Learning to Fall (5 page)

“Um… yes?” I said hesitantly without any idea what I was agreeing to. 

“Great. We can meet back here if you’d like. There’s a little coffee shop within walking distance of campus.” He smiled. “I think you’ll really like it.”

I slowly exhaled the breath I’d been holding. Coffee. I’d agreed to meet him for coffee. All things considered, it could have been worse, even though I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of socializing with my boss outside of work. John seemed like a nice enough guy and it made sense that we should get to know each other, but I’d never been well adept at the smalltalk that seemed to occur so naturally between colleagues.

“That sounds lovely,” I said.

“Great,” he repeated. “Well, I better get going and leave you to it. Have a good second day.”

“Thank you.” Waiting until after he’d left, I shut the door behind him but I didn’t return to my computer. Instead I went to the window, the edge of my palms pressing down on the wooden sill as I looked out over the tree-lined quad.

Students were beginning to move sluggishly around, most of them still in their pajamas. One girl moved faster than all the others. Already fully dressed, she kept her head down as she cut a brisk path down the walkway, heading for the science building. Unlike the other students, she walked alone.

Just as I had.

Was that what I looked like at Harvard?

Determined.

Distant.

Alone.

Even with Whitney as my roommate and Justin as my boyfriend, I’d always been so alone. Or at least it had felt that way. Driven to succeed, wanting to please the one person whose opinion mattered most, I’d been the first one in the classroom and the last one to leave it. While others relaxed on the weekend, I studied. When they went home on vacation I stayed at school, enrolling in extra credit courses and attending open lecture seminars.

I knew most people went to college to find themselves, but I’d done the opposite.

I had lost myself.

Accepting a position at Stonewall had been my first step of self-discovery. I wanted to find out
who
Imogen Finley was. What she liked. What she didn’t. What she did in her spare time. But as I was quickly discovering, it wasn’t that easy to change yourself. Old habits, particularly those ingrained from birth, were hard, if not impossible, to overcome. And the guilt I felt certainly didn’t help matters.

Guilt for going against my mother’s wishes.

Guilt for ruining her dreams.

Guilt for leaving home.

Declining all of the ivy league job offers that had come my way immediately following graduation and moving to Maine had been the only time in my entire life I had ever openly defied her. Which most likely explained why she hadn’t spoken a single word to me in over four weeks.

That doesn’t matter now
, I told myself as I turned away from the window and began to gather what I would need for my first class.
You’re doing what
you
want. She’ll come around. She can’t ignore your phone calls and emails forever.

Except knowing my mother, that’s exactly what she planned to do. Barbara Finley did not suffer fools lightly, and right now there was no one she considered a bigger fool than her only daughter. I remembered our last conversation in vivid detail. We’d been standing in the rose garden with the sun shining down, illuminating the frown on my mother’s face and the tears on mine.

“I will not allow you to throw your life away,” she’d said, her cold blue eyes flashing with disapproval. “This little rebellion of yours stops now, Imogen. Do you understand?”

“I’m not throwing my life away!” I’d exclaimed, throwing my arms out in frustration. Two mourning doves who had been nesting in the tree above us took flight, their wings beating frantically against their tiny brown bodies as they swooped low over the manicured lawn before gathering enough momentum to fly up and out of sight. “I’m trying to live it the way I want.”

What would it take for my mother to see me? To hear me? To listen to me? I knew when she looked at me she didn’t see who I really was: an intimidated young woman desperate to prove her own worth. Instead she saw a younger reflection of herself, someone to be molded and sculpted into her version of perfection.

It was my fault it had come to this. I should have taken a stand years ago, but I’d never possessed the temperament for confrontation. So I’d gone along my mother’s wishes, with her demands and her rules, because it had been easier than fighting and, because for a very long time - too long, I was coming to realize - they’d aligned, more or less, with my own.

I wasn’t ungrateful. I knew that without her influence I wouldn’t have graduated high school at fifteen. Wouldn’t have been accepted at Harvard. Wouldn’t have graduated with top honors in less than four years. Wouldn’t have gone on to achieve a master’s degree before most people my age were done with their bachelor’s.

