by Rachel Ember
Emile sat on a very uncomfortable silk-upholstered couch, and Ben took the opposite chair. At least three clocks were ticking audibly from various places in the house. “Whatever’s the matter?” Ben asked, leaning toward Emile over his knees.
“I need to disclose a relationship with a student,” Emile said before he could lose his nerve. “And, as you’re my supervisor, I’m making this disclosure directly to you.”
If he’d been a little less tense, Emile might have been amused by the complicated expressions that shifted over Ben’s face in turn, as though he couldn’t decide whether to be primarily shocked, angered, or disbelieving. Then, his eyes widened marginally as he reached a realization.
“That young athlete from your office,” he said. “The blond.”
Emile sat back against the couch. “Yes.”
Ben shook his head slowly. “You said he was in one of your classes. Was that true?” When Emile nodded, Ben sighed and leaned over his steepled fingers until Emile couldn’t see his expression. “Emile, Emile. You’re putting me in a very difficult position.”
“I know,” Emile said evenly, “and that’s why I’m telling you, and not Irina.”
Ben’s head snapped up, his eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “What do you mean?”
“She would make a formal record of my admission, probably with written discipline. She’d be sure campus affairs knew, and that they interviewed Jay—that is, the student.”
“That would be the beginning of it,” Ben agreed grimly. “But, Emile, don’t you understand that I have no choice but to do the same?”
“You do have a choice,” Emile said, holding his eyes. “Just like I had a choice about whether or not to tell anyone about Seth. Just as I chose not to tell a soul just how long we’d already been seeing each other before you disclosed our relationship.”
Ben’s jaw went taut. “You’re blackmailing me.” He sounded incredulous.
“No,” Emile said immediately, “I’m just asking you for discretion.”
Ben sat back again and stared at the wall past Emile for several seconds, and then he gave a sharp, begrudging nod. “Fine. You’ll have it.”
“And,” Emile went on, “when I get home tonight, I’m going to submit my disclosure in writing, in your faculty drop-box. That way, there will be no question that I properly disclosed the relationship to you, and that you were aware. Just in case there should ever be any confusion in the future.” That part had been Oliver’s idea. Sometimes, the way his lawyer-brain worked came in handy instead of just being vexing.
The ruddy color in Ben’s cheeks flushed darker. “Excellent,” he said tightly. “Will that be all, Professor Mendes?”
Emile stood with a plastic smile. “Yes, thank you.”
They’d almost reached the door, which Emile was eager to escape through, when Ben spoke again. “I got a call from a friend at Emory. Apparently, you made quite the splash at your conference.”
Emile hesitated on the step and looked over his shoulder. “Is that what they said?”
Ben nodded and folded his arms. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they made you an offer. Chauncey Donnelly is retiring, I hear.”
Emile strived not to react visibly. “I hadn’t heard.” Half-true, but for some reason, the half-lie didn’t bother him much. “Good night.”
Ben stepped back. “Good night.” He pulled the door closed with a snap, and Emile headed back to his car. He wished he could crawl into bed with Jay, but there were several things he still had to do before he could—hopefully—earn back that privilege.
Seventeen
Jay
November
“Honey,” his mother said from her side of the Skype call on Monday night, peering into the screen like she was searching what she could see of the dorm room around Jay. “Is your… roommate… there?”
“Eric is not here,” he assured her.
“Well, I’m glad you have some privacy so that you can relax,” she murmured. “You could apply for a change of roommate for next semester, you know. Your dad looked it up.”
Beside her in the camera frame, Jay’s dad just smiled and shook his head.
“I don’t need another roommate. It could be worse, you know.” He grimaced. “Wyatt, on the team? He said he doesn’t think his roommate has actually done any laundry. Like, ever.”
They shuddered, and Jay nodded emphatically.
“See? It could be worse. Anyway, how are you guys?”
“Well, this morning I found a tarantula in the shower,” his mom deadpanned, and his father laughed.
“It was an arachnid of moderate size. Not a tarantula.”
“‘Moderate size!’” she scoffed.
“It was small enough to escape down the drain.”
“Jesus, don’t remind me that it’s still at large.”
His dad grinned at Jay. “I tried to be the hero, but by the time I got the drain cover off, the little fella was long gone. How’s your arm, buddy?”
“It’s okay. I had physical therapy today.”
“Already?” his dad sounded surprised.
“Yeah, when I called to schedule it, they’d had a surprise opening. I was pretty good.” In fact, Jay had really hit it off with his physical therapist, a young woman with the most impressively toned biceps he’d ever seen on either man or woman. He’d stayed afterward for twenty minutes, too, quizzing his therapist on how she’d gotten into her field. The more he’d talked to her, the more interested he’d gotten. It was the first time he could remember being really curious about someone’s job, but he wasn’t ready to say anything to his parents. He didn’t want them to get their hopes up too high that he might have finally gained some kind of academic direction. He had, however, skimmed Walland’s course catalogue’s Kinesiology pages.
Anything to keep his mind off the fact that Emile still hadn’t called.
