasn’t obvious.
” There’s almost a thread of shyness in the way she says it.
I’m not very easy—that’s what it sounds like, especially in this husky timbre of her voice.
The way she mixes shyness and confidence, uncertainty and power, shouldn’t destabilize him like this.
“I—I got that. A mutually good time.” She’s still too close to him. Close enough for him to see those three freckles on the side of her mouth. The hollow of her throat, where he kissed her right before she—
“Well. Not completely mutual,” she says, and the way his body reacts to that is entirely inappropriate for a library.
“Regardless,” he says, intent on soldiering through. “It was unprofessional. I’m your teacher, and I’m much older than you…I should have exhibited better judgment.”
Exhibited better judgment. He doesn’t talk like this, and yet he’s determined to bring an air of propriety he did not demonstrate on Monday.
She cocks an eyebrow. “What, thirty-two? Thirty-three?”
“Thirty-six. Guess that wasn’t on my UCLA profile. I’m sorry.”
“You’re always apologizing to me. For the texting, and for what happened in your office…” She folds her arms over her chest, and he can’t quite interpret how she feels about his age. “And now for being born in 1990, I guess.”
“Eighty-nine.”