For my entire life, I’d obediently checked all the boxes my mother put in front of me. Until this morning, when I woke up and looked in the mirror and saw her reflection instead of my own.

“Are you doing this because of a boy?” Her mouth flattened. “Is that it, Imogen?”

“No.” I wanted to yell. I wanted to yell and scream and throw something, but I knew the effort would be wasted on my mother and so I held everything inside, just like she’d taught me to do. “I’m not doing this for anyone other than myself. I know it’s not what you wanted-”

“No,” my mother cut in, “it certainly is not. You are going to regret this, Imogen.”

I squared my shoulders and met her unflinching stare. “I’ll regret it more if I don’t.”

“I did not waste all of my time and money for you to teach at some backwater college!” When her voice went shrill, she paused and took a deep breath, nostrils flaring ever-so-slightly. “You’re better than that. You’re smarter than that.”

“Being smarter doesn’t make me better anymore than being born into wealth does, and it might have been your money, but it was my time. I did everything you wanted. Everything,” I repeated as my eyes filled with more tears. “Why can’t that be enough? Why can’t you be happy for me? I know Stonewall isn’t where you had hoped I would begin my career, but it’s a respectable college. Whitney and I have already found a house to rent. I think you’d like it very much.”

“Whitney.” She said my best friend’s name as though it were a foul curse. “I knew that girl had something to do with this. She’s always been a bad influence on you. I never should have allowed you to choose your own roommate. A foolish mistake on my part.”

“There’s a rosebush in the backyard,” I continued, trying in vain to appeal to my mother’s sentimental side. “I thought if you came to visit you could-”

“Visit? No. There will be no visiting, Imogen.” Her gaze cut straight through me. “If this is to be your final decision, you will not have my support, personally or financially.” She paused. “I trust you understand what that means.”

“Yes.” Deep down, had I ever expected anything more?
No,
I thought miserably.
No I hadn’t.
Which is why I had made arrangements two weeks ago to take enough money out of my savings to pay my bills for the next six months before all of my accounts were frozen and my trust fund revoked.
“
I do.”

She studied me for a moment and I waited, breath held, for a flicker of emotion to reveal itself in the frigid depths of her blue eyes. I should have known better. “I must say, I am very disappointed in you Imogen.”

“I know you are, and I’m sorry.”

“You will come to your senses soon enough.” The way she said it - a statement of fact instead of a question - made my teeth grind together, but I didn’t argue with her. What would be the point? Her mind was made up. In her eyes, I was making the wrong decision and nothing I said would make her see it was the right one. The
only
one.

“Is there anything else you would like to discuss?” she asked, her tone short and clipped, as though she were speaking to the serving staff instead of her only daughter.

“No.” My shoulders slumped in defeat. “No, that’s it.”

Courtesy of the woman standing in front of me, I’d learned at an early age it was impossible to have everything you wanted. I knew most people on the outside looking in at our luxury cars and fifty-acre-estate and oodles of money would think we had the perfect life, but the one thing money couldn’t buy - and the one thing my mother couldn’t give - was her unconditional love.

It didn’t make her a bad person. That was another lesson I’d learned. But it did make her someone I struggled to relate to. Someone I struggled to understand.

Life - the one she’d had before she married my father - had made her hard, but love had made her bitter. Love given and never received. Love taken and never returned. Part of me hoped she would have changed after my father died, but if anything his death had made her even more determined to achieve the perfection he’d always demanded of her when he’d been alive.

The same perfection she was now demanding of me.

“I’m leaving tomorrow morning. Probably before you get up. I want to beat the traffic.” Biting the inside of my cheek, I step towards her, arms extended. My mother jerked back, looking at me as though I’d suddenly sprouted a second head.

“We do not hug, Imogen. It is not seemly.”

“I’m sorry. I forgot.” Of course I’d done no such thing, but I’d hoped… Although I suppose it didn’t matter. Not anymore. From this moment forward, I was determined to live my life on
my
terms. I was going to take my fancy degree and my ivy league education and go to Maine without looking back. I was going to become a new person. I was going to break free from the gilded cage I’d been kept in for the past twenty-four years.

For the first time in my life, I was going to live.

A bell tolled somewhere on campus, yanking me out of the past and into the present. Absently glancing down at my watch, I gasped out loud when I saw the time.