Jay had almost called and texted Emile at least a dozen times, but he’d stopped himself each time, feeling a flare of anger he didn’t trust not to burn out of control if he got in touch with Emile and the first words out of Emile’s mouth didn’t express at least some regret. Though in the middle of their fight, Jay had just been shocked and worried, the more time went by, the more he felt angry, too. He hadn’t deserved to be the brunt of Emile’s frustration, and he felt like Emile should be the one to reach out now.
But if he didn’t call soon, Jay might lose his resolve and be the first to do it anyway.
“You sure you’re okay, baby?” his mom asked, frowning. “You seemed so happy right before your game, and even in the hospital.”
Nodding, his dad agreed, “Yeah, you do look a little down, Jay. Boy trouble?”
Jay was startled into glancing straight into the camera for a second, and just like that, he’d given himself away. Too late, he hastened to say, “No.”
But his mother had already clapped a hand over her mouth, and his dad was looking somewhere between excited and sympathetic. “You didn’t mention anyone. Did you get in a fight?”
His mother’s hand flew from her mouth so that she could join the interrogation. “How did you meet him? What did you fight about?”
Jay considered them. He’d never lied to them before, which he realized made him a total loser by teenage standards, but he’d never felt he had to. And to start doing so now, about something he was the opposite of ashamed about and when he was supposed to be a man, not a kid anymore, felt wrong.
“I didn’t mention him because it’s really new. And… complicated. We did get in a fight, yeah. About, um, the complications.” Jay swallowed. “He’s a professor here at Walland. So. Yeah.”
They stared at him without moving for so long, he thought the screen had frozen.
Then, his dad’s smile turned up, and it was, of all things, fond. “You’ve always been such a serious kid. It shouldn’t surprise us that you’d go for an older guy.”
His mother looked more unsure—which was funny, because if anything Jay woul
d have expected her to be the one to take all of this less seriously. More so than his dad, she’d always been almost painfully casual about the subject of sex and relationships, like she was determined that Jay never find any mystery in it at all.
His dad nudged his shoulder against hers. “Honey.”
She blinked, glanced at his father with a narrow-eyed expression that Jay couldn’t remember ever seeing between them before, and then sighed and nodded. “Your dad’s right. We can trust you not to let anyone make you do things you don’t want to do. You’re not a kid anymore.” She swallowed, and Jay was dismayed to see a suggestion of tears in her eyes. She inhaled hard and blinked until she seemed to stave off any urge to cry. “But you’ll always be my kid,” she added sharply, “so that guy had better not fuck with you, or I’ll…” she trailed off while making a vague gesture.
“Sue him,” Jay’s dad supplied helpfully.
“I was going to go with murder,” she muttered, but she was smiling a little as Jay’s dad put an arm around her waist.
“Stick to your strengths, my love,” his dad advised, kissing the top of her head. “You’re barely a match for a spider.”
Emile’s text came later, when Jay was lying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling and playing a game where he tried to guess how late Eric would get back to the dorm and whether or not his clothes would be conspicuously mussed, or even more conspicuously immaculate, like he’d changed before coming home.
Jay didn’t really think he was a serial killer, but now that his mother had planted the seed, he hadn’t been able to fully let it go.
When his phone lit up with the notification, Jay immediately sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed so that he could hold the phone steady in front of his face with both hands.
I know it’s late. Could we meet anyway?
Jay sent his answer immediately. Yes. Your place?
Actually, came Emile’s reply, Godot and I are close to campus already. You know the park south of campus, across the street from the greenhouses?
Jay was already slipping into his shoes as he typed his answer one-handed. Yeah. I’ll be there in five.
He jogged the whole way, slowly and with his injured arm close to his chest, barely breathing hard when he slowed to a walk at the greenhouses. They were lit, which was a little eerie, but no one seemed to be around. The structures were like large, square lanterns casting light across the sidewalk that bordered campus, and brushing the thicket of evergreens that shielded half of the park. Still, Jay didn’t see Emile at all until he noticed Godot, the dog’s white coat and white, wagging tail stood out persistently even in the shadows by the bench where Emile was sitting, the leash wound loosely around his wrist.
Godot whined happily, and when Emile released his leash, he bounded over to Jay and snuffled his cold nose against his knees, wriggling while Jay stroked him. He lingered over the dog even more than he usually would have, suddenly nervous about what this strange, neutral meeting place implied about the nature of the conversation Emile wanted to have.
“Hey,” Emile said, his voice soft in the dark. He scooted down the bench a little in silent invitation, and Jay trailed his hand over Godot’s head as he sat down next to Emile. The dog shadowed him, plunked into a sit at his feet, and looked up expectantly. Jay chuckled and obediently stroked his ears.
“Thank you for coming,” Emile said. “I wasn’t going to bother you tonight, but…”
“I’m glad you did,” Jay said quickly, daring a glance from the dog to Emile. He didn’t see anything too alarming in Emile’s expression, but there was a definite tension there.
“Me, too.” Emile looked down. “I need to apologize. I was afraid everything was going to implode after Sydney saw us, and I took it out on you. It wasn’t fair.”
