280 Days

It was exactly 7:46 on the evening of January 8th when Charles McKinley’s cell phone rang. He was having dinner at a restaurant in the lower east side of Manhattan, alone at the table in the corner, as usual. He had a gin and tonic along with his salmon fillet and wilted chard.

He was not expecting a phone call.

Especially not a call from her.

Ina Bridley was one of his brightest students. So bright, in fact, that she had graduated a month earlier, finishing up college at NYU exactly six months ahead of schedule. In addition to being bright, she was absolutely beautiful. She was tall, with thick, curved hips and perfect round breasts and long, dark auburn curls. Her eyes were dark, intelligent, always sparkling.

Especially when she looked at him.

They had begun an affair one year earlier, during Christmas break. She was a Junior and couldn’t get home to Georgia because of snow. All of her friends were home for Christmas. He saw her wandering around the library, trying to balance a stack of books in one hand and an MP3 player in the other, shimmying her hips to a silent beat. He tried not to look at her undulating hips and instead focused on the back of her head, trying to place her amongst the hundreds of students. After a moment, she turned slightly, revealing a profile fit to be carved into a cameo, and he stepped forward, grabbing the books as they started to slip out of her hands. She blushed, slipping her earphones off the top of her perfect head.

“Professor McKinley! Thank you!” she said in a smooth, light southern accent, smiling up at him. “What are you doing here?”

Charles smiled back, now recognizing Ina Bridley, one of his favorite students. She always sat in the front of his Dichotomy of American Films class, was quick to answer and even quicker to defend her answers.

“Just trying to find a book to read. I don’t have anything better to do tonight. What about you? Shouldn’t you be home for Christmas?” he asked, looking down at her. She smiled sadly.

“I had to come home early. Daddy saw the weather report for next week and said that all the planes were gonna be canceled, so they shipped me back early.”

Charles nodded. “Well, I’m sorry. Did you have a good time anyway?”

“Yes, I did,” she said breezily, balancing on one foot for a moment. “What about you? Why aren’t you home? Don’t you have a family?”

Charles shrugged. “I spent two weeks at my parent’s house, with my brother and two sisters. That was about all I could stand,” he laughed. Ina tilted her head to the side, furrowing her brow.

“Forgive me if I’m being brash, but don’t you have a wife? Any children?” she asked, turning and facing him directly. Charles laughed.

“No. No wife, no children. It’s just me. Cheaper that way.”

Ina laughed too, and Charles, forgetting for a moment that he was a professor and an authority figure and 44 to her 23, brushed a stray lock of hair from her cheek. She stopped laughing and looked up at him, her eyes round and her cheeks pink.

It just got worse from there.

Now, a year later, he was alone, and the only thing he could think about was seeing her again. Maybe she was back in town.

“Hey, kitten,” he whispered into his mobile phone. “Are you home?”

Ina didn’t say anything.

“Ina? Are you there?” he asked, frowning. He heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line, and then Ina spoke.

“Yeah, Charlie. I’m home. Can… can you come over? Please?”

Charles stopped a passing waiter and quietly asked for the check. He heard Ina exhale shakily.

“Ina, are you okay? Is something wrong?” he asked, a bit panicked.

“No, no,” she mumbled. “I’m not okay. Just… come over as soon as you can. Hurry, Charles.”

The line went dead and he shut his phone, his heart pounding. He pulled two twenties from his wallet and put them on the table, not even bothering to get the change.

He left the restaurant and almost ran out onto the sidewalk, shuddering as a wall of frigid air hit him like a ton of bricks. He was grateful for the cold air, though. It helped calm him enough to hail a taxi. His mind kept running through scenarios at lightning speed. Had someone found out about them? Had the school confronted her? Would they fire him? Had her father and mother found out? Was her father on his way to kill him this very second? He shuddered again as he slid into the backseat of a Gypsy cab and told the driver to take him to Bowery and step on it.

When he arrived at Ina’s apartment, he’d calmed down a bit. He was sure that if the college had found out, it’d only be a slap on the wrist, considering Ina was no longer a student (even though she’d been a student when the affair had started), she’d graduated, so maybe the school wouldn’t have confronted her, and her father was a sensible man, he was sure. He walked up the stairs to the third level of her building and knocked on the door. Apartment number 234. After a short moment, Ina opened the door and he hurried in.

Her apartment was tiny, cozy. The bed was in the living room and she used the tiny adjoining bedroom as an art studio. Her cat Edgar was curled up by the radiator, snoring softly on a pile of paint rags. A shelf in the corner held some of her finished pieces. Everything was bright and cheery and homey and Charles never felt as relaxed as he did when he was in Ina’s apartment.

