Ally Hughes Has Sex Sometimes Read Online Free Page B

professor.
    What kind of student would do that?
    But there they were, and there he was in Ally’s house. She had invited him in, after all, or had he invited himself?
    â€œOh,” she said, staring at him, feeling winded. She couldn’t think.
    â€œIs that okay?” Jake asked.
    She didn’t know. Lizzie was away. That was true. Her daughter was three hours south in New York and safe with Claire.
    She was with Claire, Ally’s mom.
    On Sunday, they’d hop the Amtrak at Penn. Ally would fetch them at one o’clock at PVD on the Gaspee Street side. But she was supposed to be grading papers. Yoko’s papers. That night. Not kissing one of her students.
    â€œLet me stay. Please,” Jake said. He looked into her eyes and squeezed her elbow. He had her elbow again. Then he stepped back to give her some space, room to think, to see him, to breathe, to catch her breath.
    He slipped his hands into his pockets and then slipped them out, and a second later, he kissed her again, this time in the middle of her mouth. “Sorry,” he said and let her go completely. “I can’t help it. I’ve been wanting to do that for three years.”
    What? Ally thought. He did? Years?
Three
years?
    They gazed at each other, and neither one spoke.
    She wasn’t startled the second time, and she didn’t resist. She saw it coming. She wanted him to kiss her again. He tasted like Stella, malty and sweet. “Oh my goodness,” she said and looked down.
    He tasted like college and kissed her the way she’d been kissed back then, on the second floor of Healy Hall or in a dark, sodden corner of Champions bar. Suddenly the past rose inside her, that feeling from ten years before, all that raucous, innocent fun, and something released, nerves maybe, and made her laugh.
    â€œYou’re laughing,” Jake said, seeming embarrassed.
    â€œNo, no, I’m not,” she said kindly, but she was. “I’m your professor, Jake. Come on. I’m thirty-one.”
    â€œI’m twenty-one. So?”
    â€œPlease. It’s totally yucky and . . . inappropriate, and I’m sure against some rule.”
    â€œWhy?” he said. “What rule? I’m attracted to you, and I’m pretty sure you’re attracted to me.”
    â€œI am, Jake. I am. But who isn’t? Look at you. Please. Everyone’s attracted to you.”
    Jake smiled.
    She looked at him and then downstairs. She imagined Claire standing there, Lizzie with her backpack, both looking up from the first floor. You get only
one
mistake, Claire said when Ally got pregnant in college. One. She’d made hers.
    Claire was right, Ally thought: Grown-up professors did not do this. They didn’t kiss students. Maybe the men did, but not the women. What was she doing? What was she thinking?
    She turned to him. “Think for a second. If I were your professor, and I was a man and you were a woman . . .”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œWhat if—you needed a recommendation? A credit for class—which you
did
? It might seem like—”
    â€œThat’s not
exactly
what’s happening here.”
    Ally smiled. “I made a pizza.” She turned away. “You must be starved.”
    â€œI am.”
    â€œGood.” She stepped away and went downstairs. This was right, she thought as she did. To walk away.
    Jake followed.
    On the first floor, they cut through the dining room toward the kitchen. “Do you always lead?” Jake asked.
    â€œNo. My little girl Lizzie leads. She’s the boss. She’ll be back Sunday.”
    â€œYou said that already.”
    â€œOh, I did? Right. She’s got a report due. Tuesday. On her birthday. Nathan Hale. Benedict Arnold. It’s about spies.” She entered the kitchen and moved toward the pizza, pretending to ignore him, to forget what had happened seconds before, rambling on about Loyalists and Patriots,