Teaching Roman (16 page)

“So I got a letter from the SEC,” I said in attempt to break the tension in the air.

“I saw.” Jills slammed her book shut and flashed me a hopeful smile. “Are you going to sit on the board again?”

“I wish,” I said in a flat voice, and the fake smile fell off Jill’s face. “Nope. This year I thought ‘why sit on the board? They need a challenge. What the hell? Maybe I should have an affair with a teacher, almost get pregnant, and get called up in front of the board.’”

“Interesting plan,” Jills said in a weak voice as her eyes searched for something to say. Growing up with Tara meant she often had a hard time being comforting, even though she tried to be.

“And it worked!” I continued in mock enthusiasm, waving the letter.

“Maybe you should open it.”

That was the last thing I wanted to do, but with the proof of Roman and I’s indiscretion staring me in the face, indignation swelled in me. I was mad at Brett for tattling like we were still in elementary school, and I was mad at Cassie for not stopping me in Mexico, and I was mad at both my best friends for letting it keep going when we gotten back. And I was livid with Roman for the roller coaster ride he’d abandoned me on halfway through. But mostly I was angry at myself for being stupid. I’d let Roman distract me from school and my career. Brett might have turned out to be an asshole, but at least he’d never made me fall in love with him.

Buoyed by my anger, I ripped open the envelope and skimmed the letter.

“What does it say?” Jills asked.

“Blah. Blah. Blah. An ethical complaint has been made against you,” I said, adding, “
by your douchebag ex-boyfriend
. A hearing has been scheduled to determine if disciplinary action should be administered. Due to the serious nature of the claim—”I rolled my eyes—“the committee will also review your place within Olympic State University.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means—”I looked up at her—“they want to kick me out of school.”

Jills jumped up, dropping her textbook and notes. “They can’t do that!”

“I’m pretty sure they can.” For some reason facing what the letter had to say had calmed me, allowing rational Jess to take over. I’d sat on a number of cases involving expulsion. Even when it was considered, hardly any of them ever got that far. In fact, we’d only recommended it in the case of a violent assault between roommates.

“You need to call Lil,” Jills said.

“I’m not calling my sister.”

“She’s a lawyer.”

“You don’t bring a lawyer to an SEC hearing.”

“Is it against the rules?” Jess asked.

“No, but for fuck’s sake, Jills, this isn’t an episode of
Law & Order
. It’s not even an episode of
Judge Judy.
” There was no way I was calling Lil in on this one. The more I considered it, the more I knew the committee might recommend disciplinary action or level a fine for poor student conduct, but they wouldn’t kick me out, especially if Roman hadn’t been fired.

“I’ll go with you then.” Jills lunged toward me, but I held back the letter so she couldn’t see the hearing date. She and Cassie had been party to my humiliation for far too long.

“I’m fine. I still have friends on the committee. I bet they’ll laugh it off.” That was a lie. The committee changed annually to ensure
no one went mad with power,
as the faculty advisor had informed us. I would be on my own for this.

“Okay.” Jess sunk back onto the couch, but her eyes narrowed a bit. She didn’t believe me.

“I need to grab a shower before my study group later,” I said, fleeing down the hall. I didn’t have a study group tonight. All I really wanted was to be alone so I could handle this. I didn’t need anyone’s help.

I emerged later to find Jills gone and a note on the counter.

Meeting at Garrett’s at 9 for mandatory girls night. No questions asked. No excuses.

Part of me wanted to rip up the note or leave it on the counter and pretend I’d never seen it, but a girls’ night was too tempting. Along with a lot of utterly ridiculous rules we’d established freshman year, one of the ones that stuck was the no questions asked girls’ night. We’d let a lot of our other less-than-genius rules go by the wayside, even Jills had eventually let go of our boycatching tradition, but we’d kept girls’ night. It didn’t matter what was going on in our lives, those nights were reserved for being together and being silly. It was exactly what I needed. All I had to do was cancel an imaginary study group and find a way to kill the next three hours.

