“Go on,” she said. “I know they’re your favorite.”
“And you made them just because I was coming home?” He chuckled and picked off a bite of one steaming muffin, plucking it between his fingers. “Today’s really not special, Mom. Within a week you’ll be sick of having me underfoot.”
“I could never.” She dropped herself down into a chair opposite him, propping her chin in her hands and watching him fondly. “And knowing you, you’ll probably still never be here what with living up at that school.”
“It’s mandatory. I’ve got to do my part as dorm monitor.” He made himself swallow a bite; even if he’d loved his mother’s orange crème muffins since he was old enough to talk, right now it tasted overly sweet, cloying, lodging in his still-tight throat. “Though I may just end up moving in with you and looking for a new job. I...uh... I kind of screwed up.”
Her eyes sharpened. “Now how did you manage that when you’ve not even started yet?”
“...nothing. I didn’t do anything.”
“So you managed to screw up by not doing anything?” Her brows lifted mildly. “That’s unlike you. Usually when you screw up, you’re at least trying.”
“Funny.”
“Darling, what did you do?”
He winced. “...IkissedProfessorIseya,” he mumbled under his breath.
“Try that one more time, dear. With air.”
“Oh God.” Summer let the muffin plunk back to the plate and dropped his face into his hands. “I kissed him. Professor Iseya. I just...kissed him.”
His mother gasped. “Fox Iseya? Oh dear.”
“...I don’t think ‘oh dear’ really covers it.”
She made an odd sound, before pressing her fingers to her mouth—but that didn’t stop her lips from twitching at the corners. “Oh—oh, darling, I still remember you doodling his initials in your notebooks. And learning how to read those—what were those letters?”
“...hiragana...”
“...yes, that. Just so you could write his name the proper way.”
“Oh my God, Mom, stop.” He pressed his burning cheeks into his palms, closed his eyes, and told his churning stomach to calm the hell down. “I was seventeen.”
“And it was adorable.” She chuckled fondly. “But whatever possessed you to kiss him today?”
“He pissed me off.”
“One, language. Two, that is highly unexpected, coming from you. My mild-mannered boy.” She patted his hand, and he cracked one eye open on her warm, indulgent smile. “Three, most people don’t kiss people when they’re angry.”
“Yeah, well, I’m weird. We’ve always known that.” He sighed, dropping his hands and folding his arms on the table. “He didn’t even give me a chance. He just told me I haven’t changed and I’m not fit to teach a class, which makes me wonder why he even agreed to work with me. Then he challenged me to like...assert my authority or something just once every day, if I want to prove myself. So... I kissed him.”
She clucked her tongue. “Well, that is certainly quite assertive.”
“I can tell you’re trying not to laugh.” Groaning, he dropped his head and thudded his brow against his forearm, burying his face in his arms. “Go on. Get it out.”
“I wouldn’t laugh at you, darling.” Her small, warm hand rested to the top of his head, weaving into his hair...and it struck him with a quiet ache just how weightless her hands were, as if her bones had turned hollow as a bird’s. “I take it, though, it didn’t go over well.”
“How did you guess?”
“Because it’s Fox. Not because of you.” His mother sighed gently and tucked his hair back with a lingering touch. “You were too young to know him before his wife died. We were actually fast friends, he and I, before he shut everyone out and isolated himself.”
Professor Iseya’s...wife? Summer lifted his head sharply, staring at his mother, his heart thumping in erratic sick-lurch rhythm. “He was married?”
“For some time when he was close to your age, yes.” She smiled, blue eyes dark, soft. “He was really the kindest, sweetest man...but when he lost Michiko, well...” She shook her head. “Loss and grief can change people.”
“When did this happen?”
“When you were...about four or five, I would say. Terrible tragedy, truly. She fell asleep behind the wheel one night on her way home from her job in Medford, and lost control of her car on the bridge over the Mystic. Her car sank right to the bottom of the river.” His mother bowed her head, lines seaming her round, soft features. “Fox was never the same after that.”
“I...oh.” Guilt plunged through Summer in a hard strike, sinking deep as a spear into his flesh. He knit his brows. “Why haven’t I ever heard about this?”
“You were quite young, dear, and it was grown-up business. And over time, the whole town learned to stop speaking about it out of respect for Fox. I don’t think the man’s ever stopped grieving.”
Or he never allowed himself to grieve in the first place, Summer thought with dawning realization.
And just like that, far too many things fell into place.
When he’d been a student at Albin, all he’d seen was Professor Iseya—aloof, untouchable, mysterious, his icy armor all the more fascinating for the secrets it promised. As a boy it had been too easy to daydream about being the one to tease past that armor to discover everything hidden inside; to be the special one the cold, somewhat frightening professor defrosted for. There’d been a touch of the forbidden, too, when Iseya had been nearly forty by the time Summer graduated, and that stern, subtly domineering demeanor had inspired a few whispered thoughts of just what he might do to Summer in private when Summer was young, vulnerable, inexperienced.
But those had been childish fantasies, entirely inappropriate and impossible, and suddenly that frigid exterior took on a wholly different meaning when seen through older eyes.
When it was the defensive shield of a man in pain, struggling to find a way to function in his everyday life, fighting his pride to keep from
