“I’ll be right back.”
Inside the washroom, I unbelted my coat and dropped it on one of the two white leather chairs flanking the wall by the door. I was instantly reminded of the lush restroom at Canoe.
A month.
That’s how long it had been since my night out with Matt. My stomach clenched with guilt. I’d raked Daniel over the coals for accusing me of being involved with Matt, and yet he did have some cause for assuming that Matt and I had more than just a close friendship. I shook my head to wipe out the memory of Matt’s tongue exploring my mouth.
No, no, no. This is not what I need to be thinking about right now.
I finished up in the washroom, checking the hair clips to make sure they were still holding my curls in place. Joanna really had done a great job. Satisfied, I grabbed my coat and headed back out to the lobby. At the counter, Daniel was chatting with the girl who’d greeted us.
“I’m sure that can be arranged,” I heard her say as I neared the counter. When she saw me approaching, she cleared her throat conspicuously.
“Oh, Aubrey, here, let me take your coat,” Daniel said, holding out his hand.
The counter-girl hung it up and then grabbed a set of keys from a drawer, telling us to follow her. I eyed Daniel curiously as we crossed the lobby, but he just took my hand and winked at me. Sexy bastard. The girl opened the door at the far end of the room and ushered us inside.
“Good luck,” she whispered to Daniel as she pulled the door closed.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
“I told her I’m in the dog house and I’d be forever indebted if she could arrange for us to have a quiet half hour in here.”
“In other words, you charmed her pants off?”
“I did what was necessary to secure some privacy. Anyway, never mind tactics, let me look at you.” He made a clicking noise in his cheek. “You look absolutely stunning. Beyond gorgeous, poppet, really.”
Okay. He was killing me. Talk? Did I say I wanted to talk? Talking was suddenly highly overrated.
“Listen, mister. Quit trying to distract me,” I said, scrambling to get back on track.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll try to behave. Come on over and sit.”
He led me to the cream-colored leather sofa. I settled into one of the cushions and took in the rest of the room. Plush red draperies hung beside the French doors which led to an outdoor deck or patio of some sort. A cherry-wood bar stretched the width of one of the walls. Delicate orchids in an elegant long-necked vase adorned the side table along the opposite wall beside another set of curtained French doors. The room was beautiful.
Daniel unbuttoned his blazer and sat beside me, his arm resting along the cushions behind me. I crossed my legs and noticed his eyes travel appreciatively from my thighs down to my ankles. I quite enjoyed having the upper hand for once.
“So, you said we have lots to discuss. What’s first?” he prompted me.
“I don’t know where to start. There’s so much we need to talk about. It’s a little daunting.”
“Would you mind if I asked you a question?” he said, absently twirling my hair around his fingers. “On Monday, you said you had something you wanted to tell me. If we’d had a chance to talk on Tuesday night as we’d originally planned, what would you have said?”
I sighed, reaching for his hand which he eagerly offered.
“I was going to tell you that we needed to take some time apart. After last Saturday, I couldn’t stand the thought of being so close to you without really being with you. It seemed like it might be a good idea to suggest backing off, not spending time alone together until May.”
He squeezed my hand and smiled ruefully. “Huh, we couldn’t have been in more entirely different mindsets if we’d tried. Why didn’t you call to talk about this on Sunday?” he asked.
“I was afraid to. I thought you’d suggest a permanent break.”
“Oh, my lovely, how could you possibly think that?” he asked, bringing my hand to his lips.
“I couldn’t help it. You should have seen your face when you got out of that taxi, Daniel. You were so angry. I thought I’d blown it,” I admitted.
“People in relationships are allowed to be angry with each other sometimes. It doesn’t mean they hate each other. Having said that, I do have one small request. In the cab, you said a word I’d rather you didn’t say to me again, at least not the way you said it.”
I sighed as shame coursed through me. I knew exactly what he was talking about.
