Triple Love Score (10 page)

“Guess what I just did?” Miranda said. She knew how Danielle would respond.

“What or who?”

Miranda relished that she could finally answer who. It had been many years since a who. “Who. A student.”

“What? A student. Are you crazy? Is this Miranda?”

“Well, not really a student, he’s auditing the class. But I didn’t know that until after.”

“After?”

“After the second time.” It felt good to finally have juicy details.

“Okay, spill.”

So Miranda did, telling her everything.

“And you were like prepared for that. You had condoms just sitting around. Or did he bring them? And ewww—he brought more than one. What does that mean he thinks about you?”

“Condoms. No, I’m still on the pill.”

“Really? You let some random guy go bareback. You, Miss Straight and Narrow just said, ah, fuck it?”

“Ah, well, not really. I wasn’t thinking about it.”

“Are you thinking about it now?”

“I guess so.” Miranda regretted this phone call. She wanted to go back to just being proud of herself for doing something that didn’t require a five-year plan, something that just felt good and to hell with the consequences. “Tell me about your students. How’s their English coming?” She hoped to change the subject.

“They are doing fine, really fine. But I want to talk about you. What brought this on all of a sudden? Random sex with a student? Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Thanksgiving, ugh.”

“Why ugh? You like the holidays. How’re Avery and Stanton?”

“They’re fine. The holidays are fine. Okay. Scott was there.”

“Scott?”

“Thai food and Scrabble Scott. The Scott I grew up with. Scott Cramer.”

“The one and only? Mister gone and lost forever?”

“Yeah, that one. Oh, and he has a daughter. She’s like six or seven. And perfect. Lynn’s her name. I have to tell you, though, she says she’s my new best friend. We even shook on it.”

“Replacing me are you? Hmmm. We’ll see. What about the mother?”

“No mother. Just them.”

“So the guy you crushed on is still single, with a kid. You like kids.”

“I know I like kids. I like this kid. She was fun to be with. We went into the city to see the Macy’s balloons the night before, and then in the morning Scott and I had a thing, a spat really, then zip, cold shoulder.”

“Cold shoulder? Nothing?”

“He only broke his silence to me at dinner. He told me I should look up some guy to help me market Blocked Poet.”

“You told them about that?”

“Yeah, I wanted Avery and my dad to know. It’s not like I can win a big legal case and protect the wheels of justice or anything. It’s just nice to have something to show for myself, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. I just thought you were keeping that on the down low.”

“I am. It’s just them. And Scott. But they don’t know anything about it really. They wouldn’t rat me out; they don’t have anybody to rat me out to.”

“You should contact the guy.”

“What guy?”

“The marketing guy. That stuff is good. You should make something out of it. Make it big.”

“Hmmmm …,” Miranda said.

“Don’t hmmm me. Do it. I gotta go, though; it’s time for class to start. We’re doing Valentine’s Day today.”

“But it’s November still.”

“But this is the order the textbook goes in. It covers all American holidays. Last year, I had an Arbor Day unit. We studied the vocabulary of trees.”

“Vocabulary of trees?”

“Not everyone can be a famous internet poet.”

“Ha!”

“Ha, yourself. You should call the marketing guy and not the student.”

“I don’t even have the student’s number. And he’s not a student. His name is Ronan. From Ireland.”

“Wow, you nailed the foreign exchange student?”

“Graduate student.”

“But gee, you just said he wasn’t a student. Stop confusing me, okay? Call me later, but honestly, be careful.”

“Thanks, Mom. It’s not like I’ve ever done this kind of thing before.”

“Exactly. That’s what has me worried,” Danielle said.

W
HEN RONAN DIDN’T TURN UP at her apartment the next day or the day after, Miranda fought the urge to be upset. Maybe it was a one-time thing. Maybe he didn’t mean anything by it. She experimented with being the type of woman who enjoyed a one-night stand. She found herself striding across campus, hips swinging in a wide sashay to teach her mandatory Thursday composition classes, where she tried in vain to steer them away from plagiarizing their final research papers through a mixture of humor and begging. She smiled. A lot. The Friday department meeting was canceled and not rescheduled again until after the Christmas break. The end of the term was in sight, and somehow, she was suddenly a woman who knew how to have a good time. No strings attached. This lightness, the new attitude she tried on for size, sparked her creativity. She posted a dozen new works, all of which spread through the Internet like wildfire. She tracked their link-backs and trackbacks with glee. When her Instagram gained another ten thousand followers overnight, Miranda dug out the paper marked Ambrose Reed from the bottom of her purse.

Ambrose Reed, she entered into Facebook. Nothing. Then she remembered the Q and up he popped. Zero security settings. She could see his entire page. Each picture linked to some product or person. She recognized almost all of them. The mouse cursor hovered over the link to his email address. Click. Scott Cramer sent me, she typed in the subject line. Then she sat there, staring at the blank message area. She wasn’t sure what she needed to ask. She wanted something in her life to go somewhere. She wanted this new attitude to be about more than having sex with a hot guy. She wanted it to be about how she lived her life. She didn’t want to be afraid to make things happen. She wanted to stop waiting. But none of that would matter to Ambrose Q. Reed anyway. From the look of it, he mainly cared about selling things; perhaps a means to an end? If her work for Blocked Poet was something you could sell, he would be just that. Finally, she copied in the links to her Instagram and Twitter accounts and added the word “interested” with a question mark. Then she closed the email with her cell phone number.

The weekend stretched before her like a blank canvas. Finding no coffee in the cupboard, Miranda headed into town. She brought a notebook and a plan to sit in the café and write something. She wanted to watch people and eavesdrop. Research, she called it.

