Forbidden First Times: A Contemporary Romance Collection

by Sofia T Summers

  Petra nodded again, but she didn’t look convinced.

  “Anyway, I was thinking that we could hang out,” I offered. “Today. You know – make it a girls’ day.”

  “That sounds nice,” Petra said after a few seconds. “But, um, I told Evan it would be cool if he came over later. You don’t mind, do you?”

  That was fast, I thought of their break-up. But this was just like Petra – on and off relationships that lasted until they didn’t – and I shook my head. Hanging out with her surely-immature boyfriend was the last thing I felt like doing, but I reminded myself that this was all about repairing our friendship ... and if this was how Petra felt like doing it, then I was there.

  “Of course, I don’t mind,” I said. “I was actually just thinking how I need to get to know the guy dating my roommate.”

  Petra smiled widely and blushed, one of the only times I’d ever seen her do so.

  “I don’t know that we’re there yet,” she said, tossing her long blonde hair. “But we’re talking again, so that’s something.”

  “It’ll be fun,” I said, almost more for my benefit than hers.

  “I hope so. Want to help me clean?”

  I glanced around. The apartment, which was usually spotless, was cluttered and dusty. With yet another pang of guilt, I realized that I’d been completely slacking off: normally, I was the one who ran the Swiffer along the ceiling to get rid of dust bunnies and cobwebs, the one who vacuumed, the one who wiped down the counter-tops in the kitchen.

  “I mean, you always do it,” Petra said hurriedly, mistaking my guilt for reluctance. “I don’t mind doing it, just tell me how you’d do it.”

  “No, no, I’ll help,” I told her. “Really. I think it’ll help take my mind off things.”

  “Like what?” Petra frowned, and instantly I knew that I’d said the wrong thing.

  “Nothing,” I lied.

  “Eden,” Petra said. “What’s going on?” I didn’t answer and she looked at me with concern. “Did something happen? Are you still mad about that jerk at that party we went to?”

  I shook my head quickly. “No, not at all. I forgot all about him,” I replied.

  At least that wasn’t a lie.

  “Is it your grades?” Petra asked. She flushed. “Or is it Professor Hot—”

  “No,” I said sharply.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “You don’t have to snap at me,” Petra said as we walked over to the kitchen closet. I took out the Swiffer and put on a clean sheet, then began rubbing it absentmindedly over the floor. I should have been grossed out – almost immediately, huge chunks of grey dust clung to the material – but instead I stared down at the floor, wondering just how absent my brain had been for weeks.

  I’d been obsessing over Will so much that I’d neglected basic things, like cooking and cleaning. In fact, the last time I’d had a hot meal had been at Golden Wok.

  I knew I was falling in love with him – but I was going to have to step back and take some time for myself, make sure that I was getting things done that needed doing.

  And as much as I didn’t want to keep lying to my roommate, I knew that sooner or later I was going to have to tell her something. The only problem with that was that I’d have to worry about the lies spiraling out of control. I couldn’t tell her that we’d had a falling out or that he’d embarrassed me in class or anything like that – she’d sympathize and then no doubt suggest writing a nasty Facebook post, when the last thing I needed to do right now was draw attention to myself.

  “Did he do something rude?” Petra asked finally. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me, Eden. But ... this feels kind of weird. Are we keeping secrets? We never keep secrets,” she continued, her blue eyes wide and open with earnestness. “That’s not something best friends do.”

  I swallowed hard, suddenly feeling sick. “I’ll be right back,” I said as I pushed the handle of the Swiffer into her waiting hands and excused myself to the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet, I leaned over and pressed my face into my naked thighs. Nausea rumbled inside of my belly and I wished that I hadn’t accepted a cup of coffee from Petra on an empty stomach.

