The Trip The Way I Wish It Had Gone, Part Four

Published early on our Previews page on Sunday, August 16, 2026.

Official publication date for the main page of our site: Tuesday, August 18, 2026..

This story was submitted by Jack aka lkngjst@yahoo.com

To read the 1st part of this story, go to "The Trip The Way I Wish It Had Gone, Part One".

To read Jack's 1st story, go to "Love Affair With A Shoe".

"The Trip the Way I Wish It Had Gone"

Series. Fantasy framed as "what I wish had happened."

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## Part Four

I knocked on 1301 at nine, and when she opened the door I could see she'd thought about it all afternoon. She'd changed into something simpler, hair pinned up the way you'd wear it to look a little serious. She'd set the room, too — the desk lamp on, overheads off, the little work chair pulled out from the writing desk by the window. She'd built her own set. Of course she had.

"You came," she said, and under the game there was a flicker of the real nerves.

"You asked me how it should have gone," I said. "I'd rather show you than tell you. But here's the only rule that matters, and it matters more than the rest of it combined. The second you want to stop being anywhere but here, with me, you say so, and we're just us again. No script, no professor, nothing to explain. Yes?"

She let out a breath she'd clearly been holding. "Yes."

"Then come here and sit down."

I let my voice settle into something steadier and more certain — not unkind, just sure of itself. The careful, brilliant man who had finally, quietly decided. I crossed to the door and closed it, slow, deliberate, the way she'd described on the bench. I watched it land on her — the sound of the latch she'd imagined a thousand times and never gotten.

"You've been finding reasons to stay late all term," I said. "I've noticed. I've noticed more than I should have, and I've spent a great deal of energy talking myself out of it." I stopped in front of her. "I'm done talking myself out of it."

"Professor —"

"You wanted to be the thing I couldn't resist." I tipped her chin up. "You were. You have been since October. I just wasn't allowed to say so."

Whatever was left of the performance went out of her then, and what was underneath was just want — two years of it, finally pointed at someone who wasn't going to leave it at the door. She came up out of that chair and into me, and I took my time the way the careful man would have, because the whole point of her fantasy was a man who wasn't in a hurry, who had decided she was worth being deliberate about.

I made it about her. That was the whole assignment. The version where she's the one being chosen, being studied, being wanted out loud by the person she'd convinced herself would never want her back. I told her what I'd supposedly noticed all semester — the way she bit her pen, the questions she asked just to keep me talking, the seat she always took. I made half of it up and she didn't care, because someone was finally saying the words. She came apart somewhere in there with her face buried in my neck, and it wasn't the confident pool-deck Sloane and it wasn't a performance. It was the girl who never believed she'd get to be that girl, getting to be her.

After, the script just dissolved. No announcement, no awkward seam. One moment I was the man behind the desk and the next I was just me, holding her while she breathed against my chest, both of us in a dark hotel room thirteen hundred miles from any campus.

"Hey," I said. "Where'd you go just now."

"Nowhere bad." Her voice was thick. "I think I just got something back I gave up on a long time ago. I didn't expect it to feel like that."

"You okay?"

"More than okay." She propped up, eyes shining, a little wrecked and a little amazed. "You actually gave it to me. Most guys would've turned that into something about them in about four seconds."

"It wasn't about me." I tucked a loose piece of hair back. "Tonight was yours. That's the whole point of doing this right — it goes both ways or it isn't worth doing."

She was quiet a moment, then laughed softly, wiping her eyes. "Okay. New problem. Now I owe you one, and I take debts very seriously." She rolled over, grabbed her phone off the nightstand, checked something, grinned. "The package clears for delivery mid-morning. So here's the deal. Tomorrow we skip the useless afternoon sessions. We hit the pool, and I wear the first surprise down there." That grin again, hungrier now. "And the rest of the box — that one's for after dark. Your turn to be the one who can't talk himself out of it."

"You've put thought into this."

"I've thought about little else." She settled back against me, warm and unguarded in a way she hadn't been before tonight. "Bring sunscreen. You're going to be staring a while."

*To be continued.*

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_Ladies, couples — has anyone ever actually given you the fantasy you'd written off? I want to hear it. Comment below or send a message. And if these are landing for you, a tap of love tells me to keep going._