“When I asked you if I could call you and you said ‘whatever,’ I heard, ‘I don’t give a fuck what you do.’ I know you were hurt, but I can’t stand that word. It haunted me all night. Even if you’re pissed off at me, I want you to tell me what I’m doing wrong. At least then I’ll know you care enough to address the problem. I don’t ever want to feel like you don’t give a flying fuck what I do. Deal?”
“Deal,” I said quietly. “And you have to promise not to ignore my texts like that. Even if you’re too paranoid to text me back, at least call me.”
“I promise. You know, I didn’t even get your texts until Wednesday morning, and by then I’d convinced myself you’d moved on. I couldn’t bear to hear you tell me why you didn’t want to be with me.”
“Wow, that’s nuts,” I said, leaning against him and twirling my fingers through the sprinkling of hairs peeping out of his open collar. “But I guess I was pretty irrational myself the last few days. Thank God for Matt and Julie. Poor Matt. He wanted to call you to explain everything. I threatened him with a covert attack on his testicles if he did. I can’t believe he went to see you anyway. I wish I’d been a fly on the wall when you guys were talking. You know I didn’t set out to tell him everything, right?”
“He suggested that he practically had to torture the truth out of you.”
“It was impossible to keep lying. I couldn’t cover up any more. He won’t say anything, Daniel. I’m not trying to upset you by saying this, but I’d trust Matt with my life.”
“That doesn’t upset me, although it does make me feel completely unworthy. As for being able to trust him, if he wanted to screw me over, I’m sure I’d be twisting in the wind right now instead of sitting here with you.”
He pulled my head down to rest on his chest, and I placed my hand over his heart, feeling its steady beat under my palm.
“So, where do we go from here?” he asked. “Do you still want to take a break from things until May?”
I tried to imagine not spending time with him alone, not talking to him on the phone, not being able to have moments like this for another month and a half.
“Aubrey?”
“Sorry. I’m thinking.”
“And?”
“I don’t know. How do you feel about everything?”
“All I can think about is what a mess I’ve been the last few days without you. If you want to step away—temporarily, I’d hope—I can’t force you to change your mind. But right now, I want to be with you more than ever.”
“I want that too.”
He looked at me warily. “But?”
I sighed, sitting up and turning to face him. “It’s not really a but. It’s just…well, Julie and I had a great talk on Tuesday. She put things in a different light.”
He looked at me curiously.
“I told her we were being completely hands off, as you’d suggested. She thinks it’s great that we can’t be together because it forces us to get to know each other. After what happened with Matt, I think I agree. If you truly knew me, you’d never believe I was capable of that sort of calculated betrayal.”
“So you do want to pull back? Take a break from seeing each other?”
“Not exactly. I still want to spend time with you, but I’m going to do my best to stop fixating on the things we can’t do. If we were dating under normal circumstances, I’m sure we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I don’t think I’d have made it past that little
texting session in the Hart House Library. I’d have tackled you as you tried to walk out the door.”
He smiled, and his eyes had a faraway look. “That was pretty hot.”
“Anyway,” I said, trying to get us back on track, “my point is, instead of seeing the limitations of our relationship as being imposed on us, why don’t we choose not to cross those boundaries and focus on learning about each other? I know it sounds old-fashioned, but is it really so bad to take things slowly and not leap head first into a physical relationship? Let’s start at the beginning, not at the end. Am I making any sense?”
“You’re making perfect sense. I know for a fact that I can’t promise to stop doing this, though,” he said, pulling me close again and hugging me tightly. “I swear, when I thought I’d never get to hold you again—well, let’s say it drove me to drink.”
“What is it with you men drinking when you’re upset?” I said, leaning back to look at his face.
“Classic avoidance, I believe. An inability to deal with emotions. We’re pathetic.”
“I’ll say.” I smiled gently as I gazed up at him. “Wow, doesn’t it feel good to finally be on the same page?”
He squeezed my hand, sighing deeply and closing his eyes.