“Late. I’m so late!” Grabbing my books, I hugged them tightly against my chest as I dashed out of my office and took the stairs two at a time. Students and faculty alike looked up as I sprinted past them, the soles of my shoes slapping loudly on the pavement. “Excuse me,” I called as I shouldered through a group of guys wearing sleepy expressions and navy blue sweatpants with the college’s logo printed in hunter green on the side.  “Excuse me!”

“Where’s the fire, Professor?” one of them called out, and dimly I registered the voice as belonging to the football player I’d had in class the day before. The one who had complimented my ass.

When I reached my classroom it was empty and the lights were out. Flicking them on, I hurried over to my desk and collapsed against it while I attempted to regain my breath.

I exercised regularly, but it hadn’t been the sprint from Wilson to the Mandell lecture hall that had my heart pounding and my pulse racing. It had been the fear of being late, and the anxiety that came with deviating from my carefully planned schedule.

I jumped when I heard the
slam
of something hitting the floor. Before I could stop them the books I’d shoved onto my desk slipped one by one off the edge in an avalanche of Shakespeare and Austen. Shaking my head at my own clumsiness, I knelt down and began to gather them up. Out of habit, I looked at my watch as I stood up and registered the time with a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach.

7:57AM.

There were still eighteen minutes to go before my first class.

And I was far more like my mother than I’d ever wanted to be.

CHAPTER FOUR

Jealousy

As he’d promised, John met me at Mandell after my last class. I didn’t question how he knew my schedule. He was, after all, the director of the program. I locked my notes in my office and sent Whitney a quick text to let her know I would be home later than usual before John and I walked the three blocks to Beany Business.

“It’s a local hotspot for faculty and students,” he explained as he held open the door. “So you’ll probably see a few familiar faces.”

I didn’t immediately recognize any of the two dozen or so people lounging around the coffee shop’s strategically placed tables and comfy looking leather sofas, but then I’d only met a fraction of the student body and a handful of its professors. After attending Harvard - population: 21,200 - being able to enter a coffee shop and recognize everyone inside of it was a foreign concept. I did a second sweep of the chairs, biting the inside of my cheek in disappointment when no one’s face immediately jumped out at me. I was impatient to acclimate to my new surroundings. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to belong. I wanted - I
needed
- to be part of a community.

But how long would it take? A few weeks? A month? A
year
?

Correctly interpreting my expression, John smiled and said, “I know it can be overwhelming at first. It was for me too. Especially if you’re a transfer.”

“A transfer?” I asked as we joined the end of the line. Given that the last class of the day had just let out it was fairly long, but the two baristas behind the counter worked quickly and in a matter of minutes we were only two people away from the front. I tilted my head back, scanning the menu written out in colorful chalk hanging on the wall.   

“Someone not from here,” he explained. 

“Oh.” Surprised, I looked away from the menu and met his gaze. “Is that rare?”

“A little bit. Not all the students are from Maine, but about ninety percent of them are from New England. The rest come down from Canada. The college is always trying to recruit from other states, but it’s tough.”

How odd. Had I not been pushed to attend Harvard, I liked to think I would have gone to someplace exactly like Stonewall. Someplace small and tucked away. Someplace where, even if you couldn’t recall the name of everyone you passed, you at least remembered their face. Someplace where community was valued more than competition and not having a perfect 4.0 GPA wasn’t considered a failure.

What would I have been like,
I wondered,
if I’d gone to Stonewall instead of Harvard?

Did it matter? I was here now. Not to start a new chapter, but to begin an entirely new book. It would take time to break old habits. To let go of old insecurities. To realize the earth wasn’t going to come grinding to a halt if I wasn’t fifteen minutes early.

I’d already done something I never would have done before. Something I never would have
dreamed
of doing when I’d been firmly under my mother’s thumb. I had talked to a complete stranger at a bar. I had let him touch my thigh. I had drank from his glass. I had knowingly, purposefully, wantonly put my lips where his lips had been.

Wanton.

I had been
wanton
.

Or at least my version of it.

And I had yearned, just a little. Yearned for a stranger who had made my flesh tingle and my heart race. A stranger I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about.

