After my dad died, it was twelve-year-old Seth who took care of us. Seth made sure that we all took showers, ate meals, did laundry. Seth made tea and built fires in the fireplace. He woke up in the middle of the night when I had nightmares about a car crash, talked me down.
We all reacted differently. Levi got quiet, Eli got spiky, Daniel got angry. I think I was just sad, but Seth somehow became nurturing. Out of everyone, he’s the one who reached down deep and found something good within himself in those dark days, and I’m still grateful.
“Sorry,” I say. “I should know —”
There’s a knock on my front door, and I fall silent for a moment.
Then I drop the blanket to the floor, pull open the back door so hard it slams against the wall, and practically run through my house.
She’s standing outside the front door, bag slung over her shoulder, wearing heels and a skirt, hands curled into fists and jammed into her coat pockets.
Thalia looks at me for a moment without saying anything, and my heart drops through the floor. She looks like hell: eyes glassy and red, ringed with black; face splotched bright pink.
Without a word, she walks past me, into my house. I close the door behind her and she steps out of her shoes, then stands next to them.
“What happened?” I ask, almost afraid to know the answer.
“Nothing,” she says, quietly. “I get to keep my scholarship and stay in school. But you knew that.”
I start grinning, the relief flooding over my head like a cold rain, releasing tension I didn’t know I was holding.
“Thank God,” I say, and I step forward to take her in my arms.
Thalia steps back, and I just kick her shoes.
“Don’t,” she says, and now she’s got her hands on her face, in her hair, on her hips, and she looks away and she sounds edgy and I stop in my tracks.
“I’m sorry I didn’t answer your calls,” I say, fighting to keep a smile off my face. “I thought it was best —"
“Did you?” she suddenly says, cutting me off, her voice wobbly and tired. “You thought it was best, just like you thought it was best to tell the story of how you blackmailed me into having sex with you?”
I feel like the moon must feel when it begins waning: the slow, unexpected march of darkness.
“You were going to get expelled,” I point out, my mouth suddenly dry.
“You don’t know that.”
“There was a good chance,” I go on. “And if you hadn’t been expelled, you’d have at least lost your scholarship —”
“So you felt it was a good idea to make sure that you’re remembered forever at the university as a professor who sexually assaults his students?” she says, her voice rising, eyes wide, face flushing. “You decided to just tell everyone that I was just your victim? Nothing but some innocent girl who wanted an A so badly that she was willing to fuck for it?”
The anger spreads through me with a chill, like frost in my veins.
“I just gave up everything for you,” I say, my voice an ugly snarl. “Tomorrow morning you’ll still be in class, still on scholarship, and I have no idea what I’m going to do.”
“You didn’t even ask me,” she says, hard and flat.
“I spent seven years in grad school and now I can never teach again,” I say, stepping forward again. This time Thalia doesn’t budge, just looks up at me, jaw clenched, lips pressed together.
“You wouldn’t even answer my calls,” she says, her eyes shining, brighter red than before. “You wouldn’t talk to me. You took everything into your own hands — you took us into your own hands — and you didn’t ask me and you didn’t tell me and at no point did you ask about my thoughts or my wishes and Jesus, Caleb, I’m so fucking sick of men thinking that they know what’s best for me.”
“What would you have said?” I say, and now I’m shouting too, taking a step back, pacing away in frustration and then back to her. “Would you have said oh, no, I’d prefer to be expelled from school?”
“I don’t know what I would have said!” she shouts. “I’ll never know because you didn’t bother consulting me!”
“Well, you’re welcome!” I shout, and now I’m pacing back and forth the width of the hallway, unable to keep still. I want to punch the wall and I want to open the door and rip it off its hinges, but I don’t do either because I’m a damn adult.
“Did you think I was kidding?” she asks.
“What are you talking about?”
Thalia points furiously at the front door.
“There,” she says. “When I stood right there after you told me about the emails and you promised to be my partner and not my protector, were you kidding? Were you just waiting for the next moment that you could be some kind of knight in shining armor and come and sweep this little lady off her feet?”