Passionate History (7 page)

“Please, eat something.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “I wish I could stay…but you know your way around anyway.”

“Don’t worry about it. I know you have to be at commencement.”

“I’ll be trying not to fall asleep the whole time.”

She smiled. “It can get kind of long. At least it looks like a beautiful day.” She gestured out the kitchen window, which had a narrow view of a bright blue sky.

He nodded, happy when she began helping herself to some eggs. The rain had cleared out the sticky heat of the last few days, and the air was clean and cool.

“I’ll bet the sun will steam things up again in an hour or two.”

“These eggs are really good. I guess I was hungry.”

“I’d say we earned our breakfast.”

She actually flushed a little. He had a horrible thought; maybe she regretted the night before, the sex, and the intimacies they’d shared.

No, he couldn’t be that wrong. He was overreacting. “Let me give you my mobile number.”

“All right.” They punched each other’s digits into their phones. He felt a little better when he’d claimed a part of her. Bree Ross on his phone, traceable.

“Then I’ll see you later?” He stood and stretched his arms over his head.

“Sure,” she said. “Thanks for the eggs, and the shower, and everything. I guess you rescued me last night.”

“A pleasure,” he said seriously. Then she surprised him by hopping out of her chair and giving him a quick kiss on the mouth. Not a lingering kiss of a lover, but a chaste kiss that smacked of gratitude and awkwardness.

Fuck. He grabbed his satchel and left her to the rest of the eggs.

How much of an idiot could she be? Ever since she’d woken up from a delicious dream involving Aidan, an alarmingly flouncy white dress, and having hot sex in the back of a limousine (something she’d never done but secretly always wanted to try) only to see his adorable face smiling at her in the flesh, she’d acted like a missish schoolgirl who didn’t know what to do in the presence of her crush.

He was just so…perfect. Shy and bold. Sexy and sweet. Thoughtful and provocative. She never knew what to expect from him, and she didn’t know how he’d react if she told him she was thinking of staying here, at Weston, for her master’s, her career, but also for him. Because she very much hoped—feared—he was the man for her. In every way possible. She felt like she knew him, but she didn’t really
know
him. It would be crazy to base such a decision on one night of astonishing sex.

She could take the leap and have philosophy to fall back on. If it didn’t work out, then she’d have learned something about herself and would move on. But she very much wanted it to work out.

But where to start? How could she convince herself and Aidan they should take a chance on a future together when they hadn’t been on a date yet?

The first step would be to find her car, and her stuff, and to change her clothes. The clothes she wore smelled like Aidan.

She called the rental car company, endured the clerk’s derisive snort when she explained she’d forgotten what her car looked like, and wrote down the description. Silver four-door Japanese sedan. No wonder she’d lost it. It described every third car on the block. The campus was flooded with people and cars for commencement, but she worked against the tide of humanity hiking up to the green, scanning the street until she found her car parked in the shade of a maple tree, papered in wet green leaves shaken down by the storm.

Modesty could be overrated; Bree artfully changed into fresh leggings and a dress in the front seat of the car. She only hit the horn once. Then she called her friend Lena, and they made plans for brunch.

Lena was sensible. Bree could count on her to listen to her situation and give her honest feedback. Feeling more centered already, she was surprised when her phone rang before she could pull the sedan onto the road and head for Weston Village.

“Mom! Hi.”

“Brianna Lucille Ross, you fly across the country and don’t even tell us? You’re in Massachusetts, and you aren’t coming to visit?”

Crap
.

“How did you know—?”

“Your sister saw pictures of you with your college friends on Facebook.”

Damn social media.

“It’s been ages since we’ve seen you. Can’t you come by for a quick visit?”

Her mother’s voice had gone from strident to soft. Bree had no defense against motherly guilt.

“Well, my plane isn’t until tomorrow, but I sort of have plans….” She imagined Aidan, broiling under the hot sun, listening to one rehashed commencement speech after another then sitting through the conferring of the diplomas as everyone from Abbot to Zweier got the little slip of paper that had cost them $160,000. She hoped he was wearing sunscreen or was in the shade. With his skin tone, he was likely to burn underneath a light bulb.

