He was quiet for a long moment.
“Maybe I need to learn that, too.”
I nodded.
“Then we start there. We don’t repeat what happened. We don’t turn this into some secret relationship. And we don’t make promises to each other.”
He agreed.
For the remainder of the afternoon, we maintained a careful distance.
We returned home, prepared dinner, and discussed his upcoming classes.
The days that followed were strangely peaceful on the surface.
We watched television.
We went grocery shopping.
We talked about books and college.
But underneath every ordinary moment was the knowledge that we had crossed a line neither of us could erase.
And I began to understand that the hardest part of a mistake wasn’t always the moment you made it.
Sometimes it was the way the memory followed you into every ordinary moment afterward.
On the third evening, Tom called from Chicago.
“How are my favorite people?” he asked cheerfully.