  I felt like shit. It hadn’t even been a solid forty-eight hours since Will and I had slept together – if more time had elapsed, I felt so crummy that I would have assumed accidental pregnancy. As it was, I was on the Pill – but honestly, I forgot to take them just as often as I remembered. I’ll have to be better about that, I vowed as I took a deep breath and sat up.

  I’m an adult now.

  I have to be responsible.

  When I got out of the bathroom, Petra was using a wet Swiffer over the floors. She turned to me and gave me a small smile.

  “I’m really sorry, Ede,” she said. “I think I’m just anxious.”

  “About what?” I asked. Carefully picking my way across the wet floor, I hopped onto the bar stool and turned to face her.

  She sighed. “I think it’s just because of everything. The drama of being with Evan and then breaking up and getting back together, and being a senior, and feeling so freaked out about the future – like I have no idea what to do, you know?” Before I could answer, she kept going: “And like, now we’re fighting and everything feels so strange and weird, and I’m totally taking all of my stress out on you, and that’s not fair.”

  I couldn’t believe it – Petra was taking the blame for our lapse in friendship. I should have corrected her – god knows I felt guilty enough to do so – but I didn’t. Maybe it was possible that both of us were at fault. Maybe we were both so distracted by school and our love lives that this was totally normal, or something like that.

  While it was hard for me to picture anyone else as infatuated with someone as I was with Will Marks, I knew it had to be possible, or else the human race would have died out. Was Petra dealing with the same kind of confusion and arousal on a constant basis that I was?

  “It’s okay,” I said slowly. “I think we’ve both been really distracted.”

  She nodded.

  “You sure you don’t want to cancel on Evan?” I asked playfully. “Have a girls’ night like we used to do in the dorms?”

  Petra laughed once, but an almost sad smile came over her face. “Those days feel like so long ago,” she said. “I mean, it was years ago – but it feels so strange now.”

  “Mn.” It was all I could say. I still felt that weird blend of nostalgia and excitement and sadness all at once, and I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever get over it.

  By the time the apartment was clean, it was mid-afternoon. Petra and I ordered pizzas for dinner and put on 13 Going On 30 as we waited for Evan to show up. He was late – “he always is!” Petra said defensively – and by the time he arrived, the movie was almost over and we were on our second bottle of wine.

  Evan wasn’t much like I’d expected. While he had the charming frat-boy looks of golden blonde hair and green eyes, he was smart, even funny. The three of us sat around and talked as Petra poured more wine and served up pizza from cardboard boxes. The realization that I’d assumed Evan would be an idiot was yet another thing that made me feel guilty, almost as if I’d underestimated my roommate and her intelligence and the ability to choose a guy who wasn’t a total douchebag.

  It also made me wonder – just how much of my own beliefs had I been projecting on to others, even people like Petra, my supposed best friend?

  Maybe I’m not as different from everyone else as I always thought – the realization hit me when I was curled up on the couch, watching Petra and Evan flirt with each other.

  Somehow, it was humbling.

  But along with that thought came another one. If I wasn’t that different from my peers – and clearly, I wasn’t – where did that put me when it came to Professor Will Marks and our relationship? When I had been at his house before, most of my attention had been on him, of course. Still, there had been a lot of things I’d noticed that seemed to put a gulf between us, wider than I could have ever
imagined. I’d been so thrilled to move into my apartment with Petra – we’d saved up all of our money the summer after our junior year and gone to IKEA, happily plunking down our debit cards for plates and knives and potted plants.

  Professor Marks’ house hadn’t looked anything like my apartment. His luxe, leather furniture had stood out to me (and that blanket! I could still feel it brushing against my skin!). He’d had antique books on wooden shelves that had looked like they’d cost a fortune. Stickley lamps and a huge, expensive-looking flat screen TV mounted on the wall with no cords showing.

  He was an adult, a real adult. A man.

  And no matter how mature I had thought myself to be, it was clear that a lifetime of experience lay between us.

  I wondered if I’d ever be able to overcome it. Would graduating make me feel like an adult? What about getting a job, or even thinking about grad school – something I’d begun to contemplate lately?

