by Amanda Grace
You nodded, pursing your lips like you had things you wanted to say, but then your lips just curled a little and you turned to look at me again. “You really are smart.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Maybe next time you could try not to sound so surprised.”
You laughed, and the mood lifted, and then you turned away from the water and walked up to me, and you let your hands settle on my hips as you leveled a gaze at me. “It feels so weird to think I might’ve met my match in a girl so much younger … but it also feels so … ”
“Right?” I asked.
You nodded, your lips pressed in a thin line. “Yeah. And that’s what scares me. That I feel like I could settle into this … into you … without a look back.”
“Why is that so scary?”
“Because every sane thought I have is telling me it’s not right to date a student. I’m risking everything … ”
“For me,” I said, finishing your thought.
You nodded. “Yes. I’m risking everything for you. For the chance to be with you.”
“You say that like maybe I’m not worth it.”
“There’s not a doubt in my mind you’re worth it,” you whispered, leaning in, pulling my hips up against yours so that our bodies were touching at our stomachs, hips, thighs. It was intimate in a way I’d never experienced, casual in a way I hadn’t expected. Like we fit together, were meant to be like that.
I let go of the tension in my shoulders, my arms slackening as I leaned into you, my body fitting against yours, my cheek resting against your shoulder. “I wish this was easier,” I whispered. “I wish we’d met some other way, so it wouldn’t feel so … ”
“Conflicted?” you offered.
But I wasn’t conflicted. I was utterly convinced we belonged together, that we’d always be together. And some part of me twinged inside because you’d picked that word, like you had doubts. But I didn’t voice this.
“Difficult,” I said instead. “I want to be with you everywhere. On campus, at the grocery store. I want to not wonder if someone is watching us right now.”
You tried so hard to hide it, but I could feel the slightest tension ripple through you, like you hadn’t considered that and the idea that someone was watching us terrified you.
You always did have more at stake. I was stupid, naïve then, and I never quite saw it, but it was always you with the risk. Your life, your reputation, your job.
I would always be the sweet, bookish girl who got taken advantage of. That’s how the world sees me. Pity, sympathy, sadness … so many things, but no one who matters is disgusted.
Not like they are with you.
Maybe I needed to be eighteen to get that. Maybe that’s where the two years come in. Perhaps they bring the ability to understand what’s at stake, to foresee what could happen in a few weeks or months. Because at that moment, on that river bank, I sure didn’t possess the ability to look forward and see what was coming.
I only saw you and how much I wanted you. I knew in that moment I had to make you mine, whatever the pain, whatever was in store for us.
I just wish I’d known, that day at the river, that it wasn’t my own life, my own pain, at stake.
It was yours.
We stayed on the riverbank for almost two hours, sitting on the rocks until we were both more than a little frozen. It was a different world there, on the shores of the river, where time seemed to stop around us as if that superpower of mine actually worked. But eventually we had to give in to the cold, and we traced our path back to your adorable little house. I leaned into my jacket, wishing I’d worn something a little warmer, rubbing my hands together, willing them to warm, driving away the tingly feeling just as we stepped through your back door and went to the kitchen.
I stayed quiet as I watched you work, pulling things out of the fridge, stepping out back to light the grill, turning and twisting and cooking like you did it every day, were at ease in the kitchen.
My parents thought I was going to the library, then studying with friends. I had never ever lied to them like this, and they had absolutely no reason to think I wasn’t telling the truth. That’s why it was such a piece of cake. Sixteen years of being the model child—screaming inside for some kind of relief and yet marching on like a soldier, doing every little thing expected of me—and in that instant I’d given them the first bald-faced lie, the first one of many that would lead me down to the cliff, the cliff I’d jump right off of in a few short weeks as my lies snowballed.
“It’ll be done in a few,” you said by the time I’d fully warmed. “There’s Snapple and soda in the fridge.”
I got up just as you stepped outside to pull the chicken off the grill, stopping to pat Voldemort as I headed toward the fridge. It’s funny how different your dog was when he was home, how often he just slept on his bed, occasionally thumping his tail on the ground. So different from the dog who bounded up the trails with us.
When I peered into your fridge, I saw Snapple and soda, but I also saw beer and a six-pack of hard cider and I was so damned tempted to grab one, twist it open, and walk out to that patio like there was nothing wrong. I wanted to be old enough to do that so you wouldn’t feel so wrong about us.
All I ever wanted was to be free with you, but every time I turned around there were more restrictions, more evidence that I wasn’t as old as you were.
So I grabbed a half-lemonade/half-tea Snapple and popped the top, reading the silly little fact under the lid. Relative to size, the tongue is the strongest muscle in the human body.
God, I did not need to be thinking of the tongue.
I had to wait to kiss you.
Later, so many people told me that your allure had to do with you being forbidden. Like somehow knowing I wasn’t allowed to be with you is what made me want to be with you even more. I don’t believe that.