“Then why don’t we come to you?” her mother said quickly. “We can be there for a late lunch.”

About the time Aidan would be free. Oh, dear. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “I guess lunch would be okay.”

“Fine, we’ll call you when we get there.”

Beeps in her ear signaled the end of the call.

She sighed. She wanted to see her parents, she really did, but they were a bit…overwhelming, and she’d wanted to be able to focus on her mission at Weston, so she hadn’t told them she was coming to the East Coast. Having sex with her old professor hadn’t been on the agenda either, but she wouldn’t have traded their night together for anything, even if it meant he could no longer write her a letter of recommendation for grad school. She had to admit it would look like a fairly egregious conflict of interest.

As she drove toward the diner where she was to meet Lena, she thought about the flight she’d booked back to Seattle. Her plan had been to come to Weston, secure her references, reconnect with some friends then go back to work at the outdoor school while spending the summer and fall applying for graduate school. She liked her job. She liked her cozy apartment. She had made some friends at work. She’d been thinking about getting a dog, something medium-sized she could take hiking with her.

But when she thought about Seattle, she didn’t think of it as home. She didn’t particularly want to go back, not when it meant leaving here, leaving the campus she was only beginning to realize how much she loved, leaving her family without at least catching up, leaving Aidan and his mind-blowing kisses and sexy accent and the possibility of sharing something extraordinary with him.

But how could she, who wasn’t afraid to leap out of a moving airplane thousands of feet above the earth, take this leap and trust in herself, in her future, in a man? Not just a man, though.
The man
. The man she wanted to be with for the rest of her life. She was almost sure of it.

Lena sat at a window booth at Weston Village’s infamous Greek diner. The Acropolis was a bizarre shining box sitting in the middle of a strip mall parking lot, with mirrors on all the walls making one feel like one was inside a very large compact, or maybe a dressing room.

Bree had many fond memories of stumbling into the twenty-four-hour diner around two or three in the morning and ordering apple pie with a side of French fries, her favorite late-night, after-party snack.

She’d recently eaten Aidan’s surprisingly tasty eggs and toast, and if her parents were showing up for lunch in a couple of hours, she didn’t need a meal now.

“Just tea,” she told the waitress. “And a slice of apple pie. What the heck. I feel like I’ve been up all night anyway.”

“You could have texted me, you know. I figured you found some other accommodations for the night, but I worried.” Lena was a mother-hen type who always got stuck being the designated driver and the one who kept a lookout for campus security during skinny-dipping parties at Weston Pond. Not surprisingly, she’d become a kindergarten teacher.

“Sorry. I was trying to find my car and then Aidan…Professor Worthy, sort of intercepted me, and then it started to rain and….”

“And what?” Lena squeaked. “What do you mean ‘Aidan’? Did you stay with him last night?”

“Yeah.”

“Weird. I never had him as a teacher, but still, weird.”

“Actually, it was only a little weird at first. He’s a super-nice guy.” Bree had thought it would be easier to talk about this. She wasn’t ashamed of what she and Aidan had done, but she hadn’t thought about how it might seem to the rest of the world.

“That’s why you couldn’t text? Was he boring you with a lecture on Grecian urns?”

“No, why would he do that?”

“Sorry. It’s the Acropolis.”

Bree giggled. “No. Actually—” She took a deep breath. “—would you be totally weirded out if I said I liked him?”

“What do you mean, like, like-him like him?”

“Yeah.”

“Um. Wasn’t he your teacher?”

“For one semester.”

“Isn’t he way older than us?”

“Seven years older.”

“But he was your teacher.”

“But he’s not anymore.” Bree grew impatient. She didn’t think Lena would be this judgmental.

“True. I guess it’s been a while. I mean, it’s not like you liked him when you were taking his class.”

“Right,” Bree said halfheartedly.

“You did? Come on, Bree, that is gross.”

“Let me explain. And stop being critical for one second.”

“Fine.”

“I had a sort of vague crush on him when I was in his class. You know, he’s cute, Scottish, teaches my favorite subject, wears these sexy loafers.”

