Forbidden Love (7 page)

They patted around, trying to find their
clothes. Shaking, Trisha stepped into her jeans, foregoing the
underwear, and yanked her shirt over her head. She stuffed her
panties and bra into her bag, which had flopped over and dumped out
her notebook, folders, and water bottle. The water bottle had
rolled away to somewhere, and she didn’t have time to look for
it.

“Back door,” Rusty said, and took her hand to
lead her up one of the aisles toward the office, which had an
exit.

They stood, blinking in the fierce white
sunlight.

“If you’ll forgive me, I’m going to hustle
back to the office,” Rusty said, and pecked her on the cheek. “That
was amazing—thanks. I’ll call you, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. The import of what she had
just done was beginning to register.

She watched Rusty turn around and hustle up
the walkway that swooped around the back of the Bernstein building.
He walked with confidence, hands in his pockets, shoulders
back.

She could have just found her soul-mate.

But Rusty didn’t call. She tried not to think
too deeply about it. She decided that something else must have
happened at home with his brother Hadden, or that he was
overwhelmed with his lesson planning for the Characterization
class. Guys were just not as detail-oriented, and she knew that if
she spent too much time pining for him, the next time she saw him,
he’d act like everything was fine. I’ll give him some leeway, she
thought. He’s got a lot going on. Instead, she luxuriated in the
memory of their rendezvous onstage. Her reveries held her in a
secure embrace the way that the present could not. Once she found
herself lying on her bed in the late afternoon, resting before
Millie met her for dinner, and she was so involved in her
daydreaming that she didn’t realize that her hands were drifting
all over her own body.

Trisha forced herself to
focus on her assignments, including the one for Characterization.
She had to choose an emotion, write a script that demonstrated the
emotion, and be prepared to perform the emotion without referring
directly to it.
Crestfallen
had jumped out at her from the list that Rusty
had provided. She was most practiced in feeling this way, she
figured, though she didn’t have any plans to be in that position
again. On Thursday, she headed to the second class, hopeful that
the quiet electricity between them would be enough to keep her
sane, considering she would have to look at him without touching
him, and watch him coach her peers with interest and
investment.

She didn’t know why her stomach was folding
in at the threshold of Room 201.

“Excuse me,” Heather Elks, one of Genevieve’s
friends, said. She was trying to squeeze past Trisha and into the
classroom.

Trisha stepped forward. She tried not to zero
in on Rusty directly, but kept her peripheral vision on him as she
strode to the same desk that she had claimed during the first
class. He was wearing a crisp white shirt, rolled up at the
sleeves, which made his skin look even bronzer than it was, and
charcoal gray dress pants. Trisha thought about how her father was
always commenting on the tailoring of men’s pants, the specific way
the leg bottoms should crease over the shoes, and knew he would be
impressed. Rusty was talking to Professor Kastarellis, smiling
lazily, and didn’t turn his head to greet her right away. She got
comfortable in her seat.

A few minutes passed. No wave, no wink, no
wrinkling of the forehead to say hello. Another minute went by, and
Rusty began calling the roll. He stated her name with no
inflection, gave her a business-like nod, and moved on.

What the fuck?

Humiliation crept up like fingers from her
neck to her cheeks. She was wondering why, after what had happened
between them, she felt the same way she did the first day of
class—abandoned and invisible.

“Everyone did the assignment, correct?” Rusty
said. He started to walk around the inside of the semi-circle of
desks, passing out long, narrow pieces of paper. “Now, randomly,
I’m going to give each of you a line from a famous play. There are
six pairs of lines. You will determine your partner for today’s
exercise by finding your line’s match.”

Trisha held her breath. He was coming
closer.

“How broad is your knowledge of dramatic
history?” he was asking. “Were you listening in Professor
Mackinson’s survey class last year?”

“When I wasn’t sleeping,” someone said, and
timid laughter broke.

And then, Rusty was standing in front of her.
As she took the paper out of his hand, she stroked her forefinger
against his.

“How familiar are you with the less familiar
Shakespeares?” he said, looking into her eyes. The line couldn’t
have been more neutral, and neither could his expression.

Too old by heaven: let still the woman take/
An elder than herself: so wears she to him,/ So sways she level in
her husband’s heart…

Trisha was considering the reality that she
might be crazy. Did the other day not exist? Had she fantasized so
hard that she convinced herself that it really happened? Or did she
need to resign herself to the understanding that the classroom was
just going to be the place where he fully separated from her, at
all costs—including her dignity?

Wandering around the room trying to find her
match, Trisha was barely paying attention. She was dazed. It took
her five full minutes to realize that the only two people left
standing without partners were her and Genevieve.

For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,/
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,/ More longing, wavering,
sooner lost and worn,/ Than women’s are.

“Twelfth
Night
,” Genevieve said with a
smirk.

“Orsino, Act II, scene iv,” Trisha added
flatly. She looked around. People had paired off around the
room.

“Now, you will perform your script to your
partner,” Rusty announced. “You will not tell your partner your
emotion ahead of time. Your partner will take notes on your
performance, recording the exact moments that moved them and
indicated to them what you were feeling. You will also record the
exact moments that didn’t work for you, and plan to explain why.”
He crossed his arms and leaned against the front table. “Now
go.”

Trisha snatched her notebook from her desk
and walked over to the piano in the corner of the room to sit down
on the bench, as far away from him as possible. All right, Trisha
thought. I’ll go along with this. I get it. I’ll play it cooler
than you—I’ll play it stone cold. Genevieve followed her, smacking
her gum.

