it as loudly as she imagined. The three closest students swiveled around to stare.
Max waved at them then pointed at Gwen, "Powerful negotiator."
"This coupled with the female’s learned response to say no, due, really, to her larger investment in reproduction, gives her sexual power over the male."
Max leaned down to her other ear this time. "Seven. And you can say no to everything else." He headed to the door.
"I will!"
The students stared again.
"Not have sex. I will say no."
They turned back around.
She whispered to herself. "I will. I’m good at it."
Friday afternoon she thought about leaving the dorm altogether. There’d be no chance he could find her then. She didn’t think he even knew where she was staying, although Ellen, her traitorous mother, might have blabbed it. But fleeing would communicate fear, hers, and power, his, despite what the professor had said. Staying in her room reading, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, completely underdressed for dinner and overdressed for sex, would tell the sad tale. She was turning him down.
The knock on the door made her drop her book. She knew that knock. It wasn’t the surprise rapping her mother had given the weekend before. This was Max’s dorm door knock. She hadn’t even known she'd remembered it. Well, shit. She took in a deep cleansing breath and journeyed the five steps to the door. She repeated no, thank you in her head as she opened it.
"Good, you’re ready." He turned back toward the elevator, his camera bag swinging on his shoulder.
"I’m not."
She kept her hand on the doorknob, while he glanced down her body, and she tried not to flinch. No one who knew you at your prime should ever scan even your clothed body after a baby, even if the baby was a legal adult. He seemed to stop at her socks. "Oh, get some sneakers on. Might want a sweater." He raised an eyebrow. "I like pink."
She rolled her eyes. She was in Psych. II. She knew all about pink. "I’m not going with you."
"Oh, well, if I’d known you wanted to stay in…"
"No." She put her palm out to stop him and realized he was just messing with her. No one messed with her. She was a grown woman, a mom, a homeowner, a former P.T.A. secretary. Steve was mature and serious and nicely literal. Max took casual to a level of irreverence, and she hadn’t experienced that since, well, she’d last sparred with him.
She didn’t know what to say. If she said something logical and true and reasonable, he’d say something funny or charming or he’d deliberately twist her words and then they would go around again because she was rusty. Her stomach growled. Rusty and hungry. She lowered her head, took a breath in, and stalked over to her closet. She pulled out her tennis shoes, and reached for a cardigan.
Max lounged in the doorway, watching. "I like pink."
She passed the cardigans in petunia and coral and hoped he didn’t get a glimpse of the deep pink bathrobe. She yanked out a navy sweater, and its hanger swung from the force.
"Blue’s nice."
She pointed at him with the cardigan. "Don’t push it."
The hotdog made her feel better. The pep rally, populated by hundreds of college kids, made her feel a little silly. But washing the hotdog down with the imported beer Max smuggled in his bag felt mature, despite the immaturity of breaking the rules.
The stage, set up in an immense field on the edge of campus, held a couple of guys in suits. One, she assumed, was the president. It was unpleasant to realize the president, whose name she’d known twenty years ago, could have retired even if that had been his first year. How had so much time gone by? She realized she hadn’t even asked Max about his parents. Back then his dad would have been at a school function like a pep rally. She hadn’t thought of Dean James in years or the first dinner at the Holter house when Max had used her as a human shield to avoid his parents. It had gotten her that first date, hadn’t it? And changed the trajectory of her whole life most likely. It’s not like you ever knew even looking back. Hindsight might be twenty-twenty for some people, but she was pretty sure that even examining the past, she required reading glasses.
She glanced up at Max, watching the crowd as if framing photos in the quickly fading light. She could see his