It was well past the beginning of the party when I arrived. Some people had already come and gone; others lingered like fog on a windshield after a heavy make-out session between two high schoolers: unwelcome evidence of things that probably shouldn’t be going on.
These parties functioned as bacchanals, probably wilder than some of the frat parties going on not far from here, but much more exclusive and sought after by the student population of the writing department. I’d come originally to witness the debauchery—to see what kind of party a professor could throw that had become campus legend—but I’d stayed when Tom had gotten his hooks deep into the marrow of my bones, now inextricable, it seemed.
On the back patio, I spotted him.
A group of girls—probably freshmen—stood, hanging on his every word like he was a good-natured priest giving casual communion. They listened with intent that betrayed their true motives. I hung back and observed, irritation making my skin itch in a way that couldn’t be scratched.
Tom’s eyes flicked upward, catching mine. He locked them on me for a moment as one of the girls continued to talk to him. I held his gaze, the line of our sight felt like it held its own gravity. I let myself sink into it, and as though I’d been summoned—the warlock’s familiar—I walked over.
“Excuse me,” he said to the three girls. Drink in hand, he turned to me and dismissed them just like that. Miffed, one of them turned up her nose at me, but the three of them soon decided it was better to go mingle or refresh their drinks than stand and watch over Tom’s conversation with me.
“Hey,” I said. The greeting was so informal, and even though I’d run my hands through his hair and dug my heels into his backside, it felt inappropriate.
“Hey, you,” he chanced a fleeting touch of my face. Something that could have been noticed by any of the students there. Something that felt infinitely dangerous and just as exhilarating. “I wanted to talk to you about something. Come with me.”
Tom turned and I followed him as he walked down, off of the patio and into the garden, meticulously cultivated and illuminated by a series of delicate string lights. I wasn’t sure they would survive a storm come the spring.
Away from the crowd and obscured by a rose bush, he pulled me to him. His hand brushed my face and his kiss tasted like everything we shouldn’t be doing here and now. Whiskey infused his breath and I wanted to get drunk on it. He pulled back, a smile on his slightly parted lips.
“I want to select you for the Headlights award,” he said. “And subsequently, the Gorman Fellowship.”
The words were like a marriage proposal. The thrill washed over me. The possibilities of the future ebbed away and then crashed back down on me in that moment. But something unsettled me about it, much like the fallen leaves in the too-warm weather.
“Tom, I can’t—”
“You can, and you will,” he said.
“I don’t—”
“You do deserve it. This has nothing to do with—” he let the sentence hang in the air, unfinished. My worst fear dangling from the unpunctuated end of it. The idea that Tom would choose me simply because I’d slept with him. I recoiled from the thought, terrified of its veracity.
A crumpled smile broke across my face.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You don’t have to thank me. You’ve earned it.”
I leaned in to kiss him and he stopped me.
“If we start, I won’t be able to stop, Ione. I—” he grabbed my hand. “You know how I feel about you, don’t you?”
“We don’t have to—”
“Yes, we do.”
The weight of the moment bore down on me like an anvil.
“I’m crazy about you,” he said. “I’m in love with you and I can’t help it.”
Tom squeezed my hand.
“We’d better get back to the party.”
I followed his lead, emerging from the garden to see the three girls looking our direction. One of them glared at me while another sneered knowingly. I pressed imaginary wrinkles from my blouse, suddenly self-conscious in front of them. I shook it off and left to make myself a drink.
Inside, the party raged on. The music was louder than usual, the hangers on a little drunker than they would have been had I arrived a few hours earlier. I poured a whiskey and sat the bottle back on the counter.
The house shuddered with the slamming of a door. The music stopped.
“Party’s over!” shouted a female voice.
I saw her through the glass-walled cabinets in the kitchen that looked out over the living room. Tall, thin, wearing scrubs. She had reddish-blonde hair pulled back in a loose bun. Beautiful. And furious. There was no doubt in my mind that this woman was Vanessa, Tom’s wife.
Students scattered like cockroaches before her. As the house emptied, I sat my drink down, eager to make my own exit but also disgusted at myself for being afraid of her. It spoke to the fact that maybe Birdie was right.
As I rounded the corner that led from the kitchen into the front hallway, she stopped me, almost colliding with me.
“You’re her,” she said it as though the knowledge had just come over her by some unseen force. I couldn’t imagine how she could have known who I was. “You’re the girl my husband is fucking.”
Even as she said it—those words so desperate—she was entirely self-possessed. Her eyes didn’t betray a hint of tears and her voice didn’t shake. She said the sentence as though she’d been looking for me for a long time. All her married life, perhaps. I stood, dumbfounded by her confidence.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked.
My lips parted to speak, and she swung a hand up from her side. She slapped me hard enough that