  I’d never felt like such a kid before. Now, being involved with a man, I was starting to wonder if I wasn’t getting in over my head.

  It made me think back to what Professor Marks had said, the day I’d asked him why he had chosen to be a professor. He’d given me some canned reply about how he’d wanted to stay in a bubble forever and not have to deal with the real world.

  Maybe, just maybe, I was the exact same way.

  18

  Will – Sunday

  I spent all of Saturday lost in my office at home, poring over books that I hadn’t looked over since graduate school. Back when I had been an undergrad and even at the beginning of grad school, I’d thought that I had wanted to specialize in medieval literature – I’d even taken Old English and Latin as my languages and committed Beowulf to memory, just to impress my advisor.

  In the end, though, I’d been drawn to the modern classics. They had shaped my life in countless ways that I couldn’t even begin to explain, and reading Modernism had always made me feel less alone in the world. It was a movement of isolated, troubled protagonists and the upheaval of social mores.

  No wonder I was drawn to it.

  I would have bet money that I didn’t have on what I had really been doing: subconsciously trying to delve back into the material which had made me fall in love with the English language in the first place, to remind myself of just how much I had to lose. It wasn’t like any other job, where I could have quit and found employment within a couple of months, even if it wasn’t something I was crazy about.

  Academia was an entirely different animal, and I had to treat it as such. As a younger man, I had thought that the level of sacrifice involved wasn’t anything that could best me – that I would always care about my career more than anything else.

  And that’s still true, I told myself, more forcefully than was necessary. Of course, it is.

  It has to be true.

  Deep down, though, I was beginning to wonder. I had made such a habit of keeping other people at arm’s length that now, in my early middle-age, I didn’t have any close friends. Sure, there were friends from grad school who would have listened to any problems that would have arisen. And there was Peter, my TA, who clearly wanted to be pals outside of Oakbrook. But there was no one who I felt truly connected to, someone who I could count on for days of nothing – sitting around and shooting the shit and drinking whiskey.

  I began to wonder if I hadn’t missed out completely, or if I’d somehow done things backwards. Maybe I should have made an effort to be more social – to join a club or something, even if it was just a club full of guys where we’d sit around and drink and talk football.

  But I didn’t know shit about football, and I didn’t care to.

  There were some days when I felt so much older than I was, practically ancient, and Saturday had been one of them. After hours staring down at books and trying to remember what about academia had appealed to me in the first place, I went to bed. I didn’t even jack off – Eden’s face was still prominent in my mind, but I was determined to live like a monk where her beautiful body and mind were concerned. I was going to push her away and make her realize the truth: that any involvement with me beyond the most casual kind would make her regret the decision to stay.

  Sunday morning, I woke up feeling no better than I had the night before. Oakbrook seemed to suffocate me with every moment, and I realized that I had to get out of town, if only for the day. The weather outside was cold and blustery, a perfect match for my mood, and I drove out of town, past the brewpub, past the remote shopping centers, until I was on the country roads. Instead of going into the mountains, I turned onto the highway and drove south, in the direction of New York. With every second I was going further and further away from Eden, and it didn’t feel as good as I thought it would.

  I started thinking about her, as I often did. What she was doing (and what she was wearing). What she was thinking. I wouldn’t see her until Tuesday, and I found myself longing for the sight of her round cheeks and big brown eyes. The gleam of innocence and wit that clung to her like perfume.

  God, I was a fucking weak man. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and turned off the highway, pulling into the parking lot of a steakhouse. I realized in that moment that I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday, and my stomach growled as I walked inside and asked for a table.

  “Just you?” The host asked, sounding bored.

  “Yes,” I said stiffly. “It’s just me.”

  “Do you just want to sit at the bar? We’re kind of filling up,” the host said as he narrowed his eyes at me. “I mean, if you’re not expecting anyone else to join you.”

