Summertime Guests - Wendy Francis Page 0,63
demurs.
For the remaining several minutes they stroll along, hardly talking, the buzz of traffic on Seaport Boulevard filling the silences. When they reach the walkway in front of the hotel, Marty bends down and softly grazes his lips across hers. “That’s for all those times I wanted to kiss you but you’d already left.”
She’s about to make a joke about how she guesses she’d better not invite him up to her room but thinks better of it. “I’m glad I got to see you,” she says simply and elevates on her tiptoes to kiss him lightly on his whiskered cheek.
“Me, too.” His hand squeezes hers before he turns to hail a cab. “And, hey,” he calls over his shoulder, “now that you have my number, stay in touch, okay?”
“I will!” she calls out, climbing the stairs to the hotel porch and grabbing the wooden railing to steady herself, completely forgetting that she’s still wearing his jacket. But they both know as they walk away from each other that it’s the last time she’ll be reaching out to him. To do so again, she thinks, would probably destroy her.
TWENTY
Before they step on the boat, Jason tells Gwen he has to take this call. Already George has sent him four texts since yesterday, and Jason has responded to none of them. The fact that his department head is now calling, not texting, must mean that the Charlie Problem, despite Jason’s ignoring it, has not gone away. Gwen reluctantly steps over to the side of the small walkway that’s meant to carry them onto their boat to wait for him.
“George,” he says, struggling to sound as upbeat as possible. “Sorry, I haven’t gotten back to you. Gwen surprised me with a little getaway for my birthday in Boston. I’ve been meaning to give you a call. What’s going on?”
“It’s Charlie Wiggam, one of your students? He’s filed a complaint against the university and, more specifically, against you.”
Jason clears his throat. “I’m sorry. Say that again?”
“A complaint, Jason. He’s claiming that he saw you out at Old Marley’s a few weeks ago, that you’d had a few and started giving him a hard time, and that, well, essentially you slugged him.”
“What?” Jason can’t believe what he’s hearing. Old Marley’s is a restaurant-bar a few miles off campus where students go when they’re craving good food as opposed to the lousy stuff served in the cafeteria. Jason and Gwen have been there a handful of times themselves simply because there’s a dearth of decent restaurants in their small town. “That’s ridiculous,” he says. “No way. Didn’t happen. Not in a million years.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” George says. “When you didn’t get back to me yesterday, I started to worry.”
Jason sends Gwen, who’s now shooting him beseeching looks from the gateway, a hurried nod. “C’mon, you know I’d never do anything like that. I flunked him in Introductory Russian History, and he’s pissed. This is pure retaliation. He sent me a text the other day basically calling me an asshole.”
There’s a grunt on the other end. “Are you sure? Did you keep the text? Why didn’t you tell me? It’s university protocol, you know, to report it when a student sends any kind of harassing communication.”
Jason kicks the edge of the sidewalk where a piece of loose cement has buckled up over the edge, and it goes skittering across the road. “I know. I was going to tell you, but I figured it could wait till I got back home. I thought the kid was blowing off steam. This whole thing is nothing but sour grapes.”
“Well, even if it is, it’s still a pretty serious charge he’s leveling. Assault. The good news is that he’s not taking it to the police. He’s agreed to let the university handle it. But it’s the kind of situation that, if things don’t go your way, you could get kicked off campus for good.”
If he weren’t so incredulous, Jason might burst out laughing. George has no idea that this is what Jason has been considering for himself anyway, with or without Charlie Wiggam’s help. Maybe, he considers, it’s a blessing in disguise, the final shove he needs to convince him to wave goodbye to academia once and for all.
“Does he say when this was supposed to have happened? Because I’m pretty sure I’ll have an alibi.”
“Yeah, hold on a sec.” Jason can hear George rattling through some papers on the other end. “May fifteenth,” he says