Page 7 of Playing By Their Rules

“How did we make that mistake?” I ask as soon as the door closes behind Maisie. “At the restaurant, didn’t she say she was in grad studies?”

Ethan falls back on the bed and stares at the ceiling. “No. Fuck. She told us she was in the linguistics program. We assumed grad studies.”

“We assumed grad studies because we wanted it to be the case.”

Even if she’d been a grad student, it’s not a guarantee she’s a certain age. There are twenty-two-year-olds in graduate programs, and younger. We were blinded by our own desires.

I scrub a hand over my face, trying to clear the fog of lust. I want to run after her, tell her we’ll take care of her until she’s twenty-five, fight off any young punk who looks at her too closely. And then on her birthday, we'll make everything worth the wait. But that’s grooming, and again, we aren’t predators.

“I don’t feel good about letting her leave,” I say. “We should’ve made an exception for her.”

“We have rules for a reason,” Ethan reminds me.

“Fuck.” I lean against the wall. “I don’t want to go back to the apartment. I can still smell her arousal in here.”

“I can, too.” He doesn’t move from his spot on the bed. “The sweetest girl we never had.”

3

ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 115

Chance

Five Years Later

“Welcome to Abnormal Psychology 115,” I say to the class at large. The lecture hall seats one hundred, and every chair is filled. I expect it to stay full throughout the semester. Ab Psych is one of the more popular courses at SEU. It’s an undergrad course, but graduate students take it to fulfill their grad degrees, too.

A hundred minds, hungry for knowledge, await my instruction. I should be honored, but instead I’m bored, burnt out. The past five years, I’ve felt like a shadow of myself. The only time I’m happy is when I’m jerking off to thoughts of the girl Ethan and I pushed away. And even then, the most I can say for those sessions is that they are a pleasant form of torture.

“The syllabus has been emailed to you,” I continue, “so please follow along from that as we go over the expectations and plans for the course. If you need a printed handout, please let me know.”

I scan the filled seats to make sure no one is raising their hand for a paper copy, and that’s when it happens.

I see her.

Straight black hair pulled into a high ponytail just like the last time I had her in my arms, although then, Ethan’s hand had been wrapped in those silken strands. Her magenta lips tilt upward in a faint smile as she scans her tablet. She’s wearing a white button-down shirt and…fuck me, she shifts in her chair and I get a view of her legs.

She’s wearing a plaid skirt, like she’s walked straight out of my fantasies and into my classroom.

Only in my fantasies, the classroom is empty of the other students. It’s just the three of us—Ethan and me and Maisie. She’s been very naughty and Ethan has her bent over the desk while he screws her, her hands clawing at the polished wood while I jack myself and wait my turn to deliver my own inches of punishment.

My pause has gone on too long, and she starts to look up from her tablet. The others students, too, are curious about the pause. I quickly look at my own set of papers.

The words swim on the page in front of me while my mind whirls. Am I hallucinating? I could become my own case study. Because it can’t be her sitting in the front row.

But it is. I’d know that sweet, sinful face and those deep pink lips anywhere.

I say to the class, “Hang on, I lost my place. I need just a minute.”

It’s the first day, and the students nod in understanding. If I say anything with enough authority in my voice, they don’t question it.

Instead of looking at my lecture notes, I instead look at the class roster. Maisie, Maisie, Maisie…there. Maisie Kanne. She’s a grad student now, but that’s all the information I can get from this sheet. I wonder if she’s still studying linguistics, or if she’s moved on to something else. I wonder if she’s moved on to someone else.

Of course she has. It’s been five years. She was a virgin back then, putting on a brave front when two filthy-minded men propositioned her in her place of work.

We’re sick bastards, Ethan and I. She was practically a child, only twenty years old.

Surely by now, she’s gotten over us.

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