“Me too,” she said softly, her blond hair falling like a curtain across her face, with one enormous blue eye peeking through at him. She was happy he hadn’t said he loved her. It was a step she didn’t want to take. He wasn’t in love with her either, he was in like and lust with her, which was all she wanted from him. She put her lips on his then, and they kissed. They fell asleep in each other’s arms afterward, on the couch, as the candles flickered and gently went out, as Liz lay against Jean-Louis and sighed peacefully in her sleep.

Ted’s Monday after the Thanksgiving weekend was not a happy one. It was one of those days when everything went wrong. The water had been turned off in his building for an emergency repair, so he couldn’t take a shower when he got up. His roommates had finished the coffee and not replaced it. He missed two buses and then a subway, when he tried that to get to school, and was late to class. And when the assistant professor handed back their papers on a quiz from the week before, he had gotten several answers wrong and got a miserable grade. The guy sitting next to him had BO, and by the time class was over, he was in a rotten mood, from the lousy grade on the quiz he had actually studied for, and the unpleasant seat.

He was leaving the class with a glum expression, when the teacher signaled him. The professor who normally taught the class was on sabbatical, writing a book, and she had taken over his duties for a year. Her name was Pattie Sears. She was an attractive woman with long curly hair who wore jeans and Birkenstocks with socks and T-shirts that showed off her breasts. He had noticed it when he was bored in class. She looked to be in her early thirties and was sexy in a wholesome, natural way.

“I’m sorry about the grade on the quiz,” she said sympathetically. “Contracts are a bitch.” Ted smiled at what she said. “I flunked them the first time I took the class myself. Some of the rules just don’t make sense.”