Page 66 of Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl
I brush off the reflexive sting that she thinks anything between us—good or bad—would resemble her experience with that entitled jackoff. I carefully sequester the pain blooming in my chest. Instead, I simply say, “I know, Madelyn.”
“And I can’t have scandals if I want to start playing the game,” she says, and now she’s turning away a little, nervously sanding her fingertips over the wooden potting bench. “I can’t be twelve years deep into a political career and have the press find out about that one time I fucked a dad while I was his nanny.”
“Of course not.”
She swivels her head to look at me and swallows hard. “Isn’t the sex good enough? What we’re doing? I don’t want to change any of that. I just want things to be clear between us, that’s all.”
I haven’t moved all this time, and I think it’s because if I move, I will rip something vital, like an artery, or my lungs will tear open like paper, and I won’t be able to inhale ever again. But if I stand still, if I stay right here, then I can say the right things. I can hold on to our agreement and give her what she needs. I can sound level and certain when I reaffirm that yes, the sex is good enough, that no, I don’t want anything more.
But I take too long to answer, even standing still, and Maddie spins back toward me, something like panic in her face. “Bram? I don’t want to stop. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I want this. Please, don’t think that I’m trying to end things.”
“You just don’t want me to look at you like I want to give you the world.” I say it gently, a little teasingly, and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, acting as if this doesn’t hurt right now. As if I’m capable of screwing her like nothing’s changed, like of course I’m happy merely to fuck her while I scissor off my own feelings and prune away any unsanctioned desire for more.
Relief ripples through her, and she approaches me again, taking my hand, her entire expression one ofsee, I knew you’d understand. “It’s so good, what we’re doing, right?” she murmurs, pressing my hand to her cheek. “It’s perfect. We both get off, and no one has to work for it. No one has to hurt for it.”
No one but me.
But I accept it. I won’t be petulant or covet what I’m not allowed to have. I give her the kindest smile I can. “It’s very good, Maddie,” I assure her, even as the pain in my chest radiates down to the soles of my feet and out to my fingertips. “It’s so good.”
She smiles back, beams even, those lush lips a shock of scarlet in my greenhouse, where even my roses don’t get that red. “Plus,” she teases, “you still have to teach me how to run a classroom.”
I drop a kiss to her forehead and then step back, pull my hand away, under the pretense of cleaning up the dead basil parade the twins threw for Fern. In just a minute, I’ll be fine, and by tomorrow, I’ll have buried this somewhere deep, grown roots around it, trapped it somewhere where it can never see light again.
Just sex, nothing else.
“I have plenty more lessons in mind, Ms. Kowalczk,” I say with a decent stab at flirting.
And then I stoop to sweep up the basil, damp and dark around the torn edges, and avoid the jasmine plant in the corner as I go to throw it all away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Maddie
The door to the adjunct office is closed, so I talk loudly to one of the TAs about an ongoing filibuster happening in the Wisconsin state senate to make sure that if Anton and Martin are mid-coitus, they’ll hear me coming.
But when I let myself in, the only person waiting for me is Bram in the much too small armchair in front of the shared adjunct desk.
He stands as I enter, and before I can even close the door, he asks, “How did it go?”
I shuck off my coat and hang it and my bag on the hook near the door and lie, because if I’m just not looking at him, I can lie. “Fine,” I say. “He apologized.”
“So you’re saying you confronted Wallace about barging into your class earlier and earlier every day, and that it was fine, and that he apologized.”
“That’s exactly it,” I tell him as I discard my slouchy cardigan as well and then smooth a hand over my bangs, a self-soothing habit I’d done since I was a child. I’d missed my bangs. I’d missed my dark hair. After three years of looking in the mirror and seeing a stranger, I finally feel a little more like myself.
With the signature bob I’d worn since middle school back, I’d found myself reaching for one of my favorite older T-shirts this morning. A black shirt so heavily faded that it was more of an acidic gray and in a tiny, dainty embroidered script across the chest it readI SUPPORT WOMEN’S WRONGS. I paired it with a burgundy-plaid pleated skirt and my beloved chunky loafers. When I came down the stairs this morning, Bram took one look at my shirt and let out a softmmmmbefore saying, “Me too.”
“Madelyn,” Bram says now, in a voice that borders on scolding.
I turn to face him, my proud shoulders rounding into slopes. “It was a hard morning, okay?”
He steps toward me and takes my hand in his, his thumb running along the space between my thumb and pointer finger. “What happened?”
“Everything was fine. I visited Junie in the library and then just before class started, I got a text from Gentry asking me to please remove any photos of us from my social media because they’re doing a scrub of the internet before early voting starts. I haven’t even logged onto social media since I left California and there were all these awful messages from his friends saying how sorry they were to see us split and how everything happens for a reason.”
His lips purse, nostrils flaring. “I’m sorry,” he grinds out.
“It’s stupid. It’s not like I want any evidence of our relationship out there anyway. But it just... it made me feel like I’d done something wrong. Like I was the reason things ended. Or that I’m some kind of stain.”
