School Ties (12 page)

“You been here before?”

I shake my head. “You?”

“I come here a few times a year.”

“Business or pleasure?” It's a smart-aleck thing to say but he surprises me.

“Business.”

“What kind of business you in? You own a strip club? Poaching talent?”

“Y'ever heard of a club called Purgatory?”

“No. I started school here a few weeks ago. I don't go out a lot. Some of my teammates might have heard of it, though. I get the feeling this is a regular thing.”

“I doubt it. It's a private club. Members and invited guests only. I wanted to talk to you because I'm looking for someone to help out a few nights a week. You seem like a stand-up guy and it would keep you in beer money.”

“I don't—”

“I know. You don't drink. So, whatever you need cash for. Gas, pizza. Tuition?”

I flush at the last. Yeah, I could use some extra cash. The campus job they hooked me up with is minimum wage and they can't give me more than ten hours a week. I've got a bunch saved up from this summer but it would be nice to be adding to my bank account instead of slowly draining it.

“What do you think? You could come by the club tomorrow. We can talk, you can see what you'd be getting yourself into.”

I take another look at the guy. His clothes are good quality but not crazy expensive, same with his watch, and I catch a glimpse of a tat snaking out from under his sleeve. Everything about him says solid, with an edge. It's just a meeting. If the place is creepy as fuck, I'll leave. I don't get the feeling it will be. “Yeah, all right.”

“You don't say much, do you?”

“Not usually.”

“That's not always a bad thing.” He drains the rest of his glass and sets it down on the table before reaching into his pocket and extracting a black leather wallet. He pulls out a black business card and slides it across the table to me. I pick it up, skimming over the red gothic script that reads “Purgatory” on the front and a phone number and street address printed in gray on the back. “Ten o'clock work for you? I'm kind of a night owl.”

“That works.” Ten will give me enough time to get my workout in and finish up my homework.

“I'll see you then. Good to meet you, Shepherd.”

I raise my chin to say likewise and don't hesitate when he holds out a hand. I don't know what it is about this guy, but aside from his obnoxious habit of smirking at weird times, I like him. Low on bullshit. Easy to be around. He seems to have his shit together and expects other people to as well. I'll have to wait and see what the deal is with his club, but something tells me Mordecai and I are going to get along just fine.

Chapter Ten

Erin

It's my third wedding anniversary. Which would explain why I'm sitting in a dark room with handmade, from scratch, by me, gnocchi congealing on the china plate in front of me. When we first got married, Will mentioned it was his favorite. While it's a giant pain to make and I'm a notorious flop in the kitchen, I'd learned. I'd made batch upon batch to get it right.

Will loves my gnocchi. Or he used to. Or maybe he pretended to? It's hard to tell with Will. After his graduation day confession, he'd pledged to start over. Again. For real this time. We'd gone to counseling, he'd seen a therapist, and for a while . . . He's very good, my husband, when he wants to be. When he tries. But it's so much easier—and way more fun—to be bad.

I'd say we had a really good year. Will was faithful and kind; controlled his temper and his drinking. He actually seemed to try most days. It didn't hurt that Lana Davis had taken a job at a school in California. I think what my husband wants most in the world is for people to like him. He wanted me to like him. And I did. For a while.

Then it fell apart again. I guess I wasn't worth the effort. Not every day anyway. He's still good for the grand gestures. That's what he's best at. A gigantic shiny burst that's going to make him the man of the hour instead of the workaday yeoman who shows up day after day to say I love you in small ways, like remembering how I take my coffee.

I push the chair away from the table, tossing my unused napkin next to my untouched plate. I could have eaten, but I've lost my appetite. Your husband not showing up to a dinner you've slaved over all day will do that to a girl. I clean up the kitchen in silence, wishing I had a dishwasher, but these tiny faculty apartments don't have them. More outmoded traditions we're bizarrely proud of. Why? They make us relics. Relics with dry, cracked hands from washing three sinkfuls of dirty dishes.

I climb into bed exhausted and numb, not bothering to read. The book by my bedside is one of the romances I read like I breathe air. I need the possibility of a happy ending like I need oxygen. Will hates them, says they're crap, although he refuses to read one. His smack talk wouldn't bother me so much if he'd
read
one. Some of them are trashy, but some of them are beautifully written and heartrending. Who cares anyway if you enjoy them? But no, it's beneath a
Serious Literary Scholar
like himself. Beneath his math-teaching wife, too.

It may be beneath him, but I wish he'd even look past the cover and see what kind of sex I'd like to have. I'd annotate it, marking sections with a highlighter:
we could try this
; cross things out with a red pen:
oh, hell no
; and mark a few pages with sticky flags:
dear god, yes. Please, please do this immediately if not sooner.
The idea curls my mouth into a sad clown smile. If Will hasn't taken the hints I've dropped, and wrinkled his nose when I've suggested something out of the ordinary, he won't think that's funny.