  I could have strangled the pimply, gangly kid as he led me to the bar where I sat in a leather-backed stool and ordered a whiskey neat. By the time my drink came, though, I was starting to relax. The alcohol took a warm, familiar hold on my brain. And the bar was pleasant – there was a fireplace in the corner and the lighting was dim. Forced intimacy, sure, and probably a way for the restaurant and bar to charge absurd prices, but I didn’t mind.

  At least this wasn’t the kind of place where I had to face the possibility of running into Oakbrook students. The cheapest steak on the menu was thirty-five dollars, and that was for a sirloin – back when I had been an undergrad, thirty-five dollars had been the money I spent on groceries in two weeks.

  I sipped my whiskey and ordered dinner – a hangar steak, rare, with Béarnaise sauce and a baked potato and green beans – and leaned back against the bar stool, waiting casually for it to arrive. I wasn’t in a hurry and neither were the staff, which didn’t bother me.

  If anything, it merely reinforced the decision I’d made to get away for a few hours, and how it was turning out to be a therapeutic one. This was something I should do on a regular basis, I decided. It wasn’t like I was hurting for money – even my mortgage was far lower than I’d initially expected it to be.

  My dinner arrived and I finished my first glass of whiskey and ordered another. I didn’t want to drink enough to impair my ability to drive, or anything like that, but I wanted to relax. The scent of whiskey and steak combined with the sound of the fire crackling in the background was helping a lot. Who needs Xanax when you have this, I thought as I cut a piece of steak and took a bite.

  “Come here often?”

  The female voice jarred me and I turned to the side just in time to see a woman around my age slide into the stool next to mine. She was richly dressed in a leather coat with fur trim around the hood and her brown hair was tastefully streaked with blonde. She wore little makeup, but she had a stunning profile that reminded me of a vintage cameo.

  “No,” I said. The reply sounded curter than I’d intended, but she smiled all the same.

  “Me, neither,” she said. Her voice was dark and deep and her tone bordered on flirtatious as she raised an eyebrow at me.

  I cleared my throat and kept eating, ignoring the woman even though I felt her eyes boring two hot holes into my arm.

  What was wrong with me? Months
ago, I would have been incredibly interested – maybe even infatuated – with this stranger. She was gorgeous and she spoke like she was confident, which was something that had always turned me on like nothing else.

  Deep down, I knew why.

  It was all because of Eden.

  The thought was almost disheartening. If I was so obsessed with a twenty-one-year-old girl, who was young enough to be my daughter, how the fuck was I going to manage to shake said obsession?

  The old me would have eagerly tested the waters with another woman or six to find out if that did the trick. But even as I looked at my new companion and tried to work up the urge to tangle my fingers in her hair and pull her face close to mine, nothing happened. My cock stayed limp in my pants and my heart beat at the regular slow, steady speed it always did whenever Eden Cooper wasn’t around.

  “You looked like you could use some company,” the woman said, sounding slightly less confident than before. I wagered a guess that she wasn’t used to men ignoring her and the thought was almost enough to make me chuckle with irony.

  “I’m fine,” I said coolly.

  “You live around here?” Without waiting for an answer, she kept talking: “I have a little condo in the woods. It’s beautiful when it snows.” She raised an eyebrow at me and took a sip from her glass of red wine. “It’s supposed to snow tonight. And I have a fireplace. Very sensual,” she added.

  “I’m sure,” I told her. I took another bite of my steak.

  “Would you like to see it?”

  I turned to her. “No,” I told her. “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  She licked her lower lip but thankfully didn’t pout. “And why is that? I don’t see a wedding ring – not that all men wear them, of course,” she replied.

  “I’m not married,” I said. “I’m just not interested in you.”

  She blinked. That remark had been cold, even for me, and I watched emotions cross her eyes. She opened her mouth to try again, then thought the better of it and got to her feet with her wine glass in one hand.