John
, I ordered myself as we shuffled forward in line and my shoulder bumped lightly against his.
John’s the one you need to think about and the one you need to make a good first impression for, not some hot, brooding stranger you’ll never see again.

“Why is it so hard to recruit students from other states?” I asked.

“The winters, for one.” When I looked nonplussed, John laughed and shook his head. “Just wait. You may have experienced winters in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, but they’re nothing compared to the winters here, especially on the coast.”

“They can’t be that bad.”

“Just wait,” he repeated, one side of his mouth lifting in a half-smile, accentuating his boyish charm. He was actually quite handsome, in a scholarly all-american type of way. Men like John had been a dime a dozen at Harvard. Intelligent. Kind. Thoughtful. The type I’d always seen myself eventually marrying.

So why couldn’t I get Daniel Logan out of my head? A man who met exactly
none
of the requirements on my long and detailed list for a potential suitor. He may have been intelligent, but I was willing to bet he was far more kinky than kind.

And I had absolutely no business thinking of the word ‘kinky’ while I was getting coffee with my new boss. What had John been talking about again? Oh right. Snow.

“The average snowfall in Maine is fifty to seventy inches on the coast, and sixty to ninety inches in the Southern Interior,” I said, recalling a statistic I’d looked up on Google the week before I had decided to accept Stonewall’s job offer. “That’s only fifteen inches more than Pennsylvania’s average yearly snowfall.” I knew my mother was under the impression I’d moved to Maine on a whim, but the truth was I’d put nearly as much research into the college and the surrounding area as I had my dissertation.

I knew the state flower (white pine cone). The state motto (
dirigo
, which was latin for ‘I Direct’). The state population (1.3 million as of the 2013 census). I knew it became the twenty-third state in 1820, seventeen years after Camden was first settled. I knew the state capital was Augusta, and the largest city was Portland. I knew moose killed more people via automobile accidents than people killed people. All things considered, I most likely knew more about the state of Maine than most of the people who had lived here for generations.

“That’s a handy fact to know,” John said, “but the truth is you could read up on all the statistics that are out there and never understand a true Maine winter until you experience it for yourself. It’s something else, let me tell you. My first year here I almost moved back to Kentucky halfway through January.”

I sucked apprehensively on the inside of my cheek. “It almost sounds like you’re trying to scare me off.”

“No, no, nothing like that!” he protested with a chuckle. “Just trying to prepare you. Although something tells me you’ll be fine. I have a feeling you’re tougher than you look.”

Rather pleased with the compliment - even though by its very nature it implied I appeared weak - I stepped to the counter as the customer in front of us received their drink and shuffled over to the condiments table.

“What can I do you for?” asked one of the baristas, her friendly smile encouraging my own. She was pretty, with choppy red hair, bright blue eyes, and a smattering of freckles over her nose.

“A green tea chai latte, please.” I usually didn’t drink caffeine after four o’clock, but in this instance I thought I could make an exception. It may have been a tiny rebellion against the rules and regulations I’d placed on myself (and the ones that had been placed on me), but it was a rebellion nevertheless.  

“What size?” The barista’s silver eyebrow hoop wiggled as she lifted an eyebrow.

“Um…” I quickly scanned the menu again. “A medium.”

“Better make that two.” John rocked back on his heels as he fished a brown wallet out of his front pocket and placed a twenty-dollar-bill on the counter. I reached instantly for my purse.

“Let me-”

“My treat, remember? Trust me, it’s the least I can do. You have no idea some of the resumes that were coming across my desk before I saw yours.” He feigned a shudder. “It was starting to get scary.” 

Having ducked behind the espresso machine to begin our orders, the barista flitted back just in time to hear the tale end of John’s sentence. She looked at me with interest. “Are you a teacher too?”

“Yes.” Unable to stop the smile that bloomed across my face, I nodded. “Yes, I am. I just started at Stonewall this semester.”

“You seem pretty young to be a professor,” the barista said skeptically. “Are you one of those… what do they call them…” She snapped her fingers. “Prac teachers?”

“
Professor
Finley,” John interrupted, enunciating my title, “is our newest full-time faculty member. If I’m not mistaken, you’re enrolled in her night class next semester.”