“He’s so fucking hot,” Genevieve said. “I can
hardly stand being in this room right now. When do we get to do
love scenes, huh?” She took off her hoodie, revealing a tight tank
that didn’t entirely cover a lace-trimmed bra. “I gotta get the
attraction going.”

Trisha’s jaw hardened.
Suddenly, she had no interest in performing
crestfallen
. She wasn’t about to
play the victim with this bitch.
Hostile
. How about
hostile
?

“He’s worth every detail of his dysfunctional
life,” Genevieve said. She was looking back over her shoulder at
Rusty.

Trisha frowned. “What’s that supposed to
mean?”

“Oh, you know,” Genevieve said. “The whole
famous-father-who-doesn’t-give-a-crap thing, the fucked-up
brother…”

Trisha nodded slowly.
“Right,” she said. Famous father? Famous
dead
father?

Genevieve pulled her tank down over her hips
so that her cleavage was more prominent. Trisha looked down at her
own cashmere turtleneck sweater. The room must have been set at
seventy-five degrees; she was sweating.

Genevieve leaned forward slightly. “I heard
that his father put hundreds of thousands of dollars into a fund to
support the retarded brother, his medical bills and all that, and
is making Rusty wait until he’s dead to get any of his money.”

Trisha looked at Genevieve, her doe eyes that
signaled nothing about whether she was telling the truth, and then
over at Rusty, who was laughing along with Professor Kastarellis
again. But before she could figure out a way to investigate further
without revealing how clueless she was, Genevieve whipped out her
script and sighed.

“Are we doing this ridiculous shit, or
what?”

***

Trisha left at the end of class the same way
she had tried to a couple of days earlier—not looking back. Though
every step down the hallway without any kind of apologetic pursuit
from Rusty dug an arrow of regret deeper into her heart, she knew
that to hang around in search of his attention would just make
things worse. And she had to think about what Genevieve had told
her. Why would he lie to her? Why would the lie be so
outrageous—his parents fucking plunging into the sea? What did he
want from her? He didn’t need her sympathy to get her to sleep with
him, that must have been obvious. She wanted to cry, but held it
together until she reached the front door of Hastings Hall.

Trisha dropped her bag and coat just inside
the door of her room, ignoring the mucus running over her top lip,
and immediately opened her laptop.

“Daniel Treadway?” she said
out loud, staring at one of the entertainment news sites that her
Google search had brought up. “Daniel Treadway is Rusty’s
father
?”

Daniel Treadway was one of
her mother’s favorite actors.
Edgartown
Falls. Shaming of the Sheba. Grant Me Pardon.
His movie credits could go on for pages. He was painfully
handsome, to the point of being almost a freak of nature. Rusty’s
looks made perfect sense, now, of course. Trisha thought about
it—though Daniel Treadway was too old for her to pay close
attention to him, she couldn’t think of a recent film of his. She
remembered her mother going berserk over something he was starring
in a few years before.

It seemed pretty evident, though, that Daniel
Treadway was not dead.

Trisha sat back in her chair and crossed her
arms. How did she possibly bring this up without looking like an
idiot or a stalker? On the other hand, how could he think she
wouldn’t find out about this? Maybe he already thought she was a
dunce.

Her phone was buzzing inside her bag.

“I need to tell you something,” Rusty said.
“I know you’re probably pissed.”

“Probably?”

“Look—my department chair pulled me into his
office yesterday. Asshole DuVeigne told him that he saw me and you
conferencing in the stairwell. He read me the riot act about
meeting with students in ‘appropriate’ places. So now I’m being
watched.”

Trisha paused. Okay, so he had what sounded
like a valid excuse.

“You didn’t even say hello to me.” Her eyes
welled up just thinking about it. And on top of that, Genevieve
Chartrand was going around acting like some expert on his life.

“I know. I’m sorry. I was freaked out. You
don’t understand how much I need the stipend for this job. It’s
what I live on, Hot Pink.”

She was still looking at a photo of Daniel
Treadway on the red carpet.

“I’m sorry you live this way,” she said
carefully. “I’m sorry that you have no help.” Maybe she could lead
him into the right conversation for a confessional.

“Yeah, well,” he said, his voice trimmed in
an icy edge, “you have all these plans for how your life’s gonna
turn out…and shit gets in the way.”

Shit like bold-face lies? Trisha wanted to
confront him; the question balanced on her tongue. But something in
his tone stopped her. It was genuine anger, not arrogance. She
sensed that it was too soon to pry. She’d seen his temper. So what
did she do? Just keep on trusting? Keep on trusting the
mind-blowing chemistry they had, that beguiling grin of his, the
unreserved way he held her to his chest and called her Hot
Pink?

“Let me make it up to you,” Rusty said. “Come
to my place this weekend. My roommates are brothers and they’re
going home for a couple of days. I’ll cook for you. What do you
like? Shrimp scampi? I’ve perfected that dish.”

Trisha grimaced. “God, no. I hate
seafood.”

“You grew up in Rockport and you hate
seafood?”

“You would too if you came home with the
stink of fish on you all the time,” she said. “All through high
school, helping out at my parents’ restaurant, I smelled like that.
It was the slightest scent, but I couldn’t get rid of it.”

“Nasty,” Rusty said. “Thank God you got out
of there when you did.”

“Yeah, well…” She thought about the summer
ahead of her, which she hadn’t tortured herself with for days, now.
Damn.

“So what do you say, Hot Pink?” Rusty said
softly. “Do you remember Tuesday? Do you remember what happened
then?”

The mention of it spread a stimulating warmth
through her. “Yes. I remember.”