Page 84 of The Summer I First Saw You
43
HARRISON
Christian Cooper writes the kind of books in which a lot of words are used to describe very little, where nothing much happens, and that’s the point because nothing much happens in life either. Critics use words likeincandescentto describe his writing, but they’re still books no one actually wants to read, which is probably why he took a teaching job, though I’m sure the abundance of vulnerable young females didn’t hurt either.
He’s good-looking, cocky, and not old, but certainly nowhere near Daisy’s age. I’m sure he had plenty of students throwing themselves at him, but she’s the one he wanted.
She explains, haltingly, that he invited her to some writing group. She’d gone because he’d told her she was talented and because the ex-boyfriend who’d dumped her the summer before was so impressed that she’d been asked. And on the way out, Cooper told her she was his muse. That his writer’s block had ended the day she walked into his classroom. He’d dated celebrities and there he was, wantingher. He’d been shortlisted for prestigious prizes, had had a novel optioned by HBO, and yet he was insistingherswas the fresh, unsullied voice.
I get how it happened. I just can’tstandthat it happened. And I’m here as her lawyer, but it’s hard to do that job when I am fucking spiraling right now.
That one little detail changes everything. I see a pattern where I didn’t before. Older men have been preying on her for the better part of the past decade. The eighteen-year-old boyfriend, the manager at work, Cooper…
And me.
I pinch my nose.Focus, Harrison. I need to pull my shit together because we’ve got thirty fucking minutes before we enter this hearing, and no matter what else happens today, she’s leaving here with her future restored.
I sink onto the edge of the bed, pressing my hands to my face before I force myself to look back at her. “Daisy, this changes everything. Why didn’t you say anything before now?”
“Because I didn’t want you looking at me the way you are at this precise moment. I had no idea he was still dating that doctoral student.”
I shake my head. “Sheisn’t the issue. It’s that he was your professor. Between that fact and the school’s gross mishandling of your pregnancy and your depression afterward, you could sue. Youshouldsue. This isn’t a discussion we should be having thirty minutes before the fucking hearing. I’m going to cancel the meeting and—”
“No,” she says, twisting her hair. “No. Look, I don’t want to sue. I don’t want everyone to know I was sleeping with a professor and got pregnant. These are things that—” Her voice is choked. “These are things I want to take to my grave. I sue, and they become part of my public history.”
“Not necessarily. Your identity could be protected.” I grab her hands to make sure she understands how important this is. “Daisy, it could be worth alotof money. I’m talking millions, if we found you an attorney who specializes in these kinds ofcases. And it’s such a slam dunk the school would settle before it even went that far.”
She laughs, brushing at the first tear that rolls down her face. “Harrison, how would I explain that I suddenly have millions of dollars to anyone? How would I finish my degree if I was sitting in a courtroom half the time? I don’t want that money. I knew what I was doing. It’s not like he pretended to be a student or blackmailed me into sleeping with him. I made a bad decision, entirely on my own, and yeah…the school should have better resources for students in my position, but I don’t want toprofitoff the fact that they don’t.”
There was an imbalance of power. That’s what she’s not acknowledging. That’s perhaps what I wasn’t acknowledging all summer either. She depended on me for a place to live, for God’s sake. She knew me as her uncle’s most responsible friend.
And I manipulated all that to my benefit. “Daisy—”
“I would pay two million dollars right now if I had it just to make this whole problem go away,” she says, her voice breaking, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “I’d pay two million dollars just to not have failed those classes, to not owe them money, to be able to get my degree and never have my mom or anyone else know about the way I fell apart.”
“Fuck,” I groan, pacing, dragging my hands through my hair.
She’s making the wrong decision, and I’m certain that if she was willing to discuss it with Bridget and Liam, they’d tell her the same thing. But she’s not willing, and ultimately, it’s her call.
“You don’t waive any rights,” I tell her. “We go in there, tell them what happened, but at no point do you agree to an NDA or waive a single right to come after them later on. Are we agreed?”
“But what if that’s the only way they’ll let me finish?”
“It won’t be. They wouldn’t fucking dare, under the circumstances. No matter what they say, my response will be ‘I’ll discuss it with my client’ and you don’t agree toanything, okay?”
“Okay,” she says, swallowing. “Okay.”
We take a cab to the school and walk to the administration building, side by side, not touching. We wouldn’t touch anyway, given that I’m here as her attorney but I also need the distance from her. I need more distance even than I’ve got. We’re led to a large room you’d find in almost every old university: tall windows, ancient hardwood floors, wood chairs for the hearing panel, and shitty folding chairs for the two of us.
I continue to plan out what I’ll say but it’s nearly impossible when that one little piece of information is rewriting every moment we spent together. Because which part of it can I claim I did for her? None of it. I brought her to Malibu because I didn’t want to be away from her. I slept with her that first night because I was jealous. Again and again, I went out of my way to ensure she couldn’t be with anyone else.
It was all so fucking selfish, so much worse than I’d realized at the time.
Jesus. Ispankedher.
I can barely stand to remember it now.
The committee members look bored as they file in. They’re thinking about what they’ll do once they get out of here, whether there’s time to run to the store on the way home or if they should just get takeout.
