by Claire Adams
She hadn’t given me a direct answer when I had asked if she was going to tell my father, but she didn’t need to—of course she was going to tell him. All she’d need to say was she had walked in on me with one of my professors in a compromising position and he’d hold his hand up, tell her he’d heard all he needed to hear, and say that I obviously wasn’t taking him seriously at all, and to cut me off.
I got dressed and then started to pace. I didn’t know what to do. I called Lindsey.
“My mother just walked in on me giving Leo a blowjob,” I said when she answered. She started laughing, thinking that it was a joke. “No, I’m serious,” I said. “I’m not joking.”
She stopped laughing. “Oh, shit. Are you serious? She just walked in on you guys together?”
“Yeah, it wasn’t good. Not just walked in on us together, but I was literally sucking on his cock when she came in. I don’t even know how long she was standing there watching. And she wouldn’t give me a straight answer about whether or not she was going to tell my dad, but obviously, she is. Do you think I should try to call him first? And tell him myself?”
“Um, no!” Lindsey exclaimed. “Definitely not! Because what if she doesn’t tell him? What if she decides to just keep it to herself, and then you call him up and confess to something that you really didn’t need to in the first place? I absolutely do not think you should call him first!”
“You’re right,” I said, even though I knew there was no way in hell that my mother wasn’t going to tell my dad. But on the total off chance that she didn’t, I certainly didn’t want to be the one to confess that sort of thing to him if I didn’t have to.
“What did Leo say?”
“I don’t know, not much. He offered to stay, but I told him it’d be better if he didn’t right now. I don’t know if—” My phone beeped. Incoming call. I pulled it away from my ear and looked at the screen. “Shit,” I said, bringing the phone back to my ear. “It’s my dad calling.” My stomach twisted. “I better answer it.”
“You’re going to be fine,” Lindsey said, with much more optimism than I felt. “Call me when you’re done on the phone.”
“Okay.” I switched over and said hello, trying to make my voice not shake.
“Tessa. It’s your father.”
“Yes, I know, hi, Dad.”
“I just got off the phone with your mother,” he said. “I could barely understand a word she was saying, she was so upset. So you probably know what this call was about. This is really something that should be talked about in person, but you’ve made the situation so uncomfortable, Tessa, that the phone will have to do.”
“Dad,” I said, “I know you’re disappointed, and you have every right to be—”
“You’re damn right I do,” he said. “This is not what your mother and I meant when we said we wanted you to get your grades back up. What you’re doing is morally wrong, Tessa. Didn’t we teach you better than that? Don’t you just know better than that?”
“Of course I do, and this isn’t any reflection on you guys at all. I wasn’t trying to disrespect you guys or anything like that. And I’m sorry. I’ll . . . I’ll call Mom when we’re done on the phone, and I’ll apologize to her. I know she’s probably really upset.”
“I think it might be best if you gave her some space right now.”
“Okay, fine. I’ll call her tomorrow or something. Whenever it is I end up talking to her, I’ll tell her that I’m sorry. I didn’t realize she was coming over right then.”
“Your mother wanted to hold onto the second set of keys, not because she was trying to spy on you, but because she liked to stop by sometimes and surprise you. The sort of surprise that you gave her just now was definitely NOT what she had in mind.”
“It’ll never happen again.”
“You’re right—it won’t. At least not in a place that I’m paying the rent on. You’re cut off,” he said. “I’m not going to support someone who is simply unable to tell right from wrong. This isn’t just some mistake, Tessa. This was a decision you made, and that you’ve probably been carrying out for quite some time now—is that correct? How long has this been going on for?”
“A little while,” I said.
“A little while. I don’t need to know exactly how long ‘a little while’ is, but it’s long enough. You’re on your own now. There’s nothing more I can say about that, other than you’ve embarrassed yourself, you’ve embarrassed our family.”
“That’s not what I was trying to do,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter whether that was your intention or not. That’s what happened. And you should frankly be ashamed of yourself, and this professor of yours should also be ashamed. I haven’t entirely ruled it out to go to the school with this, because he shouldn’t be holding a teaching position there if he’s going to use it to take advantage of students like this. It’s not right.”
“It wasn’t just him!” I said, suddenly more afraid for Leo than I was for myself. Even though I knew he said he didn’t care if he got fired from Benton or not, I didn’t want this to turn into some scandal that would be all over the internet. “It was me, too. He didn’t force me into doing anything. I wanted to. But it’s turned into something more than that, we actually really both like each other—”
“Oh for Christ’s sweet sake!” my father roared. “Will you listen to yourself? Have you gone insane? This is college, not a goddamn dating show! Am I paying 40 thousand dollars a year in tuition for you to be finding your soul mate? No, I’m paying for you to get a good education so you can do something worthy and productive with your life. And it sounds like all you’ve been doing is taking advantage of that! Well, no more, Tessa. NO MORE. If you want to spend your time goofing off and falling in love and whatever the hell else it is you’re doing, go right ahead, but it won’t be on my dime!”