I'm not going to pick up the latest because I'm loving it and I don't want to be all anaesthetized when I read it, empty like one of Will's discarded bottles of gin. I want to savor every word. So I stare at the ceiling, pining for sleep until the door to our apartment creaks open and Will trips over the threshold. My hands tighten in the sheets. He's been drinking. Again.

He stumbles into our room and his attempts to be quiet are insulting. A picture frame knocked off a dresser he steadies himself against to take off his shoes, swearing as he stubs a toe on the hope chest, the grinding of the stubborn drawer I've been asking him to oil for weeks. Frustrated tears well in my eyes by the time he fumbles his way under the covers.

“I hope the boys didn't see you.”

He stiffens as if he's surprised I'm awake. “Didn't.”

“How do you know? You're so plastered I doubt you'd notice if they were grapefruit bowling again.”

The hallway had smelled better than usual after that stunt. The scent of citrus permeated the carpet for weeks, drowned out the standard fetid odor of too many gym clothes washed not often enough. I'd still had to chastise them with a straight face. I'd told Will about it when he'd returned from the Model UN trip he was leading, hoping to be able to laugh about it behind closed doors, but he'd wrinkled his nose instead. I couldn't tell if it was disgust at my juvenile sense of humor—come on, grapefruit bowling? That's awesome!—or at the idea of walking on zest ground into the carpet for the foreseeable future. Not that Will takes his shoes off except when he comes to bed.

He doesn't defend himself but collapses onto the mattress heavily, snoring within a minute, leaving me to stew in our marriage bed.

•   •   •

I make my obviously hungover husband pancakes and coffee the next morning. Cream and sugar, how he likes it. When he bothers to get me a cup, which isn't often, he still puts sugar in mine even though I've told him a hundred times,
Just cream, please
.

I get a couple of tabs of aspirin from the bathroom, pour a glass of orange juice, cut some strawberries, warm up syrup on the stovetop before pouring it into a tiny pitcher. I put the whole production on a tray with legs that fold down, a wedding present from one of his sisters. Balancing the heavy tray along my arm so I don't spill, I come into our bedroom. When I've roused him to seated, I place the banquet over his lap.

“Thanks, angel. This looks wonderful.”

He's started to eat and I sit down on the chair next to our bed, twisting my fingers together in my lap. “Will, I want a divorce.”

He pauses with a bite of pancake dripping with syrup hanging over his chest. A drop falls onto his buttoned-up pajama top. That's going to make him crazy. But his fastidious compulsions are momentarily silenced.

“You what?”

“I want a divorce.”

“No, you don't, Erin. You're saying that because you're upset about last night. It won't happen again, I swear. I'll finish eating, we'll get cleaned up and we'll go have a wonderful day. Everything will look better. I was going to take you to the special collections at Harvard. They have—”

“Does that sound like something I'd like to do, Will? Honestly?”

He lays his silverware down on the tray and his face furrows into a bewildered frown as if he's never thought of it before. He has, occasionally, but only when he's sorry. Except Will is never truly sorry. What he is is sad he got caught, uncomfortable with having someone angry at him.

“Look, we've tried. We're not in love, there's no baby, and I can't take this anymore. The lies, the drinking, the cheating. I've held out for three years, hoping you could become the man you say you want to be. You even were for a while. But deep down, every day, you're just Will. You're charming and intelligent and handsome, but you're also irresponsible and careless. I don't want my life tied to yours anymore.”

“But—”

“No, Will. No buts. Not anymore. If you're worried about your job, don't be. I already talked to Rett and we can both stay. We can keep it quiet through the end of the school year. After graduation you can move out, and we'll both go about our business.”

I'd love it if he'd leave, if I didn't have to see him strutting around campus all the time, wondering who he's sleeping with, but at least I'd be able to be thankful he's not sleeping around on me anymore.

“What if I don't want to stay here being ex–Mr. Erin Brewster? You're like Hawthorn royalty, so what the hell will that make me?”

“Single?”

He scowls and shoves the tray down the bed, hard enough that orange juice and coffee slosh over the sides and onto the tray, sullying the puddle of syrup on his plate.

“I'm not going to stay here and be made to look like the bad guy.”

“When have I ever made you look like the bad guy?”

He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. There's nothing to come out. Will may be a terrible husband, but that's no one's business but ours. I've been careful to keep my problems behind closed doors to the extent that Uncle Rett was surprised when I'd asked over our usual Sunday dinner what happened to faculty members who got divorced.

“I'm still leaving.”

