“ ... you asked me if I was in the meth business or the money business. Neither. I’m in the empire business.”

I closed my eyes, breaking my concentration on the show I was watching for the fourth time in the past hour. It wasn’t like I was going to miss anything—I’d seen the show three times all the way through, yet I kept getting distracted by it instead of doing what I was here for.

I glanced at my Bio 201 book and frowned. Maybe turning on the show was a mistake.

With my roommate going home for the weekend, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the empty dorm room and get some serious studying done before my mid-term. I was behind on the work, and I was starting to feel it. This weekend of intense study and work would magically catch me up, allowing me to maintain my grade.

But the siren song of good television wasn’t the only thing calling to me. There was also Alicia.

The girl I’d been seeing was gone for the weekend as well, but just because she wasn’t physically present didn’t mean that she didn’t fight for dominance in my mind. That dimple in her cheek when she gave me that shy smile just wouldn’t stop haunting me, and I found myself tempted to look at porn just to take the edge off what Alicia was doing to me.

If only I could justify it—my morning was already being eaten up by Walt and Jesse ... the last thing I needed to do was go on a second gooning session since I had rolled out of bed. My good intentions for the weekend were already starting to show frayed edges.

A knock on the door pulled me from my introspection, and I frowned, wondering who could possibly be knocking on my door mid-morning on a Saturday. Almost everyone I knew was gone for the weekend.

I slid my chair away from my desk, stood up, and approached the door a little cautiously, as if afraid there might be an intruder on the other side. Popping the lock, I cautiously opened it to see who it was.

A pair of gold/green eyes stared at me through the slit in the door, and it took me three whole seconds to realize who I was staring at. “Kayla?”

“Hey Adam,” Kayla said.

Kayla McHenry had been my babysitter from the ages of eight to twelve, when she was finally able to leave our small town and attend college. According to her, she’d dropped out after meeting the man who would later become her husband. They only stayed married a few years before he left her for a younger woman whose figure hadn’t been ruined by having his child—her words, not mine.

The last thing I would accuse Kayla of was having a ‘ruined’ body, and I would know. After Kayla’s divorce was finalized, her parents convinced her to move back home with her baby and live with them until she could get back on her feet. I discovered all this when I went home for the weekend two months ago and ran into Kayla outside a Walmart parking lot. She invited me back to her place, and after putting her kid down for the night, we ended up having a glass of wine.

That was the night she took my virginity.

We hadn’t spoken since that night. I went back to college, and she stayed at her parents’ house. In our hometown. An hour and a half away.

“Is ... everything okay?” I asked.

“Um ... yeah,” Kayla said. She looked down the hall she stood in as if afraid someone might see her. “Can I come in?”

“Oh!” I said and backed away as I threw the door open. No matter how confused I was, I didn’t want to be rude to her. “Yeah. Come on.”

Kayla quickly stepped into the room, the tension in her face lessening slightly, and then she hesitated before taking a few extra steps forward, as if her concern over intruding was replacing her fear of being seen.

I shut the door behind her as she stepped into the center of the room, her gaze wandering across the small, messy space. Suddenly, I felt self-conscious. I didn’t expect company, so I hadn’t prepared for it. An empty pizza box lay open on top of the sink—the only remaining evidence of my breakfast. My clothes from yesterday lay in a pile near my bed, and another corner held parts to a PC I was building that I hadn’t finished, thanks to a defective part I was waiting to replace.

“Sorry about the mess,” I said.

Kayla waved off my apology with a small smile. “Adam, please. I’ve been to college. This is spotless compared to some of the places I saw.”

She wandered toward the desk, her eyes drifting over my open Bio 201 book and the messy scatter of notes I’d been studying poorly for the past hour. She reached out and flicked a pen away from the edge of the desk, and I noticed her fingernails had a fresh coat of glossy, dark red polish. “Studying on a Saturday morning? I’m impressed.”

“Trying to,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “Midterm Monday. I figured with my roommate gone, I’d lock in and get caught up.”

“Sounds thrilling,” she teased, but her tone was light. She glanced at the paused episode on my laptop. “You can study with the TV on?”

“Sometimes. It’s mainly background noise,” I said, leaving out how I’d been mesmerized by the show for the past twenty minutes.

Kayla tilted her head, a few strands of her straw-blonde hair falling forward. “Mhm. You always did have a thing for multitasking.” She smiled at the memory, though I wasn’t sure which memory it was—me as a kid refusing to go to bed, or me two months ago learning what she tasted like while taking my socks off.

I stepped around her to clear the pizza box and shove it into the trash. “So ... what brings you all the way up here? Did you have something in town?”

She shook her head, walking slowly along the edge of the room like she was mapping the perimeter. “No. My mom took Caleb for the weekend—figured I could use a break.” She glanced back at me, half-smiling. “I learned last night that a break in our little hometown is just ... getting some bad Chinese and watching a movie alone in my room.” She bit her lip and looked at me, and I could feel the uncertainty. “I thought I’d drive out and see you. It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing, and I didn’t call ... I hope that’s okay.”

“It’s okay,” I said, though my voice came out more cautious than I meant. We hadn’t talked in two months. She was here ... in my dorm. That night with her had been a sealed memory I’d been keeping in a mental box, and now she was flipping the lid open as if it were nothing.

Kayla stopped at the end of my bed, resting a hand on the metal frame. “I never heard back from you,” she said softly.

I swallowed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t ... yeah. I guess I didn’t know what to say.” I couldn’t look her in the eyes, so I decided to find the bed frame she was caressing more interesting. “You have a kid, and ... I’m not there and...”

I had no clue what I was trying to say. “I didn’t want you to feel like I was trying to...”

“To what?” she asked, tilting her head as she studied me.

“I thought you would regret it or something. It’s just ... you used to babysit me and ... I know what we said, but I didn’t want you to think I was trying to keep something going you didn’t want,” I said. “And I’m never home. Stuff kept coming up, and when weeks went by, I wasn’t sure what to say ... then I was just afraid you hated me for never coming back or...”

Every explanation sounded dumb.

Her eyes softened, gold-green catching the dim light. “Adam, I enjoyed that night, and I don’t regret it. Do you?”

“No,” I said without hesitation.

She gave me a hesitant smile, her eyes bright. “Good.”

A few moments of silence passed as neither of us knew how to continue through the awkwardness. Finally, Kayla looked around the room again, as if it were some foreign country. “So ... how’s school?”