Page 68 of Ten Years and Then…
And he kissed her back.
It wasn’t until half an hour later, after she drove him back to campus and dropped him off in front of West Hall, that he really thought about the kiss, and wondered if Nora could forgive him for cheating on her.
It wasn’t until the next morning that he was able to convince himself you couldn’t cheat on someone you broke up with exactly twenty months ago.
Chapter 21
February 1991—Albion College
Nora, February 25
Nora had been staring at her phone for ten minutes. Things were so much better—mostly—with her mother, but this was something different. Asking her mother for practical work advice wasn’t something she’d ever thought she’d do.
But who else was there to ask? Normally this was the kind of thing she would have asked Rachel, but—as far as she knew, anyway—Rachel had never been anyone’s boss, and Nora needed to know what Ben was thinking. She needed to know if she should be grateful or angry at the way Ben was delegating—or dumping off—so much work on her.
They’d been dating for six weeks now, and every week, as they got closer—although not yet close enough to spend a night together—he assigned more and more of his usual duties to her.
The phone wasn’t going to dial itself, was it? If she was going to call, she needed to just do it already.
It only rang twice before her mother picked up. “Hello?”
“Mom, it’s me.”
“Nora, darling! How is my future world class journalist this morning?”
Well, she was in a good mood. That was promising. Maybe she’d actually have some useful advice.
“Confused, mostly. I need—I need your—I don’t know. Insight, I guess? I need to figure out what my editor is doing.”
Her mother laughed. “I’m no journalist, Nora. I wouldn’t know anything about it.”
Nora sighed. “It’s not a journalism thing, Mom. It’s a boss and employee thing. You manage people. I need to know how you think when you’re giving out assignments. Like, when you hand off annoying tasks, are you just doing it because you don’t want to deal with it yourself, or are you trying to help them build up their skills and—I don’t know, teach them something?”
Saying it out loud, it sounded ridiculous. Was she that insecure? That clueless?
Who was she kidding? Insecure and clueless ought to be tattooed on her forehead.
“Is your editor male or female?”
“Ben’s a guy. What difference does that make?”
There was silence for a moment. No, not quite silence; Nora thought she heard her mother suppressing a laugh and rolling her eyes.
“You did not just ask me that, Nora. Please tell me you aren’t that … unaware.” Nora imagined her mother had mentally run through several far harsher words before settling on unaware. Another word they could tattoo on her forehead.
“I guess I am, Mom. I mean, I just didn’t think about that.”
More hesitation on the line. The silence was uncomfortable and went on much too long before her mother finally spoke again. “I don’t want to disillusion you. Or discourage you. But this Ben, there are only two reasons why he’d assign all his unwanted tasks to you. Either he’s simply lazy and wants to do as little work as possible, so he’s dumping them on you.” Another pause. “Or he wants to sleep with you, and he hopes you’ll become so tired of the work that you’ll trade yourself to him in return for better assignments.”
“Mom!” She yelled it out, probably loud enough to hear in the lobby of the dorm two floors below.
“You asked for my advice, Nora. I have worked with countless men, and they all boil down in the end to lazy or horny. And I hate to say this, but you’ll have to learn for yourself how to tell the difference.”
That was—well, horrifying didn’t even begin to cover it. And the men her mother had been with over the last ten years didn’t inspire confidence in her judgement. But she had been running her gallery all this time. Successfully. She had to know what she was talking about, right?
But if she did, then that meant Nora had been completely wrong about Ben going back not just to six weeks ago, but to last year. And if that was true, what else—who else—had she also been wrong about?
“Thank you, Mom. That’s … a lot. But I’ll think about it, I promise.”
