Passionate History

by Libby Waterford

  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.

  Chapter Six

  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. G
randma 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.

  Bree got a quick buss on her cheek from her mother and took the seat next to her sister. “Hey, Tess. You got dragged along, too?”

  They had not been particularly close growing up, but now they no longer fought over Barbie dolls and whose turn it was to empty the dishwasher, they got along better than most sisters.

  Tess smiled. “Family road trip. I turned in my last final on Friday, so it’s actually nice to get a change of scene.”

  “I can’t believe you still live with Mom and Dad. Don’t you want your own place?”

  “Of course I do, but it’s convenient to school and the price is right.”

  Tess was notoriously cheap and determined to graduate law school debt free. Bree mentally applauded her but didn’t understand how she could stay sane living under the same roof as their parents.

  “You’re interning at the law firm again this summer?”

  “Yeah, actually, I wanted to talk to you about something,” Tess said, her voice lowering. The waiter arrived, and Bree’s father ordered for the table. The ice water Bree had been served soothed her frazzled nerves.

  “What is it?” Her younger sister was the model student and child, and the tone of her voice said maybe something interesting was finally afoot.

  “Um, I’m not sure this is the best place,” she said, nodding toward their parents.

  “Okay, later,” Bree replied. Perhaps she should run the whole Aidan situation by Tess. Lena’s take had thrown her. Tess might have something more encouraging to say.

  But for sure they would have to talk out of earshot of the parents. Their mother peppered Bree with questions about her friends and reunion and her flight and every other thing she could think of. Bree was in the middle of a rundown of what all her old college friends were up to when the door to the restaurant opened with a cheerful tinkle and her words dried up.

  Aidan stood at the hostess stand, flanked by Professor Woodlawn and two other professors Bree recognized but couldn’t name off the top of her head. He hadn’t seen her, and she was struck by how handsome he was. He looked as good to her as a Michelangelo sculpture or a sunset over Puget Sound. What was he doing here?

  “Bree?” Her mother’s voice called her back to earth. “You say Lena’s engaged?”

  “Um, very nearly,” she said, looking away from Aidan as the hostess led his party to a table across the room. What was she supposed to do now? Go say hi? What would she say? How would she explain this to her parents?

  “Exciting,” her mother said. “Oh, dumplings!”

  They were served, and Bree checked out Aidan’s table. He’d been seated with his back to her, so it wouldn’t be too hard to finish the meal and get out of there without having to deal with seeing him right then. Coward.

  Why was he here anyway? Weren’t they supposed to be meeting up? She couldn’t dwell on the thought because her plate was being piled high with dumplings.

  “You have to try the shrimp ones, they’re fantastic,” her father said.

  “Dad, stop!” she said, shooing him away from her plate.

  Her parents were dears, but they still treated her like she was thirteen years old.

  “Fine, but don’t sulk if they’re all gone by the time you want one,” he said with mock sternness.

  She managed to eat and answer the myriad questions thrown her way. She even got caught up on the doings in Midville, Connecticut. A suburb of Hartford, Midville had been a lovely place to grow up, but if she’d been able to talk her parents into letting her go to college at Oxford or Tulane or Anchorage, she would have. The most she could manage was Weston, a two-hour drive to an adjacent state. Now having been to England, and Alaska, as well as a half dozen other exotic places, she had to admit there was something homey about Weston Village; even Midville had its charms when she was there for the holidays, ensconced in the warm glow of her family with snow drifts piled high outside.

  She wondered if Aidan was ever homesick. She’d never been to Scotland, though she had Scottish ancestors on her father’s side. The Ross tartan had hung on the living room wall for as long as she could remember. She’d always meant to visit. She wondered if she’d go there with him, to meet his family. They could hike the West Highland Way all the way from Glasgow to Ben Nevis. It would make a fine honeymoon.

  Yikes. Where had that idea come from?

  She was all mixed up, and the amazing sex and then seeing her family made her long for a future she hadn’t even known she wanted a few days ago. Why was she all of a sudden ready to settle down and give herself over to this new life?

  Because he’s worth it.

