He pressed his lips against mine, and I let my body take over, my mouth on autopilot. The kiss became a French kiss. A soul kiss. A kiss that muddied my normally logical brain, and when he finally stopped, I pulled him into me, our bodies touching in the darkness, and I wanted to tell him that I had felt something, too, especially in the rain, when I could smell his aftershave in the car and on the bed when I secretly wished he could see me in that lingerie, and all the times I had pretended the tone in his voice wasn't tinged with wanting something more.
“Oh, my God,” I said when we broke apart. I wasn't sure if I wanted to run away or run away with him.
Cortland held my gaze. “I won't apologize.”
“Me neither,” I said, straightening my blouse.
“But I don't know where we go from here.”
Da Vinci. Rachel. Of course. I had selfishly forgotten them. “We do nothing,” I said. “Look, we got that kiss out of our system, right? We'll just play it cool. I'll just tell da Vinci I'm not feeling well, and you can have a nice dinner with Rachel.”
“You're feeling fine,” he said, his finger brushing against my cheek. “In fact, I want to feel more of you.”
I held his hand and pressed it against my chest, between my breasts. “You're wrong. I'm not feeling well at all. I need some time to think about this.”
He nodded, his eyes full of yearning. “I have to see you again. Soon. Tonight. Even that's not soon enough. Let's leave right now.”
If I looked at him too long, I'd be lost and we'd do something I'd truly regret. I could feel tears well in my eyes. “I'll call you in a few days.”
The yearning turned to disappointment. “I'll wait.”
Just minutes after I'd told him he deserved a woman that didn't make him wait, I was doing it to him, too, but what choice did I have? He was my sister's boyfriend, for God's sake. And da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci, was mine.
Chapter 17
“ I don't want to live-I want to love first, and live incidentally. ”
– Zelda Fitzgerald, letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1919
PANCHAL WANTED TO SEE me. Panchal never wants to see me, which could mean only one thing: da Vinci and I had been found out. If he had been bragging about me to his frat buddies, what kept him from saying anything to his classmates? The English class bonded like family. And foreigners were whip-smart, reading the physical cues of others long before they even knew the English words to describe them. But, like da Vinci, they all clearly knew the word “sex” by now, and “affair” and “wrong.”
Panchal was a small man, 5'5” in his black dress shoes, tiny frames around his large brown eyes, silvery black hair around his outturned ears. He sat in an oversized, elevated office chair with a wooden box on which to rest his feet. We made small talk about his daughter and how well his son-in-law fit into his family when Panchal cut to the chase. “We hab a bery big brobleb,” which, after ten years of working for him, I could clearly understand as, “We have a very big problem.”
I began sweating and removed my jacket. “I don't know what to say,” I said full of shame. Panchal had been a mentor to me, urging me to get my PhD and supporting me through my loss. Disappointing Panchal was worse than disappointing my parents.
Panchal shrugged. “Well, it's not your fault, is it?”
“I suppose not. Not exactly. Still.”
“Don't be ridiculous. You can't help that Leonardo is Leonardo any more than I can.”
“Right. And?”
“We must correct the bad behavior.” Panchal came around the front of the desk and sat on the corner.
I began to think of all the bad things I'd done with da Vinci in the last month. Panchal knowing about even one of them would be devastating. Correcting the bad behavior would mean giving up da Vinci, breaking things off with him.
Panchal waved his hands in the air. “Tardiness. Absenteeism. Total disrespect for the Panchal Way of Immersion.”
That bad behavior? Not the sleeping-with-the-teacher kind of bad behavior? The Way of Immersion was Panchal's method for smooth integration. While every immigrant is expected to struggle, Panchal's “way” should work if only they followed the rules. Panchal continued: “I expected him to be different. It is his birthright, see? I expected him to make his own path, but something has happened to him in the last month. Something big. Would you know what this is?”
I nearly blurted the first thing that came to mind: da Vinci was my lover. But that was the biggest thing that had happened to me in the last thirty days, not da Vinci. No, he likely had bigger worries, like making his grades and learning English and finding his way in a new country. But Panchal knew all of this. All immigrants dealt with these dilemmas. It was something else. “He joined a fraternity,” I said, wiping the sweat on my brow with the back of my hand.
Panchal crossed his arms. “American fraternities can be hard for Americans, let alone someone like da Vinci. Frat houses are not a part of Panchal immersion.”
“Yes, sir. But they offered him free tutoring and a nice gym.”
“And beer and girls,” he added in disgust. “I can see the lure, Ramona. But I thought da Vinci was smarter than that. Perhaps he is just big, dumb jock after all?”
I vacillated between wanting to defend da Vinci and agreeing with Panchal. Da Vinci had started spending more and more time at the frat house and on campus, partying four or five nights out of the week and crashing at the frat house half the time instead of our new bed. I missed him, but what choice did I have? I knew I would lose him if I pushed him too hard.
“You have a special relationship,” Panchal said. “You can talk some sense into him. He must be on time and finish every job he is assigned. He must not miss English class. Is this understood?”
“I'll see what I can do.”
Panchal put his hand gently on my shoulder. “And Ramona? Be careful. Your heart is still tender.”
Long exhale. He knew. Of course he knew, and he cared too much about me to stand in the way of my happiness. I could see it there-the light at the end of the tunnel-when I would feel la vita allegra, but I had never expected I would stumble so much on my journey. Joel, da Vinci, Monica, Cortland.
Panchal was right. My heart was still bruised, and there was only one way to avoid further heartbreak: institute the arm's length policy. “Arm's length!” I would yell at the boys when they picked on each other. If I kept everyone at arm's length, not only would they not be able to reach my lips, but they'd be at a safe distance from my heart, too.
“What are you doing here?” I said as I entered the Starbucks Tuesday morning, my vocal cords tightening. I froze in place. Cortland sat in the corner booth where we had sat together two weeks prior. He was unshaven and wild eyed. He didn't look or act himself.
Cortland stood and grabbed my arms. “You haven't called me.”
I shook loose of him, remembering my arm's length policy. He was already breaking it, and his touch felt like lightning on my skin. “I said it would be a few days.”
Sadness and longing flickered in his eyes. “My God. You look beautiful.”
I hadn't dolled up for him, but her. I had gotten up early to look good for Monica, and fortunately, neither of my boys threw up that morning to foil our meeting, but instead I found something even worse. I had thought about calling Cortland a hundred times since Saturday night, but I had stopped short of it, because what good would it do? Avoiding the issue seemed a far smarter way to go. If only there weren't another human being on the other end of it.