Page 42 of Misadventures with a Professor
“Okay, yes, my family has some money.” Even that vague admission feels unclean. “And there’s no trauma, no division, but the way they are about what they have is very old-fashioned to me. I try to avoid it and I think they try to avoid me.”
And then I let out a breath. It didn’t kill me to say it out loud, and it actually felt nice, a little bit, telling someone about how unpleasant my family can be.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” she asks, taking my hand and pulling me to a cove of mullioned windows to admire the green expanse outside. “Maybe you just need the right family, you know? One that fits you.”
And the strange thing i
s that I’m looking at her as she says that, as she gazes through the diamond patterns of glass out onto the verdant expanse of grass and hills, and I’m thinking of her. I’m thinking of her as my family.
It tempts me more than I can bear.
But I force myself to remember the ticking clock of summer. Force myself to remember Rosie’s cruel words all those years ago.
Degenerate.
Deviant.
Even if we didn’t have that date in August demarcating our time, how could I ever expect someone as full of promise and innocence to want to tie herself to a monstrous recluse like me? Zandy might think these kinds of games are fun for a summer, but how could she ever want someone like me for longer? Someone as contorted and sexually corrupt as me?
At the end of the day, Zandy will be the same as Rosie, and she’ll be sick of me. It’s better to prepare myself for that now and plan for a clean break, no matter how much it burns to think of it.
No matter how much it hurts.
Chapter Thirteen
Zandy
It occurs to me the next day.
I’m at the kitchen table making a shopping list, and then I have to double check the date on my phone. I run upstairs and riffle through my things and see that I’ve only got a handful of travel-worn tampons to call my own, and my period is due to start any day now. I trot back downstairs and add tampons to the list, along with the various foodstuffs and household supplies Oliver needs. If I didn’t shop for him, I think he’d probably survive on canned soup and tea. It’s a little charming in a bachelor kind of way, if it isn’t also a little stupefying.
The day proceeds as normal—I work, Oliver fucks me, I shop, Oliver fucks me again—and it’s as I’m snuggling to sleep in Oliver’s arms that I wonder how we’ll navigate my period. I’ve never done this before, the whole lover thing, and I’m not sure what the protocol is. Do I give him a warning that it’s coming, or do I just wait until it’s arrived and apologize? Will he still be okay fooling around on my period?
And what if he still wants to have sex? Am I comfortable with that?
It’s a lot to digest, and so I’m still thinking over it as I fall asleep, and again as I wake up to Oliver stroking my flanks in a way that lets me know he’s thinking about spanking me.
We do a morning spanking and a morning fuck, and then it’s time for the day to get on, except there’s a little niggle of unease at the back of my mind.
No period yet.
I shower and go downstairs, and he gets in from his run and showers too, and we work together for most of the day, my sense of unease growing. But I have no idea how to vocalize it to him, no idea how to express my worries, because what if his first thought is of Rosie? What if he’s so triggered by his bad pregnancy experience with her that he gets angry with me?
Or worse, what if he thinks I’m the clingy girl who’s tried to trap him into something by getting pregnant?
Oh God. Just the thought itself is enough to make me nauseous…except, was I already nauseous? Am I truly nauseous now? No. I’m overreacting, I’m just queasy from nerves and worry, that’s all. Nothing to do with that.
Except the next morning when I wake up in Oliver’s arms, I am definitely nauseous. For real nauseous. I slide free of him and make my way to the bathroom, where I splash my face with cold water and force myself to get un-nauseous.
He said the condom broke that day by the river.
But that was just two days ago. I’ve done enough research to know that conception could have only happened two weeks or so ago, and that would have been in London, and I’d bought all of those condoms brand new. But…
We used one of his condoms in London.
Oh God.
No.