“That's fine. I'm going to stay.” There's a one-man-band playing in my chest and I want to get it out but at least I haven't cried. I don't want to give him any more of my tears, though it's tempting. Will never knows what to do with me when I cry. “I'm going to take a shower.”

I walk out the door and start counting in my head.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi
—that's when I hear it. The shattering of something against the wall. My guess would be the glass of orange juice. That'll be fun to clean up. I shut the door, pull the shower curtain closed before I turn on the spray and sit down on the nubby bathmat, letting the hot stream of water drown out my tears.

•   •   •

Will goes to his pa
rents' house in Cherry Hill whenever he can, trading duties with other faculty and staff. That means the weekends he's around, he's not, and that's ducky. He's been sleeping on the couch and we live around each other, not with each other.

He's been looking for other jobs, closer to his family. He's got interviews with several schools this weekend. I offer him good luck as we pass each other on the threshold, and his nose wrinkles. “You're in such a hurry to get rid of me, aren't you?”

“I meant it when I said you could stay here, Will.” I did, too, though I'm relieved he's leaving.

He slings his leather bag, heavy with his laptop and papers to be graded, over his shoulder and without another word, heads down the hall.

The breath I've been holding leaves my body in a rush. It's always a question: Which Will will I get today? No yelling and no breaking things is a good day. He's gone until Sunday night, so even better. I set my own books down on the kitchen table and flop onto the couch. Spring break will be here soon, and I can't wait for two weeks of uninterrupted Will-free time. But for now, I'm going to make the best of what I have.

I've been keyed-up and anxious all day. Even though Will's gone, I can't get my head to stop being on guard.
Relax, relax.
I close my eyes and breathe, but the low-level anxiety that's been my more or less constant companion since I don't remember when won't let me go. I drink a cup of tea, turn on a movie I've been wanting to watch, but I'm still in its grip. His grip.

There's one last thing to do. I get ready for bed, changing into soft cotton pajama pants, a well-worn Hawthorn T-shirt I've had since I was in high school, and a pair of fuzzy socks. When I've brushed my teeth and washed my face, I climb under my sheets, turn on my bedside lamp and hang over the edge of the mattress to take up a book. It's not the one I'm reading. That's on my bedside table.

This one is for special purposes. I turn to a well-thumbed page and start to read, substituting certain words with the personal fantasy already playing in my head. When I've reached a particular point, I slide fingers under the blanket and up my shirt to toy with a nipple while my other hand turns pages.

The hero's about to punish the heroine for not following his instructions, and there's so much about this that makes me hot. Being given instructions. Having someone pay attention enough to know when I've disobeyed, and caring enough to discipline me, make me better. The punishment itself . . . I don't relish the idea of being actually
hurt
. I don't think pain is my thing, but if he—

He.
Even when I hadn't given up on Will yet, when I let my mind go during fantasizing or even sometimes
during
the rote sex, I'd think of Shep. Not when he was my student, no, though it hadn't been easy to shut that down. But the wrongness would eventually win out. He wasn't a minor, but it was the power imbalance; knowing I was technically an authority figure, though that never felt a hundred percent true even though he was always respectful. But after he was gone . . .

I'd fumble to make him not look like my student, picture him in street clothes instead of dress code or one of his Hawthorn uniforms, but sometimes I'd slip. Today I toe the line, thinking of him in a suit. He'd look drop-dead handsome in a suit, his broad shoulders filling out the jacket. When he'd shove his hands in the pockets of the trousers, it would pull the vent of the coat open in the back and I'd be able to see the curve of his butt.

I'd kneel at his feet, naked, while he lectured me, my eyes brimming with tears because I'd disappointed him. He'd grasp my elbow, hard enough to help me up but not hard enough to leave a bruise, and steer me to a desk, instructing me to bend over, lay my palms parallel on the fine-grained surface.

When I was in position, very conscious of being at his mercy and completely willing to take whatever punishment he'd deemed fit, he'd stroke my back. He'd also toy with the various implements in a canister on the table, their business ends sticking out above the rim.

A crop, a loopy john, a wooden spoon, a leather-covered paddle, a small cane. This time he'd opt for the worn old-school wooden ruler.

I set my book down, able to carry out the fantasy without any more help, and slip my freed hand under the waistband of my pants and into my underwear. I'm, predictably, wet. I always am when I indulge in this daydream.

He'd remind me what I was being punished for, make me repeat it back to him and then tell me my punishment. Twenty strokes, I'm to count. I picture the red welts being laid across my cheeks, my fingers curling into fists while I struggle not to reach back, trying to accept the punishment he's deemed appropriate while my tears drip onto the desk. I'd choke out the words:
One, two, three
. I'd pay the price and when it's over . . .