Just then, my stomach rumbles, and Thalia laughs.
“I didn’t even ask what’s for dinner,” she says.
“Too distracted by my obscene sweatpants?” I tease.
She turns her head and looks at me, her cheeks still flushed, a strand of hair stuck to her. I reach over and brush it from her face.
“I’m just saying, maybe don’t leave the house in those,” she laughs.
“They were less obscene before you showed up.”
“Less obscene is still obscene, Caleb.”
“Leek, goat cheese, and steak galettes with sesame-dressed snap peas and tiramisu for dessert,” I say.
“That’s so fancy I don’t know what it is,” Thalia says, both her eyebrows rising. “Of course you’re also some sort of amazing cook. You do triathlons too, don’t you? And spend your weekend rescuing puppies from burning buildings?”
“I’m an adequate cook with a brother who’s a chef, triathlons sound exhausting, and I’ve never in my life rescued a puppy,” I correct her. “C’mon.”
We both sit up, slowly. I gather my discarded clothing, toss it into my hamper, then pull a fresh shirt and jeans from my dresser.
When I turn back to the bed, she’s still sitting there, one foot tucked under her, reading a piece of notebook paper. Next to her, the bedside drawer is still open.
It takes me all of two seconds to realize what she’s reading.
“I’m not a serial killer,” I say.
She looks up at me, brow slightly furrowed.
“Should I have been worried?” she asks, and I just nod at the paper she’s holding.
“I did some research,” I admit. “And I’ve always found that the best way for me to truly learn information is to rephrase and summarize it myself, and then I left that there in case I needed a quick refresher.”
I’m not making myself sound good, because what kind of weird dork keeps his notes on first-time intercourse in his bedside table, even though they’ve also memorized it? Me, that’s who.
I can’t see it from here, but I know that the piece of paper says:
Lots of lube
Go slow
Be sure she’s aroused
Make her come first, it’ll help her relax
Let her be on top so she can control speed, depth, &c.Thalia flips it over, checks the back to see if there’s more writing, then puts it back in the drawer on top of the condoms and lube, then closes it carefully.
“Sorry,” she says. “It was still open and… I really like lists?”
“Did you like that one?”
She laughs, stands, grabs her bra and underwear from the floor.
“I did,” she says, still laughing, face still flushed. “It’s sweet.”
I walk over and give her a quick, soft kiss on the mouth.
“Come back in a few days,” I tell her. “I’ll make a flow chart. Maybe a PowerPoint, too, if you’re lucky.”
She’s still laughing, still naked, head cocked to one side.
“I can’t wait to see the clip art,” she says.* * *We have dinner at the kitchen table, then dessert on the living room couch. We each have a glass from the bottle of wine she brought, and while we drink we talk, and talk, and talk.
We talk about nothing: about which Marvel movies are good and which ones are dumb, about which dining hall on campus has the best chicken fingers, about what the weird smell in Hayes Hall could possibly be.
Together, we decide that some enterprising biology student is farming magic mushrooms in the basement, then selling them to other students. It’s much more exciting than my real answer, which is mold, probably.
We talk about everything: about her brother who’s gay and her brother who’s missing, about how every time she gets a phone call from her family, she imagines that he’s dead. About moving constantly when she was a kid, about her grandparents who immigrated from Mexico to south Texas, about how sometimes people tell her she could pass for a “really tan white girl” and then expect her to think it’s a compliment.
We talk about my brothers. I tell her the whole story about Rusty coming to live with Daniel, the story of Eli and Violet almost-eloping, the saga of Seth and Delilah and how much I wish she would just leave town again.
And then, somehow, it’s two o’clock in the morning and we’ve been sitting on the couch with empty wine glasses for three hours, so we leave the dishes for the morning and go upstairs to bed.* * *Just like that, I’m having an affair with a student.
I hate thinking of it that way. I much prefer to just think of Thalia as my girlfriend who happens to be in a class I’m teaching, but I know that’s glossing over the murky truth of the situation.
The truth that it’s wrong, even if nothing’s ever felt more right. The truth that this is unethical, immoral, reprehensible; the truth that I shouldn’t be getting blowjobs from the girl whose papers I grade.