“Oh.” The barista studied me for a split second longer, then shrugged her shoulders. “That’s pretty cool, I guess. Here’s your change, Professor Hainsworth.”

John tucked the bills and three quarters into his wallet. “Maddy is a junior majoring in English Literature,” he explained when the barista went back behind the espresso machine to finish our drinks. “She wants to be a writer and I have to say, she has the talent.”

“That’s wonderful.” I’d dabbled in writing off and on, but I didn’t have the imagination for it. My brain was stuck firmly in non-fiction, and while I revered the works of Shakespeare and Austen and Rowling, I was realistic enough to know I would never be able to do what they had done.

Maddy returned promptly with our order. “Two medium green tea chai lattes,” she said, setting two white cups with black lids down on the counter.

When John picked his up and moved to the side to allow room for the next customer, I did the same.

“Have a good one, Maddy,” he called out.

She glanced in our direction and waved. “You too, Professor.” Her smile dimmed noticeably as her gaze flicked to me. “Nice to meet you, Professor Finley.”

“You as well, Maddy. I look forward to having you in my class.”

“Yeah.” She jerked a shoulder up in another careless shrug. “Sure thing.”

“I - I don’t think she liked me,” I said uncertainly as we made our way to a vacant table.

Pulling a seat out for me before he took his own, John looked over my shoulder at the counter. “Who, Maddy?” At my hesitant nod he sighed and said, “Don’t worry, it’s not you.” Setting his latte to the side, he leaned forward and lowered his voice. “You just made her a little jealous.”

“Jealous?” I echoed, my brow creasing. “Because I’m a professor?”

“No, no.” With a laugh, John sat back in his seat and picked up his drink. Popping the lid open a crack, he blew across the top. “Because we work together.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Maddy has a crush on me.” John calmly took a sip of his latte while I stared at him in stunned silence. “It started freshman year when she took my Intro to American Lit class.”

I’d heard of such things, of course. Student-teacher affairs. I had even devoted an entire semester to the study of them in my psychology class. I knew they were much more prevalent in college than high school, but just because the student was over the age of eighteen didn’t make the act any less illicit or corrupt. Sex between a professor and his student may not have been illegal in the eyes of the law, but for any institution of higher learning it was grounds for immediate dismissal which meant even the hint of an affair was not something to be taken lightly. If John told me anything was happening between him and Maddy it would be my obligation to report it. I would have no choice. Like every other professor at Stonewall, I’d taken an oath to adhere to a strict code of professional ethics. As educators, it was our responsibility to nurture our students. To respect them. To value their opinions. To encourage freedom of expression. And, most importantly, to provide a safe environment where they could better themselves not only as scholars, but as upstanding members of society. 

Fighting the queasy feeling in my stomach, I met John’s gaze. He didn’t
look
like a man who would take advantage of a student, but as the old saying went looks could be deceiving. I didn’t know what to say or how to say it, but I did know
something
had to be said if only to allay my own fears. I took a deep breath. “Did you… did she…”

Reading in my eyes the question I couldn’t put into words, John shook his head vigorously from side to side. “No. God no. I meant the
crush
started freshman year. That’s all it was. That’s all it has ever been, and it’s never been reciprocated. If I somehow implied otherwise, I apologize. I was simply trying to explain why you may have gotten the side-eye.” Expression strained, he raked a hand through his hair. “I hope you believe me, but if you feel like you saw anything inappropriate by all means you should-”

“I do,” I interrupted. “I do believe you.” Embarrassed guilt quickly followed the relief I’d felt upon seeing the sincere consternation in John’s warm brown eyes. “I’m sorry. I never should have said anything.” My shoulders hunched as I dropped my gaze to the table. If I had been hoping to impress John, I was pretty sure I’d failed miserably.
Great job, Imogen. You just basically accused the director of the entire English department - and your boss - of sexual misconduct with a student based on absolutely nothing. Way to go!
“I jumped prematurely to the wrong conclusion.”

“And after I bought you a coffee. How rude. I’m joking,” he said hastily when I stared at him in dismay. “It’s a joke, Imogen.” Reaching across the table, he put his hand over mine and squeezed. “I apologize. It was poorly timed.”