to cook for her in perpetuity, she was glad that for tonight, one had. She wondered what his wife was like, if she was as beautiful as he was, if she was as intelligent. She thought, despite her mildly palpable crush on Professor Nobells, that she could learn from both of them. How to negotiate a mortgage on a three-bedroom on the Upper West Side, how to cook a perfect chicken, how to raise kids in a world where it seemed like, soon enough, big tech would be able to implant chips in their brains.
Nobells ushered her into the kitchen, his hand on the small of her back.
“Oh, my wife, Amy, she’s away with the kids. Florida.” He pulled an apron over his head in one swift motion. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should have told you when I proposed this?”
Cleo felt blood rise to her cheeks, and she worried that he could see straight through her naivete. That she had quickly debated that this might be romantic, dismissed the idea as preposterous, only to discover that maybe it was. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that: it was one thing to stare at your professor from the third row while he lectured. It was another to be invited into his home under the guise of wise counsel and realize that he actually wanted to woo you.
Cleo reminded herself that he was married. And she wasn’t reckless. But he had gripped her shoulder outside of class and run his hand down her arm and palmed the small of her back just a minute ago, which sent an electric pulse up her spine.
Nobells uncorked the wine and reached for two crystal wineglasses he had at the ready. He poured them generous fills and then raised his glass, so Cleo followed, her head still spinning, her brain trying to keep up, her heart racing so quickly that it felt like it might explode inside her chest cavity. She wondered if he would say something suggestive, something even mildly romantic. She hoped not, not because she didn’t every once in a while fantasize about him kissing her from her seat in the third row, but because she knew this wasn’t how she wanted to be seen. Cleo McDougal was a serious person, a serious student, and she wanted to be treated as such. (She thought. Mostly.)
“To hoping my chicken is as good as I promised.” He grinned.
And she grinned too. “I can drink to that.”
They clinked their glasses, and then they did.
It wasn’t until years later, when Cleo had extricated herself from the messiness of the affair, that she had seen it for what it was. She had written it on her list, yes, but that was just the regret. The pain, the secrets, the shame, all of it. They had been careful. Meticulous. Because it was in both of their natures. Amy hadn’t ever caught them, and if she suspected anything, Cleo never heard.
Back then, she had blamed herself as much as she had blamed him. She could have left that night. She could have turned him down. She hadn’t gone there seeking anything physical, but she hadn’t gotten up and left when his motives became clear.
Even now, she understood that there was still plenty of blame to go around. She wasn’t one to shirk that. Never had been. But years later, her perspective had shifted. That it was never an equal decision, that he was her professor, that he was the one with the power and the advice and the recommendations, and though, yes, she was a consenting adult, what they both did was wrong. But what he did was more wrong. He knew she wanted a full-time position at his firm; he knew her grades were in his hands; he knew that by initiating the affair, he left Cleo with few good options. To spurn him in that moment in his kitchen meant she risked all of the above; to spurn him down the line meant the same. Cleo knew, in hindsight, that she probably should never have gone there in the first place, to that dinner, eaten his chicken, toasted with her wine. But like so many regrets, once you’d set those actions in motion, they felt impossible to undo.
Certainly back then, Nobells, once it started, seemed impossible to undo. And even now too.
Cleo stood and clasped her hands together, stretching her shoulders and rolling her neck. She had lost track of time, and her whole body, not just