  She’d never met anyone who made her heart sing and her blood rise and her body respond the way he did.

  She wouldn’t let him slip away from her, and she wouldn’t be afraid to take what she wanted.

  Her family’s meal was winding down. She’d try to get them to head home so she could take Aidan aside and really talk to him about all of this.

  “So you’ll probably want to get back on the road soon?” she asked heartily.

  “We thought we’d spend some more time with you, darling,” her mother said. “You don’t have any plans, do you?”

  “Well actually—”

  Tess tugged on her arm. “I’m going to use the restroom. Come with?”

  The hall to the restrooms was right next to Aidan’s table. “Um, I don’t need to go.” Of course the second she said it she really did need to go, urgently.

  “Please.” Tess tugged at her arm again. Bree remembered her sister had wanted to talk to her about something.

  Fine. She could be an adult about this.

  “Okay, sure. Thanks for lunch, Dad,” she said as he stuck a credit card in the bill folder.

  Tess practically dragged her to the back of the restaurant, and Bree had only seconds to figure out how to play this. But when she dared to glance Aidan’s way, his chair was empty, and as they passed by the table, Professor Woodlawn was absorbed in her dim sum and didn’t seem to notice Bree.

  She exhaled, relieved until she made the connection that Aidan was probably in the restroom. The only restroom. She and Tess stared at the single door, forming a line of two.

  “You can go first,” Tess said. “I don’t really have to go. I wanted to tell you something.”

  Bree tested the knob. Locked. “Listen, Tess—”

  “No, you listen. I’m trying to tell you I met someone. But you can’t tell Mom and Dad.”

  “Okay.” This was interesting. Her little sister had never had a steady boyfriend that Bree could recall. “Why not?”

  “Because the guy is—” She broke off when the familiar cacophony of their mother and grandmothers’ voices bubbled up the hallway behind them. “Later,” she hissed.

  “We all decided to go,” her mother said. “What, is there a line?”

  Then the restroom door opened. Aidan stepped out and froze.

  This day was not going well. Aidan had felt a headache coming on from baking outside during the interminable commencement ceremony. The commencement speaker had harped on and on about love, underlining the fact all Aidan wanted was to be with Bree, making love to her, convincing her to stay with him, permanently. But when he’d tried to escape the festivities, Professor Woodlawn had cornered him and invited him to lunch with her and two other members of the tenure committee, and he couldn’t say no.

  Tenure meant security, stability, something tangible he could offer to Bree, part of a life the two of them would forge together. He could only pray that
was what she wanted, too.

  The lunch meeting had gone as well as could be expected. Professor Woodlawn was getting older, and she’d confided in him this year might be her last before retiring. While he’d miss the acerbic, dedicated professor, it excited him to think about steering the traditional-leaning department in a more progressive direction. He had to jump through a few more hoops first. The timing with Bree wasn’t great actually, as he should focus on pushing his tenure through at last.

  Maybe it would be a good thing if she went back to Seattle and they tried to be long-distance for a while. But he couldn’t let her leave without telling her exactly what was on his mind. There was no sense in drawing the thing out. He had to be honest.

  His rational line of thinking died when he emerged from a quick trip to the washroom to splash cold water on his face and found himself in a sea of women, one of whom was Bree. He had trouble focusing on any face but hers, but he got a sense of the line of Bree’s nose and her dark auburn hair echoed in some of the faces.

  “Hi,” she said. Was there panic in her expression? If so, good, because he was feeling a bit panicky himself.

  Five females stared at him, and all he could say was, “Hi.”

  “Hi.” He was pretty sure she had said that already. What was he supposed to say now?

  The youngest of the women who wasn’t Bree eyed him curiously, and he realized he was blocking the way to the restroom. He stepped forward, and the sea of women parted. Maybe he could get through and to the other side and everything would be fine.

  No such luck. Another woman appeared. Professor Woodlawn. Bollocks. He sent a desperate glance toward Bree, but she seemed as at a loss as he.

  “Bree!” Professor Woodlawn barked. “I thought that was you. Is there a convention at the restroom I wasn’t invited to?”