“What is it?”
“I don’t think we’re on exactly the same page just yet. There’s something else we need to talk about before we go any further.”
The suddenly somber tone of his voice and his stony expression made my heart thump double time.
“Okay. Go ahead.”
He frowned, pursing his lips as if bracing himself.
“What I have to tell you isn’t easy for me to share, and you have to keep this to yourself. No one can know. Not Matt, not Julie, no one.”
“God, Daniel, you’re scaring me,” I said, trying to read his expression.
“I’m not trying to scare you, but I do need your word. It’s very important.”
“Of course you have my word.”
“Okay. Good,” he said, lifting his eyes to look at me. “Did you know that this is actually my second teaching assistant assignment?”
“Really? Why didn’t you mention it before? I’m surprised your father hasn’t talked about it.”
“That’s not surprising at all, actually. I had a bit of an unfortunate experience last year. At Oxford.”
“Unfortunate experience? What happened?” I wondered if this had to do with the file folder with Daniel’s name on it that I’d seen in Dean Grant’s drawer.
“Well,” he said, huffing out a breath, “I was working with a first-year class. A great group of young people, seventeen, eighteen years of age. It was a Renaissance lit class.”
He paused, his eyes drifting past my face and over my shoulder, as if he was conjuring up a memory.
“There was a girl in the class called Nicola. She was one of those students who managed to rise to the top at her little hometown school,” he said, his eyes flitting back to mine. “Her family didn’t have much money, but she got some small bursaries and a loan and muddled through somehow. Turns out the leap from secondary school to undergraduate academia at Oxford was more than she could handle. She had a part-time job, and it interfered with her school work. She had trouble completing essays on time, and her analysis was generally shallow and unoriginal.”
I was losing the thread. Where was all of this going? I didn’t interrupt, though. I simply sat and waited as his eyes flickered over my shoulder again.
“I tried to help her. She came to me for guidance many times, but nothing seemed to work. She failed one essay after another. I would try to squeak out extra marks for her on the assignments I assessed, but even then, she generally couldn’t do better than a D plus.”
He stopped and took another deep breath.
“One day she came to see me during my office hours and begged me to secretly let her rewrite a term essay that she’d bombed. The prof would never have approved a rewrite, and I wasn’t about to let her do it on the sly. She started crying and saying she’d lose her scholarship for the coming year and not be able to continue her studies. She begged me to help her. I told her I’d help her as much as I could on upcoming assignments, but I wasn’t prepared to do something underhanded.”
He frowned, his eyes hardening.
“Once she stopped crying, her face completely changed. She said she’d give me ‘one last chance’ to change my mind. I told her there was nothing I could do to help her beyond what I was already doing. She collected her things and got up to leave. As she stopped at the door, just before opening it, she turned and said, ‘I think you might regret that decision.’”
His story was making my heart race. I realized I was grasping his fingers tightly, but he didn’t seem to care.
“The next day, I was called to the head of department’s office. The proverbial shit had hit the fan,” he said with a pained smile. “Nicola had gone to the dean’s office to level a complaint against me.” He paused, licking his lips and rubbing his eyebrow and temple with his index finger.
“What was it?” I asked, my voice low, matching his.
“It wasn’t as much a complaint as an accusation, really,” he said. “Three little words from her, and my life blew up in my face. I’ve spent the last ten years of my life studying words—marveling in their power, their weight. Never once in all those years did I have an inkling that the weight of so few words could be so crushing,” he said, chuckling darkly.
“Daniel, what did she say?”
He looked at me uncomfortably and said through gritted teeth, “‘He molested me’ were her exact words, I believe.”
I slowly fell back against the sofa, feeling as if I’d been punched in the stomach.
“She claimed I’d locked my office door and tried to have my way with her,” Daniel said. “She alleged that the reason I was giving her poor marks came down to her refusal to…shall we say…reciprocate my advances.”