Jay released a long breath. “Thank you. But I’m sorry, too. For not being more careful.”
Emile gave his head a tiny shake, a small denial. “All’s forgiven, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Thank God. Me, too.”
They smiled at each other, and Jay’s fingers twitched against his knee with the urge to reach for Emile’s hand, but he didn’t.
“I think you’ve probably figured out by now that I’ve always played by the rules,” Emile said. “I knew that if I wanted a good life, an easier life than the one I grew up with, I’d have to work hard for it and not take risks.”
Jay nodded. He had figured that out. He admired Emile for it.
“Before I met you, I couldn’t have imagined risking everything I’ve worked for in my career to break the rules with a student. But I can’t regret it. I can’t regret you. Us.” He swallowed, shrugged, and gave Jay a weak smile that broke Jay’s heart even before he said, as though it was a truth he was helpless to deny, “Because I love you.”
A small noise escaped Jay, and he lost control of himself enough that he’d reached out and taken Emile’s hand before he’d made the conscious decision to move. But instead of pushing him away, Emile’s fingers curled tight and warm around his.
“You don’t have to say anything. It’s—I—this is all new for you, and a few days ago, I was an enormous ass, and I know I have to make it up to you, but—”
“Shhh,” Jay murmured, squeezing Emile’s hand. “I love you, too. Of course, I do.”
Emile exhaled hard, and then he leaned into Jay through the darkness and kissed him.
Jay slid the hand Emile wasn’t holding into his hair, relishing him for a long second before he pulled back just enough to shake his head. “We shouldn’t do this here.”
“If someone sees us and figures it out, and I’m disgraced and fired, would you be interested in transferring to a college in Chicago? I think they have at least a dozen.”
Jay laughed. “Sure.” He meant it; he’d happily go wherever Emile wanted to be. “You liked Chicago that much, huh?” Regretfully, he pulled away, glancing around them just to confirm that there was no one else with them in the park; their watchdog appeared to have fallen asleep on the job, lying in the grass at their feet.
“It’s kind of a long story,” Emile said. “Maybe I could tell you while we walk? Back to my place? If you want.”
“God, I do, but should I really walk with you?”
“I didn’t see a soul the whole way here. It’s fine.”
They still didn’t hold hands as they trailed down the sidewalk, Godot leading the way. Occasionally, their swinging hands brushed, and each time, Jay shivered pleasantly, laughing as Emile relayed the story of the misdirection of the presentation, and then listening intently to what had been said at the table with the Emory professors over lunch.
“So, you were serious about going to Chicago?”
Emile glanced at him. “Not really. Definitely not about the part where you’d transfer. I know you have soccer, and your friends. I wouldn’t expect—”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Jay said quickly. “Honestly, if I take out the part where I met you, Walland has been kind of underwhelming.” He hesitated. “And I’m really not sure about soccer. It’s so hard to get everything done. I’ve always loved to play, but it’s starting to seem less important than it used to.”
Emile’s eyes were bright but cautious, like he wasn’t sure he should dare to take Jay at his word. They were nearly to the driveway, and Godot seemed to be ready to get home; he was setting a brisk pace.
“You don’t have your sling,” Emile said, frowning. “Shouldn’t you be wearing it?”
“The physical therapist admitted that it was basically just there to remind me not to use it. I’m fine.” He saw a wrinkle of doubt between Emile’s eyebrows and smiled. “I promise.”
Finally, they were walking up the driveway, and as soon as they rounded the curve that shielded them from the street, Emile’s right hand snuck into Jay’s left. Jay was instantly grinning like an idiot; he ducked his chin, and Emile’s answering, shy smile made Jay feel like he could laugh, or maybe cry. Being in love was amazing—an
d a little weird, like his entire system had to adjust to a brand new feeling, making space for something that didn’t quite fit and wouldn’t quite be contained. Or maybe he’d always feel this way, like his feelings were escaping him in strange ways and in unexpected moments. And that would be okay, he decided.
“I told Ben about us,” Emile said. “We still have to be careful, especially while you’re in my class. I know it’s hard.”
“I don’t mind,” Jay promised. He liked the idea of Ben knowing about them; it soothed the part of him that had been grinding its teeth ever since he’d found out that Ben was Emile’s ex. He hesitated. “I kind of… told my parents I was seeing a teacher. I didn’t mention your name, or the class. I know I said I wouldn’t tell them anything, but it just came out. Are you mad?”
Emile looked surprised, but he shook his head. “No. But, shit. Fuck. What did they say?”
The way profanity spilled out of Emile when he was flustered did something to Jay—it reminded him of the way he got when Jay had him naked and pleading. His stride hitched for a few steps while he got his thoughts in order and discouraged the growing hardness in his jeans. Thinking about his parents’ faces on the computer screen helped, at least.
“They were fine with it. I told you they’re really open-minded. Disturbingly so, at times.”
“Well,” Emile said, still sounding baffled. “So far, so good.”
They traipsed through the front door, and the moment Emile had unsnapped Godot’s leash, Jay grabbed Emile’s waist and turned him so that they faced each other.