Lena rolled her eyes.

“But obviously it was a silly crush. I was dating…um…Jack at the time.”

“Jake,” Lena corrected, ever helpful.

“Right, Jake, until we broke up because neither of us wanted to try to make it work after we graduated.”

“Very sensible.” Lena had been with the same guy, Kent, since sophomore year, and Bree was expecting a “we’re engaged!” call any time.

“Until one day toward the end of the semester, I saw him checking me out.”

“Really?”

Bree huffed at Lena’s skeptical tone. “Yes, and I thought, what the hell, you only live once, so the night before graduation I went to his office and we….”

“Oh, my God, you are not telling me right now that before you graduated you had sex with one of your professors!”

“Don’t be so horrified. We were both consenting adults. Geez. I didn’t think you were such a prude.”

“I’m a teacher. I kind of find the idea of a teacher having sex with their student offensive.”

“You’re a kindergarten teacher,” Bree said.

“So?”

“So, this is not the issue. The issue is we never saw each other again until this weekend. And last night….”

“You did it again.”

“Yeah. Like five times.”

“Wow.” Lena finally lost some of the judgmental look and appeared appropriately impressed.

Ha
. Bree would have bet money that Lena and Kent had not had sex five times in one night since before Obama was elected. The first time.

“So, the sex was good?”

Bree took a huge bite of pie and answered with her mouth full. “Very, very good.”

“Wow,” Lena said again.

“But here’s the problem. He lives here. I live in Seattle. He’s trying to get tenure. I’m trying to get into a grad program. We’ve never been on a date, but we have so much chemistry, I’m surprised his bed didn’t catch on fire last night.”

“How does he feel?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t have much time to talk.”

“I’ll bet,” Lena said, not entirely derisively.

“But I think he likes me, too. He kept saying he didn’t want to let me go. I think I kind of hurt him when I walked away after the last time.”

“You had sex with him and then didn’t even call him? Cold.”

“I was embarrassed. I’d never done anything like that before.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

“First things first. My parents are driving in to town to see me, so I have to get their visit out of the way. Then sometime before my plane leaves for Seattle tomorrow morning, I guess I have to talk to Aidan, see what we’re really doing here.”

“Good luck,” Lena said with feeling.

“Can you at least tell me I’m not crazy? If I really like him, and I think I really do, then it’s worth trying to make it work, right?”

“Bree, you’ve never backed off anything you ever wanted in your life. Why would you start now?”

Because the stakes have never been so high
. Her heart, which had never been broken, could either find its mate or get crushed to a pulp under his shoe.

***

If the Acropolis had been a blast from the past, then the modern dim sum place she met her parents at two hours later was the wave of the future. Jade House was a new restaurant built on the outskirts of the village where a boutique hotel and shops were going up. The times were changing, Bree thought. Who would have expected Weston Village, with its idea of haute cuisine being steamed cheeseburgers, to have dim sum?

Bree parked her rental next to her parents’ ancient Subaru wagon so she could locate it when she came out again. Going through the front door and leaving the once again humid afternoon air for icy air conditioning was a bit of a shock to the system. As was being wrapped in a bear hug by her father, and finding not only her mother, but her sister and two grandmothers as well, sitting at a sleek oval table.

“Mom! Dad! Tess! Grandma Lucy, Grandma Billie, wow! I didn’t expect to see you all here.”

“Well, we aren’t getting any younger, and we didn’t know if this would be the last chance for us to see our beautiful granddaughter in person,” said Grandma Lucy.

“Oh, bah! She’s deranged. Your mother made us come,” said Grandma Billie. They each took turns hugging her, and she basked in their familiar scents. Grandma Lucy, her father’s mother, was a perpetual worrier and clotheshorse who always smelled French and expensive. Grandma Billie, her mother’s mother, was more down-to-earth. Clad in her uniform of grandma jeans and sneakers, she smelled like cinnamon and vanilla. The grandmothers had been fast friends ever since their husbands passed away within a year of one another and, while each was in superb health, it was true they weren’t getting any younger. Bree felt badly she hadn’t seen them since Christmas.