However, after one look at Ina, he no longer felt relaxed. He could see that she’d been crying, but now her face was pale, gaunt even. Her hair was twisted up into a bun and she was dressed in an old pair of sweat pants and a thin cotton t-shirt. The TV droned in the background and a kettle of tea was boiling on the small gas range. Her suitcases were still sitting by her bed.

“Hey, kitten,” he sighed, taking her in his arms. She snaked her arms around him and lay her head on his chest, inhaling shakily. He looked down at her, brushing a stray lock of hair off her cheek.

“What’s wrong, Ina?”

She looked up at him, biting her lip.

“I think you’d better sit down first.”

She led him, slowly, to the tiny table underneath her window, and they both sat, opposite each other. She looked small and young and scared, and his heart felt like it was in a vice. He couldn’t take it anymore.

“Ina, what’s wrong? Dammit, you have to tell me or I think I’m gonna go crazy,” he said, taking her pale hand in his. She looked at him, cleared her throat, and dropped the one bomb he wasn’t expecting.

“I’m pregnant.”

Charles felt like he’d been physically struck. His heart skipped a beat and his mouth went dry and his stomach felt like it’d been tied into one huge knot.

“You’re what?” he stuttered, dropping her hand. She crossed her arms, her lip quivering.

“You heard me. I’m pregnant.”

They were both silent for a long moment, the quiet punctuated only by the laugh track from the sitcom playing on channel five and the bubbling sound of boiling water in the tea kettle.

“Dammit, Charlie, say something,” Ina said, her voice breaking. “I think I’m gonna go crazy if you don’t say something.”

Charles tried to speak, but he couldn’t form words. His mind was completely blank. Finally he was able to string together a sentence.

“Are you sure?” he asked, not quite able to look her in the eye. She shook her head, swallowing hard.

“Yes, I’m sure. Four tests and a trip to the midwife say yes.”

“How far along are you?” he said weakly, looking out the window at the skyline. She traced one of the owls printed on the tablecloth.

“The midwife said five weeks,” she whispered.

His mind slowly did the math.

“So… sometime in late November?” he asked. His mouth was still dry and his stomach continued twisting itself into new and even more intricate knots.

“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds right. Probably after Thanksgiving break. That was the night the condom slipped, remember? Oh, God, Charlie. Why wasn’t I on something else too? Why weren’t we worried about the condom slipping?”

Because we hadn’t seen or talked to each other in two weeks and it was almost too much to bear, Charlie thought.

“I don’t know,” he whispered, standing and moving to the window. His mind spun and he felt slightly nauseous.

Ina looked up at him and bit her lip. Now that he couldn’t see her, she felt her resolve to be calm start slipping, felt tears start welling up in her eyes. It was in moments like these that the years between them seemed to swell into an almost impassable gulf. He never seemed old to her, but now, standing at the window, the light from the street lamps outside casting a yellowish glow on his nearly white hair, he looked ancient.

Ancient, but still beautiful.

From the moment she’d first laid eyes on him, walking down the hall the first week of her freshman year, Ina had developed an absolutely terrible crush on her handsome film professor. She and her flat mates whispered about him over wine coolers back in their apartment, quietly swooned over his still lean, attractive body as he stood at the front of the lecture hall in his black jeans and leather jacket, waxing eloquent on Robert Downey Sr. and Robert Mitchum and Buster Keaton, sighed as he drove off campus in his beat up old Camaro. But for Ina, it was different.

For the past two years, she’d been in love with him. The encounter in the library, though the beginning of his infatuation with her, was just the culmination of an entire year’s worth of emotions for Ina.

Charles had walked her back out of the library, holding her books for her like some love struck high school student. Ina buried her hands deep into the pocket of her dark brown pea coat, stiffening as they walked out into the cold night. Charles noticed this and smiled.

“Still trying to get used to New York in the winter?” he laughed, stepping a little bit closer to her. Her heart started beating faster as his leg bumped into hers. She smiled, hoping she didn’t seem too nervous.

“Yeah. Winter’s much different here. I miss Georgia. It’s warm there. You know, we used to go swimming in the middle of winter sometimes. My granddad had a catfish pond,” she laughed. “We were crazy, me and my sisters. We always tried to swim to the bottom.”

Charles laughed, shaking his head.

“Swimming in the middle of winter? That’s insane. And you’re still insane, it looks like. Why don’t you have a hat?” he asked, looking at her bare head. She shrugged.

“I didn’t think about, it I guess. It was so sunny earlier. Felt good.”

Charles paused, and Ina stopped walking, looking up at him as he took his own black knit beanie off his head. She held her breath as he put it on her head, her skin tingling as he pulled it gently down over her ears.

“There,” he said, fluffing up his more salt than pepper hair. “That’s better. Now I’m the insane one.”

Ina swallowed now, still watching him at the window. She watched the muscles of his strong back move back and forth as he took slow, steady breaths. Even now, a small twinge of desire moved through her as she thought of his naked back. She closed her eyes, thinking of the first time they’d ever been together.

