Tenure

48. Kiernan

48

Kiernan

I wake up to the smell of bacon and rub my eyes blearily. It wasn’t even dark when we got back to his place. I showered, and then lay down for just a minute, and now it’s apparently morning.

I grab the blanket draped across the end of the bed and wrap myself up in it, padding down the hall, mouth watering. I didn’t eat supper. Just passed the fuck out. Oops.

“Morning,” he says without looking up from his laptop.

“Morning,” I say. I sit down and he slides the croissants towards me. They’re still warm. He pushes the bacon towards me too, still not really paying attention, focused on whatever is on his laptop.

I shift uncomfortably and my wince seems to have involuntarily gotten his attention.

“You okay?”

I shrug. “Just sore.”

He frowns. “How sore.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m fine, James.”

“Don’t roll your eyes.”

I stick my tongue out at him, and his hand snaps out, gripping my hair and tugging it playfully, tilting my head up.

“Behave,” he says. “I don’t have time for this right now.”

He lets go of my hair and smiles at me, his eyes crinkling, the warning half-assed as he’s clearly distracted. But his affection is genuine. It’s like he wants me to know he’s not ignoring me, he’s just in the middle of something.

I’m not sure why I find that so charming. Maybe because he took my call during his meeting with his students. Maybe because he seems to make all the time in the world for me, and even in this tiny moment of I have a life he still wants me to know he cares. Or maybe it’s just because his smile has me soaking onto the blanket; God that face should be illegal. But it’s with no small amount of pride that I think about the fact that he doesn’t seem to smile for anyone else.

“Everything okay?” I ask tentatively.

“Hmm,” he says noncommittally.

“Lawyer stuff?”

“Lawyer stuff.”

“James, how much trouble are you in for this?”

He looks over at me and seems to assess how much or little to tell me. I wait patiently, quietly, because if I’m actually his girlfriend I feel entitled to know. But it’s also my fault he’s in this mess— sort of— and I don’t want to push.

He’s earned some trust, that much I know for sure.

He rubs his chin, his stubble distracting and I think about how good it feels between my legs . . .

“I’m not sure, to be honest,” he says. “I haven’t heard anything, so he clearly didn’t go to the school or the police. At least not right away. That may change. It’s hard to say.”

“What kind of trouble would you be in with the school?”

He shrugs. “Not the kind that matters. And if it did there are other jobs.”

I blink, surprised with the nonchalance with which he casually tosses out mention of abandoning his tenured position.

“Are police a concern?”

He sighs. “I don’t know, Kiernan. I need to speak with Gerald.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to push—”

He puts his hand on mine. “You’re not pushing. I just don’t have answers.”

“You’re supposed to always have the answers,” I grumble.

He laces our fingers together and drags our interlocked fists to his mouth, softly kissing our knuckles.

“Yet here we are,” he says, a twinkle in his eye.

“What’s THAT supposed to mean?!”

“That you’re an unsolvable equation, babygirl. A gift from the multiverse, to put me in my place.”

“Maybe that’s the answer,” I chide. “Your unchecked ego equals me.”

“Prove your theorem,” he says.

I drop the blanket on the floor like a pillow and drop to my knees.

He did warn me never to stick out my tongue at him.

“Yes daddy,” I say as I reach for his fly.