Page 116 of Forbidden Lessons

Maybe thisisa date.

“You’re frowning.” He closes the door behind me, then gives another wave of his hand. “Please. Enough with the decorum. We’re well past the stage where you should feel uncomfortable walking through my front door.” He makes a point of glancing toward the garden where he found me waiting last night. “Or the back.”

“Okay,” I say through a laugh, holding up my hand. “I need you to pretend that never happened.”

He tilts his head, curling one side of his mouth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That’s better.” I force a smile, nod. “So, what’s the news? I’ve bitten my nails to shreds.”

“We’ll multitask. I’m starving.” He walks into the kitchen, and I have no choice but to follow.

I suppose if he was going to just blurt out what the hell was so important, he could have done it in a text.

Should I be mad? I want to be mad.

But then the smell of caramelized onions hits my nose, and it’s game over.

I don’t know who’s more surprised when my stomach lets out a ferocious growl—me or Bastian. Probably him. He doesn’t know my last meal was half a stale cheeseburger. I slip onto a kitchen stool, sliding my car keys and phone away from me so I can stretch out my arms on the cool marble surface. I love how stone like this always feels so milky.

“Glad to know you can follow instruction,” my professor says as he angles around the kitchen island and heads for a tall pot of steaming water on the range.

“Thought that was Student 101?” I ask, trying not to drown in my own spit. I mean, the smell in this kitchen is…

Gourmet.

That’s the only way I can explain it, but I desperately wish I had the vocabulary to do better.

When my mom was still alive, the height of Lee family cuisine was TV dinners. But things steadily regressed after mom passed. Still not really sure what happened. Something to do with her heart. After that, it was spam and eggs most meals. The cheapest cereal on the shelf, the one that tasted like wood shavings and sugar.

Eventually, PB & J sandwiches for dinner, if there was any dinner at all.

If my dad had given a fuck, he might have applied for a food subsidy from my school, but, well, he didn’t. And I was too young and naïve to even know things like that existed.

“Not everyone who’s in collegeshouldbein college.”

He wasn’t aiming that jab at me, but apparently the wave of panic that rifles through me doesn’t know it.

“Yeah?” I say, casually knotting my fingers together in front of me. “Like who?”

“Hm. Pour us a drink and maybe I’ll elaborate.”

The way he glances at me from the corner of his eyes, like he’s wondering how I’ll react, makes me think this is a test.

“Sure. But give me a hint, or I’ll get lost in your pantry.”

I’m rewarded with another smile, dragonfly quick as it touches his lips before disappearing. “Depends what you want? Open a faucet and you’ll get filtered rain water. Open the fridge and there’s some wine and sparkling water. Top shelf, to your left, scores you the bourbon you so loathe in your cocoa.”

He throws me another undecipherable look. “Glasses are in the cabinet next to the fridge.”

Water, Haven. He’s got sparkling and everything.

“No soda?”

“Do yourself a favor and Google how much sugar is in one soda. Then Google how much sugar your body is designed to process in a day. The math doesn’t add up.”

“You don’t have to be so condescending about it,” I mutter as I head for the fridge.

I mean to take out the sparkling water. That’s all I want, after all. Fuck knows why I grab the bottle of wine instead.

---