This town suited her in a thousand different ways, but the ability to walk to get a cup of coffee always ranked high on the reasons she listed for other people. But she really liked the anonymity and fluidity of living in a college town—small town living with none of the guilt. You saw the same people, but every year a whole bunch filtered out and a new bunch filtered in. By the time the coffee girl knew your habits well enough to ask you with true concern how your day was, she was off to Boston to work in finance or attend law school in Manhattan or move back into her parents’ basement on Long Island. You could smile and wave, make polite conversation, but the transient nature of things meant you could sit and stare for hours without anyone trying to interrupt you.

Miranda looked at her watch. Ten-fifty. Not quite time for lunch. Not quite time for breakfast. She stood there staring at the chalkboard behind the counter still advertising last week’s turkey noodle soup. That can’t be good, she thought. Someone brushed up behind her, so she stepped forward, mumbling, “Excuse me,” under her breath.

“Can I help you?” the counter girl asked.

Before Miranda could speak, she heard the Irish accented request for two coffees.

“Ronan,” Miranda whispered. The air left her lungs. Goosebumps pricked up along the back of her neck. “Hi,” she said. But it came out squeaky, two syllables instead of one.

He pressed his hand against the small of her back. “Hi,” he said into her hair just above her ear. “I was hoping to find you.”

“You knew where I was.”

“But I wanted a sign,” he said.

“A sign?” Miranda was grateful for the conversation. She felt her skin returning to normal. She turned to face him. His smile, for a moment, disarmed her, but she shook it off. “A sign? What about a phone call?”

“Exactly. You didn’t call me.”

“Call you?”

“Yes, Miranda, you could have called me. You have my number the same way I have yours.”

Her cheeks flushed. The text messaged poems in class. She did have his number. “Oh,” she said.

“Barring that, I wanted another sign. I wanted the universe to tell me that it wasn’t just one great night, that I wasn’t crazy for thinking about you, all of you, every minute for the last three days.”

“And this is a sign? Here at the coffee shop?”

“I am a desperate man. I will take whatever sign I can. And I hate this coffee shop. I never come in here.” He said this part a little loudly. The counter girl slid their two cups across the counter with a heavy hand. Coffee slurped over the edge leaving a brown watery stain like a slug’s trail. He made eye contact with the counter girl. “See,” he said. “No customer service.” He put five dollars on the counter, picked up both cups, and walked toward the tables in the front. He set the cups down on the table. Miranda moved to sit. Stopping her, he picked up her hands. “I can’t do this. Let’s go somewhere else,” he said.

Miranda felt her head actually spin. His hands felt so warm around hers. Her body tingled. “Yes,” she said. “Let’s.” Her mind immediately leapt to a replay of their night together as she tried to guess whether he would lead them to his place or hers.

Instead he led her to the corner store and bought her another coffee in a to-go cup; she tried to not be disappointed both in the location and the weakness of her own flesh. Then without asking how she liked it, he put in the right amount of cream and sugar. A sign, she thought, not saying it aloud, though, for fear of encouraging him in that direction.

“Thank you,” she said, when he handed her the cup.

He tipped his head to her and held open the door for her to pass.

“What, you aren’t talking to me?” she asked.

He shrugged and clasped her free hand, tugging her down the sidewalk in the opposite direction of her apartment, toward campus. When they got to the main gate, a classic affair with stone pillars and wrought iron arches, Miranda stopped walking.

“I don’t know about this,” she said.

“What? What this? You come here every day.”

“Exactly. I work here.”

“Remember, I’m not your student. I’m an auditor.”

“Is there really a difference?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“I looked it up. The day after we had drinks at your place. I’m not some kid, Miranda. I might even be older than you.”

Miranda scanned his unlined face, the thin reddish stubble, his beautiful blue eyes. He looked like a sixteen-year-old who just figured out how to shave.

“You don’t think so,” he said. “I’m thirty next year,” he continued.

“Thirty?”

“And you? Am I right? Am I older than you?”

“I’m twenty seven. Well in a few months, I will be.” It was weird wanting to be older all of a sudden.

“So have we fully established that we are both consenting adults and allowed to enter university property together?”

She shrugged. No words came. Traitors, she thought.

“Shall we?” he said. “I have something I want to show you.”

Ronan led the way through the campus, not heading toward the liberal arts building, but toward the other side that housed the gym and the defunct football stadium. He stopped at the door of a small stone building marked Aldridge House.

“Have you been?” he asked.

“No, what is it?”

“Ah, let’s go in and see.”

A student sat in a chair right in the center of the small foyer, next to a tiny table with a guest book. She nodded in time to the music on her iPod. She wore the standard uniform of the bored undergraduate girl, hoodie and yoga pants with shearling boots. The student slipped out a single ear-bud. “Sign in,” she said.

Miranda could hear the music, tinny, and small. Something poppy like Katy Perry or Britney Spears.

“What is this place?” Miranda asked.

“Go in there,” Ronan said. He pointed to the black velvet curtains to their right.

“Curtains for a door? What kind of place is this?”

“Not very trusting are you?” Ronan asked.

“Past experience,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

He bent down and kissed her nose. “I like you,” he said. “A lot. Follow me.” He parted the curtains. Inside the darkly lit space stood rows of low tables with glass tops. Inside the cases, sat books opened with pinpoint lights from the ceiling shining down on them. The gold paint glowed under the light.

“It’s the Canterbury Tales. Early 1400s. The exhibition just opened. With the low lights this was one of the few places on campus suited to host it.”

“I love these,” Miranda said. “How did you know?”

“You mentioned the gap-toothed wife as an example once.”

“Once?” She looked up at him, taking stock of his face again. She didn’t understand this turn of events. No one ever paid attention to things she said. Certainly not things about Chaucer. Not even her literature students preparing for a quiz paid attention like that.