It was a month after their first furtive kiss in his office after hours, two months after they’d started secretly seeing each other, when Charles had finally taken Ina back to his apartment. He led her into his spacious loft in SoHo, took her coat and hung it on the metal rack by the door, and poured her a glass of wine. She took it gratefully, her nerves so tangled that she needed a sip or two to calm down. His big shaggy dog, Irvin, had come tearing around the corner, sniffing and barking at her merrily, and she’d laughed, spilling a bit of wine on her hand. Charles took the glass from her and picked up her hand.

“Let me get that for you,” he whispered, kissing the spot with the drop of wine on it, his tongue hot and rough on her hand. Every nerve in her body stood at attention. He moved his hand to the small of her back and let his fingers wander up under the hem of her shirt, his hand warm against her skin. He’d kissed her, soft and slow, and she’d melted under his touch.

“You sure you still want to do this?” he’d asked after a few moments. By now her shirt was lying on the floor, and his hands were lingering on the waistband of her skirt, his thumb tracing small circles on the skin right below her bellybutton. She nodded, her hands tangled in his hair, and then kissed him hard. She felt his lips curl into a smile beneath hers, and then they’d somehow managed to make it to his bedroom.

His sheets were cool on her back, freshly pressed and stark white, contrasting with the black of his pillows. He leaned down, his lips trailing down her neck to her shoulder, his right hand still on her back, the cold of the metal band he wore on his right ring finger dragging across her skin as he moved his hand up to the strap of her red bra. Closing her eyes, she shivered as he brought the straps around and over her shoulders. He stopped, and she opened her eyes. He was hunched over her, his eyes moving over her intently.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered, trying to resist the urge to cover herself up with the sheet.

“Nothing,” he said, laughing quietly. “You’re beautiful, that’s all.”

Ina flushed, feeling heat flood her face and down her neck to her chest. He laughed louder.

“Thank you,” she whispered, looking down at him, still dressed in his white cotton t-shirt and dark wash jeans. As if he’d read her mind, he pulled off his own shirt and leaned back down, pressing onto her, the weight of him suffocating in the most delicious of ways. He kissed her again, pulling the elastic band out of her hair and shaking the mass of curls loose so they fanned out on the pillow.

After a minute or two, his hands wandered again to the waistband of her short denim skirt. He quickly undid the button and the zipper, pulling the thick fabric down over her hips. Her panties were red, lacy, and a surge of lust went through him at the sight of them, sitting precariously low on the curves of her pale hips. He looked up, surprised to find her with her eyes screwed shut, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. A thought flashed through his mind.

“Open your eyes, kitten,” he whispered, laying his hand on the soft arc of her belly. She obeyed, and a blaze of shame washed over him.

“You’re a virgin, aren’t you?” he asked, guilt mingling with unbridled lust in a way that wasn’t entirely unappealing. She laughed shortly.

“Is it that obvious?”

“No,” he said, hooking his thumbs through the waistband of her underwear, pulling them and the skirt past her thighs and her ankles and letting them fall to the floor.

He was gentle. If there was one thing that Charles McKinley was during his time in bed with Ina, it was gentle. There was something unbearably erotic about making love with a woman who had no experience. Everything was new to Ina, every gasp and moan and bolt of pain mingled with pleasure. He went slow, letting her set the pace, and finally, after what felt like hours and hours to Ina, he brought her to her end, letting himself finish only after she had. They lay there, the sheets tangled around their legs, her head propped on his arm, staring at the ceiling. Ina’s chest heaved up and down, and she turned away from him, not wanting him to see that her eyes were welling up. He didn’t say anything, just turned, pressed his body against hers, wrapped his arms around her waist, stroked that sensitive spot just beneath her breasts with the back of his hand.

Everything just got better from there.

“I have to go.”

Ina opened her eyes, startled. Charlie was looking at her, panic written all over his face.

“Charlie, please. Please, Charlie, don’t go,” Ina begged, now openly crying. “What are we going to do?”

Charles couldn’t think straight. He felt like he was suffocating.

“I-I just have to go, Ina. I’ll see you later, okay? Just give me some time to process this. I need some time,” he stuttered, moving towards the door. Before Ina could stop him, he was out in the hallway, nearly running to the stairwell. He stumbled out onto the sidewalk and hailed a cab, glancing at his watch in the process. It was 8:34. Plenty of time to make it to a bar. Any bar.

“Where to, mister?” the cabbie asked, smacking on a piece of bright pink bubblegum.

“Just take me to the nearest bar,” Charles said, rubbing his temples. The cabbie smacked his gum.

“Rough night?”

Charles exhaled slowly, leaning his head against the cool window.

“You have no idea.”