Page 52 of Misadventures with a Professor
I get in my car and speed to the airport, but I know even as I wince my way through all the speed traps that I’ll be too late. Zandy doesn’t do anything by half-measures, and she has a plan for everything—whether it’s arranging my hallway bookshelves or getting Beatrix to switch to dry cat food. There’s no way in hell she doesn’t have a concrete plan for escape. She made a spreadsheet to help her decide what to do about this pregnancy, for pity’s sake.
And even as I fruitlessly search the public parts of the airport, I can’t help but admire her. Even her spreadsheets and escape routes. Even her spine of steel normally hidden behind schoolgirl enthusiasm and lush curves.
How could I have been so foolish as to let a woman like her slip through my fingers?
“Zandy, thank fuck.”
I’m in my study, warm summer darkness pressing up against the windows and Beatrix lying sideways on my desk, watching me pace the floor. A floor I can only pace because of Zandy’s hard work in organizing my research.
“Oliver,” Zandy says quietly. I know it’s morning in the States—in the last three days of ceaselessly calling and emailing, I’ve become something of an expert in time zones—but she sounds exhausted. Raspy, like she’s been crying.
The thought of it burns in my chest.
“I just—” I stop, searching for the right words to say. I’m still stunned she finally picked up the phone, and I don’t want to say anything wrong. I don’t want to scare her away. “How are you? And the baby?”
“The baby is currently the size of a pomegranate seed,” Zandy says. “So I think it’s fine.”
She doesn’t answer how she is, and she doesn’t have to. Her voice says it all.
“Zandy, I—I fucked up. I should have listened. I should have talked. I should have done everything differently.”
There’s silence on the other end, and somehow I know it wasn’t good enough, that she needs more. “I love you,” I say. Plead. “I want you. And this baby. And I’ll do anything to prove it.”
“Are those the things you think you have to say?” she asks softly. Too softly, but I don’t see the danger.
“Of course. Aren’t they the things you need to hear?”
A sharp breath, like a gasp. From all the way across the Atlantic, it sounds like a gunshot.
“Zandy? What did I say wrong? Tell me, tell me and I’ll fix it, I swear to God.”
“Don’t you see?” she whispers. “I don’t want this to be about what you think you should do. I don’t want you to leave your research. I don’t want you to marry me if you are only doing it out of some kind of half-baked obligation of honor.”
I sputter a little at that, but she’s not done.
“And I especially don’t want you to give up the professor games. How could I, when they make me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt? When they’re a part of you, and I love every part of you?”
The burning in my chest is a fire now, an inferno, and it’s searing my very soul. “I love you too, Zandy. Don’t you see that’s why I’m willing to give up anything to be with you?”
“And don’t you see that’s why I can’t let you?” Her voice wavers, and I know she’s close to tears, if she’s not already crying. Damn this distance, this ocean! I tighten my hand around my phone as if I can pull her back to me through the tiny device.
“I want you just as you are,” she continues. “And I
refuse to be the reason you ruin your life. I’m sorry that Rosie made you feel like you didn’t deserve a child or a future because of the things you like in bed, but dammit, Oliver, if you can’t see how absurd that is after all these years, then I don’t know how to make you.”
Defensiveness wells up in my throat. “It’s not absurd. It’s reality. People like me can’t have families; that’s why I have to change.”
“But money isn’t an issue, so you shouldn’t need to change jobs, and there’s no law that says we have to be married to have a child together. And there’s certainly no law that says people can’t have playful sex after they have a baby. You’re inventing this new version of yourself that’s wholly unnecessary, and it’s a new version I don’t want. I love you how you are, and I refuse to be the excuse for you to hurt yourself.” She takes a deep breath, and it trembles enough that I know she’s truly crying now. “I love you, but I deserve more than being a duty. I deserve the man I love—as he is—choosing me because he’s happy to choose me. Not because he feels forced.”
She hangs up, and the sudden silence on the other end might kill me, save for one thing.
I understand now.
She isn’t upset that I hadn’t acted happy enough. She wants to save me from the mire of self-loathing I’ve been in since Rosie left me. And for the first time in years, I not only want to save myself, but I recognize that I don’t have to. I didn’t love Rosie in any real measure, and I’ve been a fool to let her words fester and slowly infect me.
If Zandy will have me as a crabby scholar who delights in taking her over my knee, then that’s what she will get.
And to hell with the rest.