He hung up.
I tried to take a deep breath but my whole chest felt tight, my father’s angry words still reverberating through my mind. I blinked, holding the tears back. I didn’t want to start crying like a little girl just because my father had just yelled at me. But there was a part of me that felt as if I’d just been transported back to childhood, like I was 7 years old again or something, and had just gotten into trouble.
I knew Lindsey wanted me to call her after we got off the phone, but instead, I texted and asked if she wanted to meet with me in an hour.
How’d it go? she wrote.
I’ll tell you when I see you, I wrote back. But let’s just say it wasn’t good.
We met up at the Haymarket and sat at a table in the corner, which was good because I didn’t want the whole place to be able to see me if I started to cry. I’d been trying to hold the tears back ever since I got off the phone, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be able to do it.
“So I take it the news didn’t go over that well with your father?” she asked. “Did he freak out?”
“That would be putting it mildly. It went about as good as you’d expect it to,” I said. “He’s cutting me off. He’s so pissed. And I made the mistake of saying that Leo and I actually had feelings for each other. I think that was really the final straw for him. He’s acting like I’ve just been taking advantage of them this whole time and only going to college because I was hoping to meet a guy.”
Lindsey rolled her eyes. “Come on, Tessa. We both know that’s not true.”
“I know, but that’s the way he’s making this sound. And now I just feel completely screwed. I mean, I guess I always knew how much I depended on them, but I’m really realizing it now. I know how much of a spoiled brat I probably sound like.” And I was aware of that. If anyone could overhear us right now, they’d probably be rolling their eyes. Oh, the poor little girl was cut off from her parents and now doesn’t know how she’s going to make it. I knew plenty of my classmates didn’t have rich parents that were footing the bill for them, and they were managing. I didn’t want to feel so stressed out about this; I didn’t
want to feel like it was the end of the world, even though there was a part of me that felt exactly like that.
“You don’t sound like a spoiled brat,” Lindsey said. “It’s not like you were demanding this stuff from them. They offered. You never took it for granted. And you never abused it.”
“That’s not how my father is making me feel about it. I just feel completely overwhelmed by everything. I feel like I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.”
“First, you’re going to take a deep breath. Trust me—it’ll help.” I took a deep breath. Lindsey nodded. “Good,” she said. “And second, you’re going to know that everything is going to be okay.”
I didn’t know if everything was going to be okay, but it felt good to have someone else reassuring me that it would be. “I am trying to believe that,” I said, “but I don’t know if it’s just what I’m telling myself to make me feel better and that in reality, I’m totally screwed.”
“You’re not the first person who has ever been suddenly cut off by their parents before,” she said. “And you definitely won’t be the last. It happens to plenty of people. It’s probably happening to someone right now, in fact. Things just have a way of working out.”
“I really want to believe that,” I said. “I mean, more than anything. But how am I going to pay rent? If I have to go out and get a job right now, there’s no way I’ll be able to work enough hours to be able to cover my rent, never mind the rest of the bills, if I’ve got my schoolwork to stay on top of. So it’s one or the other. I completely fucked this up.”
I put my head in my hands. I wasn’t trying to be dramatic—I just felt as though I’d been steamrolled with the reality of my situation and the consequences that had resulted because of my actions. But why had I gone to Leo in the first place about the extra credit? Because I knew my parents would cut me off if my grades weren’t up. So it didn’t seem to matter what I had done; this seemed like an inevitable conclusion.
“This is all because of a guy,” I said. “And I don’t even mean Leo. My grades started to slip in the first place because of Nick. I should just be celibate.”
Lindsey wrinkled her nose. “Now where’s the fun in that?”
“It might not be fun, but at least I wouldn’t be involved with all of this drama. If I didn’t get involved with Nick, I’d just be coasting along, doing my coursework, not worrying about any of this.”
“But you wouldn’t be having all this fun with Leo. And think about it, Tessa. When you look back on all of this, do you think you’re really going to have all these fond memories of sitting in the library or at the Haymarket, studying? Is that what you want to remember?”
“It might not be the most exciting thing in the world to remember, but I wouldn’t necessarily mind that.”
“Now when you think back, you’ll remember Leo. You’ll remember that crazy time you needed to get your grades up, and you actually took your professor—your fucking hot professor, might I add—up on his offer to sleep with him. And had the best sex of your fucking life.”
“What I’ll probably remember is the horrified look on my mother’s face when she walked in on me giving that professor a blowjob!” I cringed. “God, that was awful.”
Lindsey laughed. “But it’s funny! At least to me it is.”
I laughed too, because if I didn’t laugh, I was probably going to cry, and I had cried about this enough.
“So basically you have a choice now,” Lindsey said.
“I do? I don’t feel like I do.”
“You can curl up in a ball and be completely paralyzed by everything, or you can say you’re going to carry on, no matter how that looks. It might not look exactly how you envisioned it, say, at the start of the year, but so what? Things happen, plans change. You are not the sort of person to just give up on something because it’s hard, and I don’t think you’re going to do that now.”
