She woke with a gasp. She was drenched in sweat and the smell of herself mixed with the confusion of being unable to place where she was. A blank white wall, cheap closet doors, rumpled clothing strewn everywhere. Her mind flipped desperately through the places of her life, her childhood bedroom, a college dorm room, the bedroom she had shared with her fiance. With a growing sense of terror she realized she was in none of these known places, that she was somewhere strange and empty and where she didn't belong. She had been dreaming of something, something upsetting, her mother and sister turning away from her, unable to see or hear what she was so desperately trying to say to them. What had she been trying to say?

And then the blankness passed and the world righted itself once again, and she sat up in her bed and breathed in deeply the knowledge of who and where she was. She was just noticing how badly she had to pee when her doorbell rang.

"What the hell?" she croaked out loud, her words caught in the morning dryness of her throat and mouth. She looked at her alarm clock. 10 a.m.? Hadn't she set the alarm for 8 a.m.?

"Nope Courtney, once again you have set your alarm for the goddamn p.m. Goddamn it," she cursed at herself, at whoever was ringing the doorbell again. Probably her disgusting landlord come to make rapey eyes at her while pretending to complain about the unmown lawn that made the house look like it was a den for "negro drug dealers" as he so eloquently put it.

She quickly scanned her piles of laundry and then shrugged her shoulders. How sexy could she look in an oversized Yankees t-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. Besides, Melvin was going to be unpleasant no matter what she wore.

The doorbell rang again.

"Yeah, I'm coming okay? I'm coming, Jesus Christ Melvin." She stumbled to the front door, glancing longingly at the bathroom as she passed it by, and furiously pulled the door open. "I told you, I am not going to mow your fucking lawn—"

Cam stood on her porch, his hands in his pockets and a grin once again fixed on his face.

"Oh shit. Cam. Shit." And then the rest of her memory came flooding back. She had set her alarm so she would be ready when Cam's father came over to take a look at her air-conditioner.

"Why not Miss Park? Whose lawn will you mow?" he asked, and then burst out laughing, a long languid laugh that made her shiver and realize she had never heard him laugh before, not the entire year he sat in her classroom. She had heard him snort in derision but never this. It sounded like the laugh ... well the laugh of a man who was enjoying himself immensely.

"My alarm, shoot, it didn't go off," she explained lamely, careful to replace her generous curses with something more PG-rated.

Cam looked at his watch and raised his eyebrows.

"Must have been quite a night Miss Park."

Oh Lord, she thought, not this again.

"Cam, where is your dad? I thought he was coming," and she made a point of peering around him at the driveway and at the flat empty road that it emptied into. All around her she could hear the hum of healthy working air conditioning units emanating from the other bungalows on her block. Obviously no one else was depending on the vagaries of central air, or perhaps they couldn't afford it. Not a soul was to be seen, mid-morning long since the time when the real heat of the day had taken over. A truck with the name of Cam's father's business stenciled on its sides was parked out front.

"He'll be out later, he got called back to the ranch about something. Said I should come out and take a look, start putting my studies to use," her student—her former student—replied. He took his hat off then, suddenly looking awkward and young. "Do you mind if I take a look ma'am?"

She sighed. It wasn't enough that she had run into a student but now she had to let him into her home, a home she had neglected to properly care for some time now.

"Yeah sure, come in." She shrugged and stepped back into the shadows of her foyer. "The place is a mess though. I was going to straighten it up before your dad came." Instead she had stayed up until 3 a.m. watching Netflix and ignoring the unopened emails and voicemails from her sister, and then overslept in spectacular fashion.

Cam nodded, scraped his boots politely on her tattered Welcome mat, and stepped into the house. He glanced down at her row of shoes and slippers lined up neatly next to the door.

"Uh, should I take my boots off Miss Park?"

"No, it's okay. I think the main vent-thingy is this way," and she led him down a hallway. Her father had insisted on leaving shoes at the door, a holdover custom from his childhood in Korea and one that both his daughters adhered to almost religiously if unconsciously. She stopped in front of a large vent in her living room, and looked down at it uncertainly.

"I mean, I think this is what you need to look at, right? I have no idea come to think of it. Central air wasn't really a thing where I come from."

"Yeah, that'll work Miss Park," and with a surprising grace and purpose of movement he bent on one knee before the vent and carefully slipped its cover off. And then sneezed three times in a row.

"Oh man, nasty! No wonder your air isn't working Miss Park. This thing probably hasn't been cleaned in years." Cam looked closer, disgust clearly etched on his face. He shifted his weight back and wiped his sweating brow with an arm. "Wow, how have you been living here like this ma'am?"

She rolled her eyes. Oh these southerners and their weird sensitivity to anything resembling heat and sweat.

"I use fans. I mean, it's not ideal, but you know, we didn't grow up with lots of air conditioning in New Jersey. You just get used to it," she said. And then blushed when she realized his question was not only in reference to the temperature. Cam was looking with some concern at her living room, where newspapers, unfolded laundry, and a thickly settled dust competed for space.