He went silent, waiting for my reaction, but I was too stunned to speak. A series of epiphanies collided in my brain, the events of the past six weeks making so much more sense. Daniel insisting on conducting office hours in busy public places, never allowing himself to be alone with a girl in a class room with the door closed, keeping us all at a safe distance, using only our last names, frantically trying to remain objective. This was more than a newbie TA being extra cautious. This was someone doing his best to cover his ass.
Dean Grant’s shock that night at their house—when he realized Daniel was the TA of the course I was taking—now made perfect sense. He’d been innocently trying to set up a match between Daniel and me and must have been horror-stricken when he thought about the implications of his actions.
Then I remembered Brad’s question—what he’d asked his brother as we’d flirted at the pool table. “Are you trying to teach her to play pool or are you molesting the poor girl?” he’d said. Something spoken in jest, that one word, “molesting,” had brought Daniel back to reality. He must have realized he’d given me enough rope to hang him with if I cared to use it.
“Quite the story, huh?” Daniel said, now prompting me to respond.
“I, uh, my God, I don’t even know what to say. What happened then?”
“There was an inquiry. I was pulled from my position, and my PhD candidacy was revoked pending investigation. My parents were devastated. They flew over to try to help me. It looked like I might even have to go to court to deal with a sexual harassment charge.”
The file folder in Dean Grant’s drawer had been labeled Daniel’s Court Case—Oxford. Of course…
“My dad worked tirelessly to get to the bottom of things,” Daniel said. “He visited Nicola’s parents, and it seemed they got a sense of the, well, let’s say, the financial benefits inherent in Nicola withdrawing her accusation. She recanted, and there was an out of court settlement. I still don’t know what it cost my parents. The worst part is the element of doubt the episode raised about my conduct. I’d been
so mindful of being professional and doing all the right things, and it didn’t make one iota of difference. To this day, I wonder if my parents believe me entirely, especially my dad. It’s a constant source of conflict between us. It makes my mother crazy.”
I shook my head slowly. “So, when your dad didn’t want her to know about me being in your class when I was over at your house for dinner that night—”
“He was trying to avoid an ugly scene. He told her everything when he got home. She was upset, but she could see how the misunderstanding had occurred. Truthfully, I think she was disappointed. She likes you,” he said. “You already know how much my father likes you. Now you know why he was so insistent on us not being friends.”
“It made sense to me then, but yes, it makes even more sense now.”
“He’s been freaking out since the day I started in Martin’s class. U of T admin knows what happened last year. There’s a letter in my file. Even though Nicola’s handling of the whole situation calls her claims into question, the university is being extra careful. I’m lucky to have my dad’s influence behind me, but even he won’t be able to help me if things go wrong again. If he knew you and I were involved…”
As he trailed off, he searched my face while I tried to work through everything he’d told me. What a mess. How I wish I’d known about this all along. I’d spent the first four weeks of the semester mooning over him like a love-struck adolescent, cursing his mood swings and obsessing over his coolness. Then, once he’d shared his feelings for me, I’d sulked and given him grief because he wouldn’t throw himself wholeheartedly into our forbidden relationship. How juvenile I’d been.
“What are you thinking?” he asked me. “You must think I’m an absolute idiot for allowing this to happen between us when there’s so much at stake.”
“I don’t think you’re an idiot. How can you even say that? I’m the one who feels like an idiot. I’ve been so pushy and demanding. I wish I’d known.”
“Believe me, I thought about telling you every time we were alone together, but something held me back every time. Nicola made me feel like a monster. I spent a hellish year convincing myself I wasn’t one, and then I met you, and you made me smile and laugh. You seemed to like me. You helped me like myself again. I tried to keep my distance from you, but when I discovered you had feelings for me, I couldn’t push you away any more.” He shook his head mournfully. “After spending the last year wondering if everyone I know is questioning what really happened, I didn’t want to risk falling from your good graces.”
The Weight of Words (The WORDS Series) Page 32