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?