It was the midweek lull at Garrett’s. A handful of guys were sharing a drink at the bar, but even the dinner crowd had come and gone. No doubt Cassie would have already sweet-talked Frank into letting us use the “weekend-only” karaoke machine. I was going to need several drinks first.

I swept the bar, but the girls weren’t here yet. It was just like them to set up a mandatory girls’ night and then be late to it. But as I plopped onto a stool to wait, the door swung open and Lil stepped inside.

I’d drafted a pissed-off text to Jillian before Lil even spotted me. This was betrayal worthy of execution in my book, which meant it was a good thing she hadn’t bothered to bring Lil here herself. Jills needed a butt-the-fuck-out intervention.

Lil caught my eye and waved. There were lines under her eyes and I noted the wrinkles in her suit as she approached.

“Working late?” I asked her.

“I stayed at the office last night. Big case coming out.”

Guilt overtook anger as I took in how disheveled she looked. Lil already worked around the clock and now she had to come all the way out to Olympic Falls to straighten out her kid sister’s mistake.

“So Jillian called you,” I guessed as I led her over to a table.

“No,” she said. “You sent me a text message saying you had an emergency.”

“I forgot.” I gritted my teeth as I spoke, making a mental note to buy some sort of waterproof case for my phone. From not on I would have to take it into the shower with me.

“You said you needed my legal help,” Lil prompted. “What’s wrong, Jess?”

Jillian had intentionally made sure I couldn’t back out from telling my sister what was going on. I considered lying to her about a nonexistent speeding ticket, but Lil knew my driving record was more spotless than Snow White’s. I was still searching for an excuse when she reached out and grabbed my hand.

“I love you, kid. No matter what. I know it was Jillian that sent the message, but I hope you’ll tell me what’s going on.”

I crumbled, unable to hold myself together by sheer force of reason anymore, and the story spilled out of me. All of it. Lil managed to order us two drinks without interrupting me. She nodded in the right places, and when I got to the pregnancy scare, the muscles in her jaw tensed, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. My version of events included plenty of self-flagellation on its own.

“First of all, you aren’t stupid and you aren’t an idiot,” Lil said when I finished. She drew a steadying breath. “How old is this professor?”

“Twenty-six! He’s not even a professor. He just finished his doctorate last week.” My voice broke as I remembered my plan to jump him in his regalia. How had things fallen apart so quickly?

“So mostly this is all bad timing and not an abuse of power.” Lil was already starting to form her argument. I could see it in her eyes as she thought about how she would spin this case.

“I don’t need you to do anything about this.”

“Like hell,” Lil said. “I will be at that SEC hearing. He might be an instructor, but if he was a graduate student, then this is clearly a case of a
student
relationship. You weren’t in his class, right?”

I swallowed hard and shook my head. “Not this semester.”

“And you didn’t sleep with him while you were in his class?”

“No.” I half-expected a spotlight to flip on over my head as she interrogated me. Jills was always telling me I had a doctor mode. My sister had a lawyer mode. Still, I was comforted by her argument that Roman and I were in a student relationship. She was right after all. The trick would be to get other people to see it that way.

“If this was a real case, I wouldn't even take it to court. I'd have had the charges dismissed before the ink dried on that letter." Lil took a swig of her beer and grimaced. "Nothing like the good old university ethics system."

"Weren't you on the Ethics Committee at Yale?"

"Sure." She shrugged. "You had to be in law school. It was pretty much a requirement, but I thought it was stupid then. We have an actual court system for a reason."

Something about seeing Lil's hackles up made me smile, but she pointed an accusatory finger at me. "You might not have done anything to get you kicked out of school, kid, but that doesn't mean you were smart."

I wished I could hide under the table. I'd opened up to her like a book, which meant she knew all the drama I'd been through with Roman.

“There’s something about your story that I’d like you to clarify. What did you mean by 'I thought I was pregnant?'" she asked.

Right now the ability to turn invisible seemed like the greatest super power in the world. Unfortunately, I didn't possess the skill, so I had to answer her. "My period was late. I'd been having sex so I assumed."

"Did you take a test?"

"No, I'm pre-med but
that
didn't occur to me. I was planning on waiting to see if a baby fell out.”

