“Yes,” my mother smiled indulgently, then wiped all goodwill from her countenance, “it certainly looks as though you two had a late night. What may I ask is your…”
“Oh yes, PhD in English Literature, I’m afraid. Nothing so useful as what you do.” He laughed and tugged at the collar of his shirt. “You know, you’re helping people, get their um, get um…”
“Fix their sex lives.”
“Um, yes.” He cleared his throat.
“And what do you do? With your PhD in English literature?” my mother asked coyly, even as she snaked a hand behind her back and gave me a thumbs up sign.
I rolled my eyes.
“I teach,” he said, and I saw a shadow cast across his face. He was wondering what to tell her, wondering if he should lie, or tell the truth.
I wondered too. Despite his desire to keep our relationship a secret, I kind of draw the line at lying to my mother. If he started down that road, we were going to have a serious talk about it later.
“I’m a professor at Northbrook in London,” he said, “currently visiting professor at Wagner University in Maryville.”
While I silently cheered his honesty, I saw the thumbs up behind my mother’s back go limp. She brought both arms forward and folded them across her chest again, and that pink patent pump was tapping double time now.
“I see,” she said.
Uh-oh. Mom wasn’t pretending anymore; she was genuinely concerned.
“It’s too early in the morning, and I’m too hung over to have this conversation right now,” I interrupted, coming up behind my mother and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Thanks for the coffee, Mom,” I said, kissing her cheek. “I’ll meet you for breakfast in a minute.”
She glanced over at me and arched an eyebrow. “Stuff it, sweetheart,” she said before turning back to the Professor.
I retreated with my hands up. There was no deterring her.
“What are your intentions towards my daughter?” she demanded in a tone that would have scared the bonnet off of Mr. Darcy’s bitchy aunt.
The Professor removed his glasses and wiped the lenses with his shirt. After weeks of mental sparring, and last night’s epic game of Scrabble, I’d gotten good at recognizing the game face he was wearing now. He was stalling for time, flipping through the Oxford dictionary in his head looking for precisely the right word to express himself.
“Intemperate,” he said, replacing his glasses on his nose and looking my mother steadily in the eye. “My intentions towards her are self-indulgent, reckless, and unswerving.”
“Those are disquieting word choices,” my mother said, pulling the chair out from the desk and sitting in front of my laptop, and leveling her gaze with the Professor’s. “While I appreciate the candor, what I want to know is, is this just sex?”
“Mom!” I was seriously annoyed now.
“It’s not anything yet,” he said quickly. “We are involved, intimately. But there’s a, particular line that hasn’t been crossed.”
“Sexual semantics,” my mother said bluntly. “You intend to have sex?”
“We do. But not until after, she is officially, no longer a student at the university.”
“Do you intend to do anything more than that?”
“I’m not sure—“
“Yes you are, you know exactly what I mean.”
“Perhaps,” he said softly.
“So you’ll be courting my daughter?”
The Professor’s eyes lifted past my mother’s and met mine over her shoulder. She was forcing him to declare himself to me like some sort of Regency Era suitor, and at the moment, it looked like he was about to pull a Bingley and choke. His gaze held mine. I could feel him scanning me, searching my expression for some sign of how he should answer. I knew what I wanted him to say. None of this was “just about sex” anymore for me. But I had no idea how he felt, and I didn’t want him supplying an answer that was based on what he thought I wanted him to say, or that was designed to pacify my mother. I averted my eyes, suddenly enthralled with the hem of my sleeve, suddenly feeling a little wobbly in a way that I knew was not related to my hangover.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’ll be…I am, courting her.”
I exhaled. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath.
“If that’s alright with you?” he asked.
“Oh, she’s a grown woman,” my mother said, laughing. “You don’t need my permission or my blessing. You two do what you like.”
“Then what is this all about?” I demanded. “Seriously!”
“Just exercising my maternal rights to interrogate and intimidate your suitors for my amusement,” she said as she rose from the chair, “Nice meeting you, Dr. Grayson.” She waved and glided past me to the bedroom door. I followed.
“Nice meeting you as well. I feel suitably interrogated and intimidated,” he called.
“Glad to hear it,” she responded over her shoulder. “I’ll let you say goodbye, and we’ll talk further over breakfast,” she said, tucking my hair behind my ear.