"Miss Park—"

"Well so it just needs a cleaning huh? I guess I can get my landlord to do that, no big deal right? I should have thought to check first, I'm sorry you had to waste your time coming out here Cam," she said, turning away and walking into the kitchen, leaving him alone to survey the devastation of her life. And here she had thought it would be a successful summer if she avoided running into her students at a goddamn Dairy Queen. She turned on the faucet, unsure what to do with herself, feeling more exposed than she had in—well in some time now. The noise calmed her a little, and she rattled some dishes in the sink—filthy of course—and then splashed cool water on her face to hide the tears of shame and helplessness that were filling her eyes.

Wonderful, she thought. Of all the times to cry Courtney, of all the times. At least she couldn't see much of anything now, including the view out her kitchen window of her ratty, overgrown yard that was probably teeming with rattle snakes at this point.

And then she felt a pang of anger course through her body, and she slammed a dish down into the sink. She imagined Cam telling his friends, his father, anyone who would listen, about crazy Miss Park, the mess she lived in, obviously depressed or something, obviously nuts. A recluse. A crazy Yankee recluse who acts like she is better and smarter than everyone but she isn't, she isn't anything at all.

Well fuck him, she thought, I didn't ask for this, I didn't ask for any of this. This is my fucking home. She impatiently twisted the faucet shut and spun around to yell at him to get out of her house, get out now.

Except he was standing right there, six inches away from her, and looking down at her, his brow furrowed, but the rest of his face impassive. Curious almost. He was so much taller than her, so much more solid, his shoulders wide, his smell so fresh and clean and young. Except for the hint of tobacco.

"Cam! Jesus you scared me Cam." She put a hand on his chest as though to push him away, and was shocked by how warm and hard it felt. She dropped her hand quickly as though she had touched something painful. And then she looked down, away from his eyes, a flood of embarrassment washing over her, yes, but leaving in its wake that strange stillness that had descended on the two of them the day before. It stretched out into the heat and the dark of her kitchen, the stillness between them, and all she could hear was the pulsing of the blood in her head and the sounds of both their breaths. She closed her eyes and smelled him then, the sweat and the tobacco and the sweetness of him at first relaxing her but then a wave of something that smelled so fantastic and alarming that it reached down firmly, that scent, and pushed on her womb and made her throb.

"Cam," she said, startled, and lifted both hands then to push him away for real, the headiness of his scent cleared for a moment by the sharp longing she felt between her legs. "Cam I—"

He grabbed both her wrists then, his hands a mix of soft and rough, this boy who came from a ranch and studied air conditioning repair. She breathed in sharply.

"Cam," she said again, still not looking at him, studying the faded periwinkle flowers on her dull linoleum. Her mind was blank. She had nothing worth saying at that moment.

He came closer then, closing what little space remained between them while still holding onto her wrists, and lowered his head until she could feel his warm dry lips pressing her cheek, her lips, her neck. She held her breath, unsure of what was happening, and her reaction to it, although a flood of wet heat made clear what her body thought of it all.

"Cam, no, I, Cam," she whispered, still looking at the floor, his lips trailing up her neck now and back to her face.

As though he knew exactly what he was doing—and why shouldn't he? These small town Texans certainly seemed to get pregnant and drop out of school at a much more alarming rate than anything she had ever experienced as a teacher in Piscataway—he pushed her hands down onto the edge of the sink on either side of her, and then released one so he could take her chin and lift her eyes up to him. But still she averted them from his gaze.

"Yes Miss Park? What is it ma'am?" he asked softly, gently, all amusement long gone from his deep drawling voice. She said nothing in reply, only closed her eyes and felt his hot breath on her face, and his growing hardness against her abdomen. Her student.

"Cam," she said again helplessly, keeping her eyes closed. He took her jaw in his hand and pulled her face forward.

"Why won't you look at me Miss Park? I am not going to hurt you," but still she refused to open her eyes to him, until she felt him kissing her, his tongue exploring her mouth, and she gasped and fluttered open her eyes. This time she shoved him away for real, and hard. Men—no boys—like him always underestimated her strength.

"Get out," she said flatly then, rage boiling inside her. "Get out of my fucking house Cam, and don't come back." When he didn't move and only continued to look at her, not even lustfully but with curiosity, she snapped.

"I said, get out of my house NOW!" and she grabbed a wooden spoon from behind her, in the sink, and pushed him away with it, as though fighting off a snake in the grass. "Go! Now! Your dad was never going to come you little lying sack of shit! You just wanted to try and fuck your teacher. Now get out of my house and stop wasting my time."

He stepped back from her, quickly but smoothly, never shifting his eye contact or the look on his face of careful consideration. She threw the spoon at him helplessly and burst into tears.

"Why won't you get out? Get out! Please Cam, please, just go away," and she turned then, ran into the bathroom, slammed and locked the door, and leaned against it, waiting. There was nothing but the sound of her own jagged breaths until finally she heard the front door close and a moment later the sound of his truck driving away. She burst into tears again, although this time she made sure to sit down on the toilet and have a nice long pee at last. She really should have done that first before answering the door.