Need Me (Broke and Beautiful #2)(29)

“Are you hungry?” he asked her. “I can order pizza or Indian. There’s a really good Indian—”

“I’m fine. I had sushi at the airport.” She rubbed her arms as she turned in a circle, looking at his apartment like it was a museum exhibit. Living Habits of the Prodigal Son. At the refrigerator, she stopped, peering down at the official letter attached to his fridge. Damn. He should have taken the job offer from NYU down weeks ago, but he could admit he enjoyed seeing it there every time he opened the fridge. “NYU offered you a job?”

“Yes, but I’m not taking it. I’m comfortable where I am.” He’d applied to Columbia and NYU at the same time, but Columbia had gotten back to him first. At the time, he’d been hoping for NYU because it was more convenient to his living situation, but staying unemployed for any length of time after school hadn’t been an option. NYU had finally found an opening and contacted him right away. He’d been prepared to decline this week, but for some reason—a reason he refused to consider—he’d asked for time to consider the offer.

“Ben, I hate to see you living like this. It’s so unnecessary.”

“We have the same discussion every time you’re here.” He pulled his bag over his head and set it on top of the bookcase, careful to keep his tone patient. She’d never understood his unwillingness to touch the money set aside for him by his father, and he didn’t expect her to now. “Why don’t we talk about what you’ve been up to? You came from Miami, right?”

“The Hamptons, actually.” She finished her perusal to look at him. “I spent a couple weeks there with some friends, but it’s starting to get colder, so . . .” Her smile looked brittle. “We all started going our separate ways. You know how it goes.”

He didn’t. Well, he knew a lot about going separate ways. But spending two weeks in the Hamptons and saying good-bye to people because the weather changed? No, he knew nothing about that. It had taken him a while after coming to New York to make friends for the very reason that he knew what it felt like when people vanished from your life. There one day. Gone the next. Louis and Russell had been watching a basketball game beside him in the Longshoreman one night, and they’d started talking over beers. They’d all three kept coming back, until he’d kind of fallen into friendship with them. It hadn’t been a conscious thing, or it might never have happened.

“What about you?” his mother asked. “How is the job going? I still can’t believe you’re a professor.” She laughed a little uncomfortably. “It makes me feel so old.”

“It’s going well. Really well.” Honey’s face swam in his mind, along with a heavy, carved-out feeling in his chest. He hadn’t experienced it since they’d been together earlier, and he’d been waiting for it to make an appearance. The reminder that he’d done something irrevocable. Something against his rules and the ones that had been laid out for him by his employer. He suspected his mother showing up had buoyed the feeling, bringing it past the surface sooner than it might have.

“What’s wrong?” His mother propped a hip against the counter in his tiny kitchen. “I can tell something is bothering you, because you keep pushing up your glasses even though they’re not slipping down. You’ve done it since you were a kid.”

“Did I?” He cleared his throat. “It’s nothing.” Except that was a lie. He felt the need to get it out in the open. Relieve some of the pressure surrounding his rib cage. Yet there was something else, too, bolstering the desire to spill his guts. He knew the details would horrify his mother, and he hoped maybe that would give him the reality check he needed. “There’s a girl, actually. She’s—”

“A girl?” Her arched eyebrow didn’t move, but he suspected it might have lifted if it hadn’t been for the Botox she got injected regularly. “That’s so exciting. Have you been dating long?” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked the screen. “If I delay my flight to Ibiza one more day, could I meet her?”

Ben contained the laughter that wanted to escape. He’d barely spent any time with Honey himself. Not to mention, this wasn’t exactly the kind of relationship that warranted a meet the parents night. Was it? He’d just barely wrapped his mind around the fact that they’d had sex.

Jesus. They’d had sex. In an unlocked classroom. With his colleagues a couple floors away.

He sunk down onto the couch. “She’s a student of mine.”

His mother went very still. Ben thought she might have fossilized, but she turned and reached up into the cabinet over the sink, pulling out the bottle of whiskey she’d brought with her the last time. “Ben, you can’t be serious.” Her Massachusetts accent had come back in a big way. “After everything. Everything that happened with your father. How could you do something so stupid?”

“I don’t know.” His voice sounded dull, far away. “It just—”

“Don’t.” She shook the bottle at him, mouth twisting in a grimace. “Don’t say those words. It just happened. You know where I’ve heard them before?”

“Yes. I do know. I was there.”

“And still you continue the pattern?” She uncapped the bottle and took a healthy swig. “I know I was one of the women, Ben. I know that. When I met your father, he was married, and I was the shiny, new model. I hate myself for that. But I didn’t deserve to watch him trade me in so many times. They got younger and younger. He stopped hiding them, and one day it all caught up, didn’t it?”