Page 17 of Devil

He hadn’t answered like he thought I’d insulted him. He’d answered almost like he’d been glad I asked. “I’m the rest of your life,” he’d said with an awful, eerie certainty, and then he grabbed his satchel and left through the door. The sound of rain had filled the studio, along with a wash of orange light from the lamppost outside. The light threw long shadows from the unfinished statues scattered around the space and, just for a moment, made visible the leaking, glimmering ruins of the pomegranate on the floor.

I didn’t wait.

Whatever Bell thought he could handle was completely irrelevant to me, and I had my own concerns to manage—my conscience and then, as a close second, my job. I packed up my things and walked through the heavy sheets of rain to Father Alvarez’s office, arriving completely soaked through and chilled. Every gust of wind had reminded me that I had no underwear on, that a slick arousal still lingered where Bell had touched me.

It was just as well that Father Alvarez’s office was empty when I got there because I probably wouldn’t have helped my case arriving there in a soaking wet T-shirt that showed the plain white bra underneath or trying not to fidget in the chair as the awareness of my shamefully underwear-less state gnawed on my mind.

I didn’t know what it meant that no one was actually in the office—perhaps Bell had caught up with them on their way and had them pinned in place elsewhere—but whatever the reason, it took nearly an hour for someone to show up.

It was Kaitlyn.

She came in with her eyes down on her phone, where her thumb was rapidly moving over the screen, a vape pen tucked in her other hand. She was wearing wrinkled black work pants, a cardigan wrap, and tennis shoes, like she’d been at home and had to get dressed again in a hurry.

“Kaitlyn,” I said, and her eyes snapped up from her phone.

“Birdie, thank God.” She flung herself into the chair across from me and brought her vape to her lips. A cloud puffed around her as she exhaled and held up her phone to wave it at me. “They are saying the most ridiculous stuff. That they caught you having sex with a student.You.Birdie Cooper! I told the dean of students that she got it wrong, that there was no possible way, but she’s insisting we bring in the president and do a full investigation.” Another pull off her vape, another cloud of condensed air. She sat forward, her tone confiding and comforting both as she spoke next. “I have a fiduciary duty to Evelyn, so once this gets started, I’m Evelyn’s lawyer, not yours. But right now, off the clock, I can tell you that you’ve got nothing to worry about. They’ll get in here, see it was all a big mistake, and we’ll be home within the hour.”

I became aware that I was shaking, my hands worst of all, and I pressed one hand on top of the other to hide it. “It’s not a mistake.”

Curves appeared near the insides of Kaitlyn’s eyebrows. She’d just started doing Botox that spring, and a full furrow above her nose was no longer possible. But I could tell she was deeply baffled.

“I don’t think you know what they’re saying,” she said slowly. “They’re saying that they caught you having sex with a student on campus grounds. It’s a violation of the student safety policyandthe faculty morality clause. That would be two reasons for termination and two reasons why your carvings might never sell again.”

“Right,” I said, and my chin trembled. “Okay.”

She stared at me with those curved eyebrows, bringing her vape pen to her mouth. After a minute, she breathed, “Birdie. No.”

I looked down at my shaking hands and pressed them even harder together. “One of my students came into the studio. I thought he might have a question about his final grade, but he didn’t, and he just kept…”

He just kept what? It was all getting so blurry. He kept talking. He kept coming closer. Every objection was negotiated away, every hesitation exploited, unfolded, until I was somehow having an orgasm with my face against the chalkboard.

“He asked to kiss me. I didn’t say yes.” This was spoken to my hands. “And then there was more, and he just kept pushing, and I don’t even know how it happened. I didn’t have time to think. I couldn’t think, and I just…”

Kaitlyn’s face had gone slack. Her vape pen now hovered below her mouth. “So it’s true?” The words were faint with horror.

“It’s not—” I couldn’t stop trembling. “It’s not like what they told you. It wasn’t like I was recklessly having sex with a student. He came in and he wouldn’t stop?—”

“So you’re saying he forced you? You fought him off? Will he have defensive wounds? Or we can go to a hospital and do a rape kit?—”

“It didn’t get that far.” Even my voice was quaking now. “There’s no…evidence. For a rape kit. I didn’t fight him.”

“But he did force you.”

My throat hurt. I was so close to crying. “It wasn’t violent. And I?—”

She was my oldest friend. If I couldn’t explain it to her, how would I ever be able to explain it to anyone else?

“It made sense in the moment. Not just like he was persuading me but like I needed him to. Or wanted him to. But I also didn’t want him to, and I was scared he wouldn’t stop, and the things he said…”

The things he said. Frightening things. Obsessive things.

Intoxicating things.

“So it wasn’t force,” Kaitlyn said again. There was something in her words—later, I would know it was thelackof something, an absence, a withdrawal—but then it only barely registered, at least at first. “He just talked you into having sex with him.”

That made it sound so civilized, didn’t it? Like Bell and I had a forum, and he’d been the better debater. Like Bell had convinced me to get the extra warranty at a car dealership or to watch a movie I’d been putting off. I’d been convinced by a superior argument or by some rapport building and had surrendered my position with grace.

“It wasn’t like that either,” I said. My nose stung now. It made the words wavering and thick. “I don’t know how to describe what itwaslike, but not like that.”