Waking up next to Blake is better than I ever imagined. I put my hand on his face as he blinks a few times, next he leans over to kiss my forehead. He easily shows affection and I show it back. How are we supposed to keep this a secret now? How are we supposed to pretend that we aren't madly in love when he lectures next week? I don't want to be half alive during the week. I want to sit and have lunch with Blake Oakley, in the university cafeteria. I want everyone to know that I'm proud to call him mine, because I am. I truly am happy for once."Good morning, Cora. Did you sleep well?" Blake asks as he pulls me in for a hug. His natural scent takes over making me crave him all over again. I dare not indulge in him again it will make returning to the dorms even harder."Yes, I did. Thanks for asking, Blake. It's going to be hard going back to the university and pretend you don't mean something to me. How am I supposed to do that?"I hide my eyes from him. It's hard to give yourself to
"Hello, Zac. It's nice to meet you. I'm Cora. If you'll excuse me, I am going to finish getting ready for the day." I take my leave before Isaac can ask how we met. I'm not sure what Blake's game plan is here. Maybe his brother is trustworthy and maybe he isn't. I will leave it up to Blake to decide.I overhear Isaac in the background. His voice is deep and strong. He's strong and bigger than Blake. His arms are hairy and there must be a story there. They hardly looked related at all."Blake, what about Jessica? I thought you and Jessica were getting back together."My stomach drops low into my intestines. I don't know what's going on. An hour ago Blake and I were in love, and I was happy to give my virginity away. Now his brother shows up and whispers about Jessica. If it's the Jessica I think it is, then the hall of my dorm has just gotten harder to walk down. The campus is already hard to walk through and it will be even harder to waltz down once my heart and soul have gone missin
The following week. I'm quiet in class. I do all my assignments and midterms happen. I don't take Blake's midterm. For whatever reason he grants me an extension and let's me pick it up in an office as a take home exam. I didn't ask for special treatment. It just happened this way."Cora you're quiet. You haven't said shit all week. You still didn't tell me how your date with that...umm grad student went. I'm assuming it didn't go well if you've been quiet for a few days."Evie talks in circles around me and I don't know how to respond. It's not her fault I fucked a college professor and expected him to be mine for a time. He was too busy making arrangements elsewhere. And I've been cast as the understudy. Nothing feels worse than that and I don't know if I'll ever come out on top again."Yeah, it sucked and I don't want to talk about it now or ever. I hate men. Let's have a girl's night. Let's watch To All the Boys I've Loved Before."Evie throws a pillow at me and pops a bag of popco
Professor Oakley and I won't see each other during break. Instead I'm going to spend the next three nights at a water park to soak my troubles away. My mother got us a ridiculously expensive room and Evie is going to join us. We are also bringing Evie's little five-year-old cousin named Doug. Doug is cute, I'll give him that. His hair is extra curly and tight.The water park is called the Big Bear Lodge. Bear themed photos, posters, and mascots flood the hotel in an obnoxious way. If I remember that this place is for children it makes it easier to be here. A man in a large bear mascot costume greets us. He hands out lollipops and stickers. They give us wristbands so we can enter the water park.As we check in I see another family entering the Big Bear Lodge. There's a man who looks just like Isaac Oakley waltzing in. He's carrying a child who appears to be two with brown hair. Another child is holding his hand who appears to be four. She's a little girl with cute pigtails and matching
The thing about dating a college professor is that it's hard to keep it a secret. When I was six-years-old, Evie and I had all the secrets in the world to ourselves. But the thing about being six is that at some point you have to grow up. I don't know when I grew up and secrets became harder, but this is a secret I'm so sick of keeping. This secret eats me alive from the inside out. It's hard to love someone so much and know that if I kiss them in public it could damn their career. Maybe it would be better to let Blake go. I wonder if he'll let me go.If he let me go, I think he'd be forced to. It's apparent to me that he cares a great deal for me. His affection for me is fleeting. Like the fall leaves that change with the seasons. The fall leaves are beautiful when they're in full bloom but at some point the leaves come off and the bones of the tree are shown.I don't want to be a boned tree yet. When my leaves fall off, then my relationship will be revealed. Leaves cover a tree and
It's nice to be hours away from the university. It's a little weird that my mom has seen Blake. But in a way it's also nice. It's nice that she has an idea of who he is. She doesn't know what he is, or at least I hope not. If it ever got leaked that I am in love with my professor, and that he loved me back. Well that's the day I hope never comes.For our date, Blake takes me to a nice Italian restaurant but there's a twist. It has a dance floor. He once said he taught ballroom dancing. Nothing is sexier than watching men move women with Latin rhythms. They guide them and turn them in ways that resemble sex."Blake, how did you even know this place was here?" My cheeks turn a bright red, a cherry pink forms. I can see it on my face in a mirror on the restaurant wall."Are you blushing? That's adorable. Yes, I knew it was here. A long time ago, I took Stacey here. It was ten years ago. I'm old, remember.""You're not old. You're hot as fuck," I say loudly as my voice echoes across the r
I sneak back into my hotel room. My mother however notices and by the look on her face she knows, that I was out all night with Blake. I'm old enough now that she can't tell me what to do, but her opinion and disapproval of me make me want to back up into my turtle shell.My mother is playing on her phone, and her eyebrows are crossed. She looks back and forth between her phone screen and me. It's five in the morning, but she still has a sternness about her that is off-putting and terrifying, like the time I was grounded for a month for stealing a pocketful of candy in middle school."Cora, you and I have a lot to talk about."Mom hands me her phone, it's open to the university staff directory. The photo of Professor Blake Oakley is smiling in his staff photo, and the gig is up. She's figured out who he is, and there's no reason to pretend he's a graduate student anymore. My mother took it upon herself to do some digging, I was going to tell her eventually but not during fall break."
Fall break is over. I didn't see Blake at the hotel before checkout and he didn't text me back. Luckily Spencer wasn't around for the rest of the weekend either. But my mother and her spying still lumes heavily in the air. When I was little my mom used to watch Scooby Doo with me and read Nancy Drew stories. Both of these tales are about mysteries and solving them, and like a detective she has figured me out. Thanks Motherly Sherlock for making me feel guilt and shame about my young adult decisions.Growing up we were always taught to make the right decisions. But how can you know what the right ones are, if you don't sometimes experience the bad? My mom would tell me not to go to high school drinking parties, but why? After attending a few I now see why it is bad. Are we not to discover evil and hurt for ourselves so we grow on our own? I can't learn from her past mistakes if she doesn't tell me about them. I can't learn from what she did if she doesn't speak up to teach me. Did she