“Tell me about where you grew up,” he said finally, setting down his fork. “I’m guessing you’re not from the Bay Area originally?”
“Sacramento,” I said. “I kind of think of myself as having grown up in the Midwest, the way it feels in comparison. Suburban. Boring.”
“Boring can be good,” he said. “Stable.”
I shrugged. “I guess. My parents are nice. They just… they had a lot of expectations, you know? My older sister went to Stanford. My younger brother is some kind of math prodigy. And I was just… there. In the middle. Never quite good enough.”
The words came out more honestly than I’d intended, and I looked down at my plate, embarrassed. But when I glanced up, Mike was watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.
“That must have been hard,” he said simply.
“It was what it was.” I took another bite to avoid having to say more.
He let it drop, steering the conversation to lighter topics. What did I like about the Bay Area? Had I explored much of the city yet? What kind of books did I read?
I found myself talking more freely than I had with anyone in months. About the hiking trails I’d discovered near campus before everything fell apart. About the used bookstore in the Mission I’d stumbled upon once and spent hours browsing. About how much I loved the fog, the way it rolled in over the hills and made everything feel mysterious and new.
Mike listened like he actually cared, asking follow-up questions, laughing at my descriptions of getting hopelessly lost trying to navigate BART. The knot of tension in my chest gradually loosened. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe he really was different from what I’d feared.
We finished our main courses, and he cleared the plates with the same ease of movement he’d shown earlier. When he returned with the tiramisu, setting it between us with two forks, I realized we’d been talking for almost an hour.
An hour, and he hadn’t mentioned the seal. Hadn’t mentioned punishment. Hadn’t mentioned anything about what was supposed to happen tonight.
I picked at the dessert, the creamy sweetness suddenly cloying on my tongue. My mind started racing. Why wasn’t he saying anything? Was he waiting for me to bring it up? Was this some kind of test?
I watched Mike take a bite of tiramisu, his expression thoughtful, and the silence stretched between us until I couldn’t stand it anymore. My hands twisted together in my lap under the table, and I could feel the desperate need building again, that constant aching throb that the seal made impossible to satisfy.
“Laura,” Mike said finally, setting down his fork and looking at me with those dark, knowing eyes. “I think we need to talk about what happened at your college.”
My stomach dropped. “What do you mean?”
“Tell me about the cheating.”
My face went hot, and I couldn’t meet his gaze anymore. I stared down at my half-eaten dessert, my throat tight.
“I… I don’t…”
“Use your words, sweetheart.” His voice was gentle but firm. “Tell me what happened.”
I swallowed hard, my hands gripping the edge of the table. There was no way out of this. He wanted to know, and I’d already agreed to be here, to let him into my life, to give him the right to ask these questions.
“It was my Introduction to Algorithms midterm,” I said quietly. “I hadn’t studied enough. I’d been… I don’t know, I’d been spending too much time on other things. Parties. Hanging out with friends. Telling myself I’d catch up later.” I paused, forcing myself to continue. “When I sat down for the exam, I looked at the questions and I just… I panicked. I knew I didn’t know the answers. So I pulled out my phone under the desk and looked them up.”
“And?”
“And I got caught.” My voice came out barely above a whisper. “The TA saw me. She reported me to the professor, who reported me to the dean. They have a zero tolerance policy for academic dishonesty. I was expelled within a week.”
Mike was quiet for a long moment. I could feel his gaze on me, assessing, judging. My face burned hotter with every second of silence.
“Did you try to lie about it?” he asked finally.
The question made my chest tighten. “Yes,” I admitted, my voice cracking. “At first. I tried to say I was just checking the time, that I didn’t use my phone to cheat. But they pulled the surveillance footage from the exam room. They could see exactly what I’d done.”
“So you lied, got caught in the lie, and then what?”
“Then I admitted it.” Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. “I told them I was sorry, that I’d made a mistake, that I’d never do it again. But it didn’t matter. They expelled me anyway.”
Mike leaned back in his chair, his expression unreadable. “Do you think you deserved to be expelled?”