"Don't be a jerk," Lil said. "Getting into a relationship with a grad student might not warrant getting kicked out of school, but how did you plan on staying in school if you got knocked up?"

"We would have figured it out," I said, even as I shrank back in my chair.

"
We
, huh? And this Roman would have stuck around?"

"Yes." I didn't even have to think about my answer. Right now things were messed up between us, but I knew beyond a doubt that he would have stood by me.

"I'm glad you're so sure of this. I've seen plenty of marriages end after an unplanned pregnancy, not to mention relationships."

"There's something you should know," I said, gathering up my courage. I sat up straighter in my chair and met my sister's eyes. "We love each other. Things are screwed up right now. We'll probably never fix things between us, but this wasn't just some crazy fling."

"I figured,” Lil said.

I stared at her, unsure how to respond.

"You've got a good head on your shoulders, kid. Other than needing a serious lesson in birth control, I trust your decisions. You aren't the type to jump into bed with a random guy."

“It was more of a fall into bed with him," I said weakly.

"And I bet you had a damn good reason for doing it.”

I thought about Roman rescuing Cassie from the angry bodega owner and how he chased down the man at the airport. Those memories made him a hero, but other moments flashed through my head. Roman agreeing to let Jills take a final when she didn't deserve a second chance, and when he taught me how to swim. I thought of jalapeños and Aba's dinner table. I wasn't entirely sure when I'd fallen in love with Roman, because love colored the memory of every moment that I had spent with him. But I knew why I loved him, and it was the same reason I’d kissed him that night on the patio.

“I take it that you aren’t together right now,” Lil said delicately.

My mouth went dry like I’d shoved cotton balls in it. I could only shake my head.

Lil didn’t push me to talk about it. Instead she ordered us another round and we sat in silence until the ache in my heart faded into the background.

“I need to get back to Seattle. Early court appearance.” Lil dug through her purse to retrieve her wallet. “But I will be here next Wednesday.”

“I can’t believe they scheduled it for finals week.” I would be mostly done with them by then. It would be too cruel if I was expelled after I’d taken all my tests.

“You aren’t going to be expelled,” Lil said as if she could read my mind.

At the door, I realized I had one more question for her. “How did you know Jills sent the message?”

“There were two emoticons,” Lil said, without skipping a beat. “No Stone has time for an emoticon in a text message.”

C
assie dressed me in blue for my hearing because she’d read that it made people feel sympathetic. I wondered if she’d discovered this wisdom nugget from the same source that assured Jills that if you studied drunk, you could ace a test drunk. It sounded like about the same caliber of logic, and I told Cassie that.

“It was a psychological study,” she said, sticking her tongue out at me as she fussed over my hair.

Jillian poked her head in the bathroom and I jumped. She’d been flitting about the apartment like a ghost for the last week, trying to avoid me after calling in my sister’s help. In the mirror, I saw Jills’ face fall before she disappeared. My anger toward her was already dissolving, but I couldn’t bring myself to call her back.

“You can’t give her the silent treatment forever,” Cassie whispered as she held out a pair of earrings for me to wear.

“I’m not ignoring her.”

“You aren’t talking to her either,” Cassie said. Every once in a while she managed to mimic my sister’s don’t-BS-me tone. This was one of those times.

“She could say she was sorry.”

“Did you apologize to her for calling Tara when she went into the hospital?”

I sifted through my memories, but couldn’t recall. Regardless, I knew one thing. “I’m not sorry for that. She was in the hospital. This is a totally different situation. Jillian’s medical well-being was at stake. It was her second episode in a short amount of time, and she needed to have more tests run.”

“Look you can justify it to yourself with lists, but consider how we feel.” Cassie placed a hand over her heart. I nearly laughed at the dramatic gesture but one look at her face shut me up. “You could be expelled, and you are by far the most responsible of the three of us. We need you here.”

I couldn’t quite stifle a snort at this. “Most responsible? I’ll be lucky to skate by with a B+ in two of my classes, I’m studying less than ever, and I’m going in front of the Ethics Committee.”