I tossed the lid into the trash and walked outside, to where you were leaning over that grill, the mouth-watering scent of smoked cedar wood and chicken wafting toward me as I plunked down in a plastic chair, no longer worried about the cold, just zipping my jacket up to my chin. “It smells awesome,” I said, smiling.
“Thanks. I have to admit I’m a terrible cook, but I can barbecue okay.”
“I guess you need a girl for that,” I said, surprised at my quick quip. “I can cook a mean lasagna.”
Actually, I can cook pretty dang well. I mean, my dad does a decent Mr. Mom act, but I’m better. Since my mom is MIA so often, I’d picked up the slack and somehow found my own gene for cooking. It’s actually one of the few things I can connect with my dad about. Those moments in the kitchen when we work together, even wordless, are sometimes the only moments we share.
I held out the platter to you as you pulled off the lid on the grill, setting it on the cracked patio. Everything about this place reminded me of a perfect old pair of sweats, or a chipped, beloved mug. Well used, broken-in, and comfortable, but not flawless. And yet to me, knowing you had your own place, knowing you could support yourself … it was awe-inspiring on its own.
Because as I stood beside you, I realized that I could support myself someday, that I didn’t have to have my parents create the way, didn’t need them to decide which path I’d take and then pave it in gold for me.
What if I didn’t want to go to MIT or Harvard? What if I finished my two-year degree and got an office job and hung around town … for you, for me, for us? What if we created our own life and it had nothing to do with them, had nothing to do with my mom and dad’s plans for me?
Every second I spent with you was like liberation, was like a way for me to poke holes in their plans, in their requirements, in their expectations. It was only in those moments away from their keen eyes that I felt like I could breathe deeply and figure out who I wanted to be.
I know that if they read this, that means they’re going to blame
you, act like you’re the reason I questioned their college pathway. The thing is, it’s not just you. Maybe you pointed me in a new direction, but I chose to open my eyes, I chose to blink and look around.
And as you put that barbecue chicken on the platter, I felt a strange mix of grown-up and relaxed, like maybe the intensity I felt in my life wasn’t because of me at all, but them.
And maybe with you I could have something different, could be someone different.
A girl who took charge of her life.
I took the platter inside and you followed, after tossing the lid back on the grill and closing the vents to snuff out the remaining charcoal.
I slid the sliding glass door closed behind me, shivering again. I’d planned to dress cuter but that would have required freezing my ass off, so I’d settled somewhere in the middle.
We each picked a piece of chicken and a scoop of macaroni salad and then you led me to the living room. “That window by the table is kind of drafty, so why don’t we eat in here,” you said, setting your plate on the coffee table. You reached behind us and pulled forward a rainbow-colored blanket. “My mom totally quilted this, so you cannot make fun of it,” you said, grinning like you fully expected me to make fun of it.
“Knitted,” I said instead.
“Huh?” you asked.
“‘Quilted’ is like making a patchwork quilt. She knitted it.”
“Oh.” You chuckled. “Okay, so she knitted this psychotic thing. My request still stands.”
“Deal.”
You settled it over our legs so that our knees touched as we put out plates in our laps. Our forks clinked as we ate.
It should have been awkward, that first time I ate with you, you in that amazing sweater, the one that hugged your shoulders in the way I wanted to. But it wasn’t. Even then, it felt good to just be with you. And yes, I wanted so much more, but it was so easy to settle for what I was allowed to have: a quiet meal together, our knees touching, the blanket warming us up to a comfortable temperature.
We didn’t talk as we ate, and it didn’t bother me. The only sound in the room was the quiet ticking of the wall clock, one that reminded me I couldn’t stay with you forever. Not yet.
Somehow we’d reached five o’clock already, and dusk was rapidly approaching.
“Do you have to be home any time soon?” you asked.
“Nah, my parents won’t care,” I said. Then I cursed myself for mentioning them at all, for thrusting them at you like that.
“You live with them, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Just until I’m done with GRCC.” I paused. The college only had one small dorm complex, used mainly by international students. Most of the other students still lived at home, or maybe had a small apartment with a few roommates. “I told them I’d be home late.”
“Great,” you said, like you meant it.
I set my plate down on the coffee table and then let my body settle into the couch, pulling that supposedly ugly blanket up higher, and a surreal feeling settled over me.
There I was, a sixteen-year-old girl, in the home of my twenty-five-year-old Biology professor, watching as he ate dinner. Such a simple, domestic act, something a student was never meant to see.
I glanced out at the windows, to where the fog was settling around the edges. “I can’t believe winter is coming soon.”
“Winter … and December.” You grinned and leaned forward, and for a second I had the oddest idea that you might just curl up close to me. But instead you tucked the blanket over my shoulders, then sat back again so that we weren’t quite touching.
“Thanks,” I said.
“I’m a Biology professor. If you die of hypothermia, I’m sure the irony would haunt and kill me too,” you said.
I smiled, wondering if there was a way to find that superpower and push stop, so that you and I could simply sit there on that worn-in old couch, be there for all of eternity, enjoying life without the world to judge us for it.