She was right, I knew it. I just needed to focus on one day at a time, and not let myself get completely overwhelmed by the big picture.
“I can lend you some money for rent,” she said.
“You can?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s really my parents’ money, but they don’t keep track of my bank account; I just get an automatic transfer twice a month. They won’t know. And even if they do know, they’re not going to care, because they know you, and they know you’re a good person.”
“Thank you,” I said, feeling a wave of relief wash over me.
After I left the Haymarket, I went back to my apartment and was making some tea when I heard my phone go off. I went over and looked at the screen. It was Leo. “Hey,” he said when I picked up, and even though my whole day had been pretty stressful, just hearing his voice still gave me a fluttering feeling in my stomach. “How’s it going? I’ve been thinking about you.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I talked to my dad, who was about as happy as you’d imagine. But . . . I don’t want to talk about all that right now.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “When and if you do want to talk about it, we can.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I also wanted to put out there, that if you want to stop doing this, we can do that, too. This whole thing ended up being more than I had anticipated. I don’t mean that in a bad way at all, but I didn’t want anything to happen that was going to fuck up your life. Or mine. Honestly, this isn’t the sort of thing that I’d normally do, and I’ve just felt so fucking bored with my life while I’ve been here at Benton. This whole thing with you has really made life more appealing than it’s been in a while.”
I smiled. “That actually makes me really happy to hear that.”
“So I’m not saying that I want to stop this, because I really don’t. Not at all. But if you do, I completely understand. If you think that might help things with your parents, then maybe it would be the best.”
“I don’t know if it would,” I said, “but I can’t keep living my life for my parents. I can’t keep doing things just because they want me to. And I think they’ve thought that because they were paying my rent and everything that they could call the shots, and maybe that’s how it should be. But I’m not going to take their money anymore, and if I’m not doing that, then I can do what I want, on my own terms. And one of the things that I want is to keep seeing you.”
“You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say that. Mmm. I wish I was over there right now.”
“I do too,” I said. “But I’m probably just going to go to bed soon. I think I need a good night’s sleep.”
“I bet you do. Just know that I’m thinking about you. You want to come by tomorrow?”
“I’d love that,” I said. “I’ve got to do some studying and get some stuff written, but I’ll text you when I’m done.”
“Great,” he said. “Sweet dreams, then. I’ll talk to you soon.”
I got off the phone, and after I finished my tea, I went to go take a shower. I stood under the hot water and closed my eyes and tried to imagine washing the whole day off of me. I tried not to let the fear of what the future held in store overwhelm me.
I felt a little better the next day when I got up, mostly because I had to get ready for classes and I was able to focus on that and not dwell on everything else. And the world was continuing on just like it had always been, making me feel as though, regardless of what happened, things would just keep going on. There would still be a ton of traffic on Van Ness, that guy with the dreadlocks and the army jacket I saw every morning would still be panhandling on the corner of 24th and Mission, the student parking lot at Benton would always be full. I managed to find what appeared to be the last spot left and I got out and hurried toward campus.
“Hey, Tessa!”
I stopped and turned when I heard someone calling my name, even though I knew exactly who it was. Nick ambled over, backpack slung casually over one shoulder, a smile on his face.
“Hey,” he said. “Where you headed off to in such
a rush?”
I could see twin reflections of myself in his Oakley sunglasses. “I’ve got class,” I said. “I’m actually going to be late if I don’t get going.”
“Yeah? Which class?”
“Feminist fiction.”
“I’ll walk you there.”
“Um, okay.”
He fell into step next to me, and we made our way toward Baker Hall. “So,” he said, “you think you’re available to hang out anytime soon? And when are you going to wear that little leopard print number that you wore before? That was a good one.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t realize that you were looking forward to it so much.”
He chuckled. “It was pretty great.”
I stopped walking and turned to face him. “Why, all of the sudden, do you want to hang out with me again?”
“I just think there’s some unfinished business between us, and it’d be cool to hang out. You can’t hold that against me, can you?”
Did he have some sort of sixth sense about this? I had the distinct feeling that if I wasn’t involved with Leo, Nick wouldn’t be having this conversation with me, wouldn’t be interested at all.
“I’m seeing someone,” I said. “And no, I’m not going to tell you who it is. No offense or anything, Nick, but if I remember correctly, you were the one who decided to end things with me. I was kind of bothered by it, because I had actually enjoyed hanging out with you.”
I started walking again. It felt good to say it out loud, though I knew the reason that I was able to was because I no longer had feelings for him.
“I’ll bet we could still have an enjoyable time together,” he said. “Especially if you wore that leopard print getup of yours.”
“Sorry, not going to happen.”
Seth was coming out of Baker Hall as we approached. He held the door open for me. “What’s up?” he said to Nick. “Where you headed? I thought you had Abbott’s lecture now.”
