“My reputation matters to me too” is the only thing I manage to get out. “This could hurtmycareer, and I haven’t even really started it yet.”
At least I get some kind of reaction: It’s his turn to flinch, something complicated passing through his expression before he schools it back into professionalism.
“I know. I—I don’t know what to do here. I don’t want to be in a position where I have to decide your grades with last night living in the back of my mind. If anyone ever found out…”
He pauses for a second, like he’s waiting for me to reply and say I totally understand where he’s coming from. Like he’s waiting for me to relent.
“It wouldn’t be fair. To you or the other students,” he adds eventually.
“Fair,” I echo. A bitter laugh boils up from my chest. “Nothing about this is fair to me.”
I learned a long time ago that there is nothing I hate more than people who are obsessed with their own moral virtue. Particularly when it comes at the expense of, you know, having a fucking life.
“So what are you trying to say?” I press on.
He looks distressed, which is fucking rich becauseI’mthe one who ought to be distressed in this situation. He realized he slept with a student—so what? He’s the one in power here. He gets to decide what happens moving forward.
“Are you telling me I need to drop out?” I ask.
Years. Years of my life, dedicated to rebuilding a sense of myself as an actual person and not just a collection of impulses and fraying nerves—years learning how to exist outside the scaffolding of the world I was raised in and then relearning that world without drugs. Years, all of them leading here, to this, to my first shot at making it outside LA, and now Wyatt is going to yank it out from under me over a stupid fucking one-night stand?
Wyatt sighs, pressing the heels of both palms to his eyes for a moment. “No. No, of course not. I wouldn’t do that to you. But you’ll need to drop my class.”
Somehow, that’s even worse. I only cry when I’m angry, which is embarrassing and probably comes across as manipulative, but unfortunately my tear ducts are not responsive to the threat of social humiliation. I scrub a hand quickly across my cheek and hope the gesture looks brusque, efficient—that Wyatt doesn’t think I’m trying to get away with anything by having a breakdown in front of him.
“You’re the reason I came here, Wyatt. You’re—literally, you areliterallyWyatt fucking Cole. This was my chance to actually— I need this. I can’t just…”
Although if hedoeschange his mind because I cried, that’d be okay too.
“You know, I didn’t go out and sleep with Wyatt Cole specifically, on purpose. I don’t think I deserve to get punished for the universe’s idea of a dumb joke.”
This is literally TV-drama behavior, without the benefits. I’m pretty sure this is the plot of the first episode ofGrey’s Anatomy. Only McDreamy didn’t kick Meredith Grey out of her surgical internship afterward—we got multiple seasons of yearning stares and steamy scenes in surgical supply closets.
“I could make sure you get into Ava Zhu’s class instead,” he says. “She has a waiting list a mile long, but I can pull some strings. That’s trading up, really.”
Ava Zhu is a legend. A titan of digital photography. One of my friends from back in LA has a coffee-table book of her work. Working with her would be a dream come true, obviously. But that’s not the point.
“She isn’t mixed media. I came here to study withyou.”
Wyatt is gazing at me with these big brown cow eyes like he’s begging me to give him a break and take the damn bone. Thatlook probably works for him most of the time. But I’ve seen that same look from plenty of addicts desperate for a loan, and it doesn’t do a goddamn thing to me.
“Don’t you get it?” I say. “No matter what happens in this situation, you’re still the one with power. You can keep me in your class, and like you said, maybe one day someone finds out and it ruins my career. Not yours, not really. You’d be embarrassed for a few months, maybe. But you’re still Wyatt Cole. You still keep getting the good shows, get good reviews, and get covered inVanity Fairor whatever. But what happens to me?”
I can tell I’m affecting him. He looks like I just punched him in the chest. The part of me that hates confrontation swells up, and I have to swallow the urge to immediately apologize. I swipe a fresh wave of tears with the heel of my hand. Fuck him for looking so torn up over this. Fuck him for having the luxury of wallowing in his own conscience.
“I only ever thought of you as a one-night stand anyway,” I make myself say, even though I’m already shaky, with that drowned-fish feeling of my throat closing up. “You’re a professional. So you ought to be able to be aprofessionaland let this whole thing go. It’s not like we’re exes who had a bad breakup. I don’t know why we can’t behave as colleagues.”
He swallows, throat bobbing visibly. For a second I almost think I’ve got him. That he’ll relent, acknowledge he’s being stupid and arbitrary, and take me back into his class. But then:
“I can’t grade you,” he says.
“Wyatt—”
“I can’t,” he goes on doggedly, “but I can still teach you. Just not in the regular class. All right? I’ll help you with your portfolio, one-on-one. Informally.” He makes a face, like he isn’t 100 percent certain on whether that is morally acceptable. “And you can do your capstone project with me, if…if you’re still interested in working with me, that is.”
I hate how pitiful he looks right now. How yearning. Like he’s the one afraid ofmesaying no.
This entire situation makes me want to tear my (and his) face off.