You must have felt it too? The rightness of it all, when we were together and all those stupid rules just … disappeared?
I really do believe, even as I write this, that sometimes two people are just meant for each other, and that we were two of those people. Two people who made sense, and if only those two years didn’t matter, we’d still be those two people today. Bright and happy and comfortable in the warmth of that wood stove, in your simple, unassuming one-bedroom house.
Sometimes what I hate most about all of this is that we never hurt any one. Not a soul, not even me.
Don’t they get that? That you never hurt me like they keep assuming? I was better because of you. I was someone who mattered, someone who was allowed to have an opinion.
It was my parents who made me feel like a kid. Not you.
Never you.
When I went downstairs the next morning, I’m pretty sure I floated down the steps, lost in memories of you, in thoughts of how hard it had been to pull myself away from you and drive home. It was dark by then, but my mom and dad hadn’t thought a thing of me arriving home so late.
Trust is a funny thing.
“Hey! You’re just in time to help me cook,” my dad called out as my bare feet hit the tiled floor.
For a jarring second I’d forgotten it was Saturday, forgotten about the tradition of a giant weekend breakfast.
“Oh, uh, awesome,” I said, blinking away the memories of you and making my way into the kitchen where Dad was bent over, digging through the produce bin. Without looking up, he said, “You can chop up the peppers. We’re doing a scramble.”
“Cool,” I said, over the din of washing my hands. After I dried them on a paper towel, I went over to the little peninsula, to where the granite shone brightly under the fancy canned lights.
The atmosphere was different than it had been with you just the night before. It wasn’t awkward, but it lacked the warmth I’d felt when I’d stood in that small kitchen of yours, watching your able hands prepare dinner.
Here, everything looked so nice and shiny and perfect, the way I was supposed to look.
I grabbed one of my dad’s fancy Ginsu knives and set to work slicing the peppers into thin strips, the way he liked it. Dad brushed my arm as he set an onion on the counter top, and then he whirled around again and disappeared into the big pantry at the far end of the kitchen. I glanced back but could only see a shadow beyond the frosted glass door.
He emerged with a whole bag of potatoes, plunking them down on the counter and then turning to grab another cutting board and a big bowl. This was my father at his finest—a constant blur of motion, as if to make up for his stagnant career.
“How’s class going?” he asked as he went to the sink to wash the first few potatoes.
“Good. I think I have an A in everything so far,” I said, a familiar sensation drifting over me. Grades. A’s. All the usual expectations.
Funny, how I felt so different inside and yet he couldn’t see it.
“Atta girl,” he said, returning to the counter. “How are your professors? Do you like them?”
The knife slipped then, and I yanked my hand back just in time.
“Whoa, watch it,” he said, leaning in to peer at my finger. “These knives are no joke.”
He’d come too close to the truth.
“Yeah, sorry. Knife slipped.” I picked up the red pepper I’d been chopping. “Professors are good. The English one is kind of boring, but Bio is great,” I said, going with the truth. You were great. You were so much more than great.
“Oh yeah? What are you studying in Bio right now?”
Bennett, I wanted to say. I spent all of my class time studying you. But I didn’t think my dad would like that answer.
“We covered cell composition first, and then genetics, and now we’re on to evolution. We just had our first test,” I said.
“Oh?” He looked up at me, his hands stilling. “How’d you do?”
This was that moment, that look, the one that said, Don’t disappoint me, Maddie. Don’t end up like me, wallowing away as a small town PE teacher. I had big plans once. I was going to be somebody. And now look at me.
“I got an A-,” I said, feeling a little bit weird about it. I did get that A-. You gave it to me. But Dad didn’t need to know that, did he?
“Great job. A little more and you can turn that into an A.”
And there it was, that same push-push-push.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said. I wanted in that moment to say, “Well guess what! I actually flunked! What do you think about THAT?”
Instead, we let the silence fall, and he finished chopping the potatoes. Then he tossed them in a hot pan with a bit of oil and started stirring, the potatoes hissing from the heat.
“You know what we should do?” he asked abruptly.
“What?” I tossed the chopped onion into the pan, blinking away the tears from the intense onion scent.
“Let’s go do the corn maze,” he said.
“Uh, what?” Corn maze? What the heck was he talking about?
“The corn maze. You know, at Thomassons’?”
“I haven’t gone to that since I was like twelve.”
“Yeah, but wasn’t it fun?”
I look at my dad, realizing he’s serious. His eyes are lit up like a kid who just got a puppy for Christmas. “I mean, yeah, but I was twelve.”
“Oh, is Maddie too old to be seen in a corn maze with her dad?”
He grinned at me in a way that made me grin right back without even meaning to. In a way that somehow made me say, “Okay, let’s do it,” even before my brain recognized that I was excited by the prospect.
“Two for the maze, please,” my dad said. Behind us, two kids squealed, tickling one another as they impatiently waited in line.
“Here you go,” the girl behind the little window said. “Do you want cow questions or sports trivia?”