The last I'd heard from Marie was a big brush-off.
"I sincerely appreciate your interest," her e-mail said, "but I should probably tell you that I'm happily involved with someone else. I apologize if anything I did suggested otherwise."
We had met the previous fall at the university, where she was a student in the class I was teaching as part of my graduate assistantship. She was a senior in pre-med, and the class was a general education requirement she should have taken care of her first or second year. Being a few years older made a big difference: her ideas were consistently more sophisticated than those of the other students, and this alone would have made her stand out. But as it happened, I also found her incredibly beautiful. She was a slight, short, girl, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, and her choice in clothing was generally conservative. Still, when she wore shorts I couldn't help but notice her smoothness of her legs, and the sandals she wore showed off a beautiful pair of feet with painted toenails. Her brown eyes always widened when she laughed, which sometimes gave my cock an urgent, projected throb. She sat in the front row, and was always concerned about grades, which made her personality seem somewhat bookish. Yet she could also be playful and sarcastic and sometimes called me "teacher" instead of my first name, which is what I asked my students to call me. Maybe it was something in the way she said that word, "teacher," or in the number of times she came to my office to ask me questions throughout the semester.
Whatever it was, I optimistically wrote to her as soon as the semester was over and invited her to lunch. That was when she wrote back with the message. I started double-guessing myself and concluded that no, she hadn't really done anything to encourage me, and I felt embarrassed that my own interest had been so obvious when it didn't seem to be reciprocated. I saw her only once the next term. She said she had been accepted to med school, and would be starting in the fall. That, I assumed, was the end.
But the following year I was going back to school after winter break, and my connecting flight was overbooked. Those of us who didn't make it onto the plane got coupons we could use on the next flight out-which wasn't until the following morning. So there I was, stuck overnight in Houston with nothing to do but watch TV in a hotel room paid for by the airline. That's what it looked like, at least, until it hit me as I checked in that the last time I talked with Marie she said Houston was where she was going to school. It was nearly 11:00 by the time I got to my room, but motivated by boredom and bravery I went ahead and checked the phone book for her name. I was in luck. Not only was she listed, she was also home, answered the phone, and when I explained my situation she said she would love to get out of the house for a while and meet me, as she put it, "for drinks." The place where I was staying didn't have a bar, but a hotel across the street did, and we agreed that we'd meet there.
I tried to stay calm and tell myself not to get my hopes up. I wanted her, of course, as much as I always had, but there were good reasons to curb my lusty optimism. She could still be seeing that guy, and besides, she came off as being very level-headed, not prone to acting on impulse. We would probably just have a friendly conversation about neutral topics like school and the weather.
Marie saw me through the window from the parking lot, apparently, because she walked in with a big smile on her face and said, "Teacher!" and gave me a friendly hug that lasted a little longer than I thought it would. She'd cut her hair and was wearing glasses, but she moved the same, smiled the same, and the feeling of her body touching mine was enough to trigger an enormous hard-on. It curled up inside my jeans, straining to fully extend, and kept growing even as we walked toward a booth to be seated.
The conversation got interesting in a hurry. She complained about med school taking all her time and how she was desperate for any kind of social life. Also, she had dumped the guy—"he wanted me to drop out of school so we could get married"—and she wondered aloud why she even bothered to still take the pill. That took me aback. Here we were, old friends sharing drinks at midnight, and she had just implied that she hadn't had sex in months, but was still prepared for it. And so it went. She touched my arm a couple times, and everything she said seemed to me like a sign, but I didn't trust myself to read them right. Near one o'clock, it felt like things were winding down. The drinks were gone, and we were out of things to talk about.
"It's kind of cold in here," she said.
"Yeah."
"I bet your room is warmer."
My voice disappeared, and all I could do was jut my chin forward as if I were giving the matter contemplation.
"Let's go," she said, and grabbed her purse as if to close the conversation without further discussion. "I've had too much to drink to drive right away."
Almost before I knew what was happening we had paid our bill, walked across the street, and found the door to my room. I was fumbling with the passcard, trying to get it out of my wallet as she stood beside me waiting. Eventually I found it, and we went inside.
"Wow," she said as we entered the room. "I really need to sit down."
For a moment, it seemed like there really was a logical—and Platonic—explanation for what was going on: just like she said back at the bar, she had gotten a little drunk and didn't want to drive home.
"Are you sick?" I said. "Are you going to be OK?"
"Oh, I'll be fine," she said. "I didn't drink that much."
"Alright."
"Other things happen to me when I drink, but I don't get sick."
She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at me standing in front of her. She opened her mouth as if she were going to say something, but then just leaned backwards and let herself fall.
"Oh, God," she said. Now she was staring up at the ceiling, and her legs rested, motionless, off the edge of the bed. For a moment, neither of us said anything. I sat down on the chair at the desk and looked down at her sandaled feet on the carpet. The toes weren't painted. No time, I guessed.
"This is a little scandalous, isn't it?" she asked, without moving.
"What is?"
"Us being here."
I looked up and tried to read her expression. She was still staring straight up.
"Because I used to be your teacher?"
