Free Sooner or Later by Elizabeth Adler

Miss Lottie and Mr. Morris showed up, furious.
    They’d caught them as they zoomed up on the Harley, long hair streaming behind them in the wind, singing at the top of their voices, shrieking with laughter asEllie executed a neat U-turn, tight on centrifugal force, then screeched to a halt.
    “Whoawhoawhoa,” Maya yelled, vaulting off the back. “How about that, then?”
    “How about that,” her father’s voice repeated grimly from the porch.
    Maya’s eyes met Ellie’s and they swung round, taking in Miss Lottie, regal and rigid with fury in a smart beige suit, and Michael Morris, icy-eyed and businesslike in gray pinstripes, standing on their ramshackle front porch, looking as out of place as Hell’s Angels at a presidential banquet.
    “Shit,” Maya said softly, glancing at Ellie.
    “We’re in for it now,” Ellie muttered back. “Think you can talk your way out?”
    Maya shook her head gloomily. “Not a chance. How about you?”
    Ellie took a deep breath. “I’ll give it a try.”
    She bounded up the front steps, beaming. “Well, hi there, Miss Lottie. What a surprise.” She stopped, uncertainly. In all her life she had never seen her grandmother look at her that way, sort of hurt and disappointed, as well as angry. And she had never,
never
before, not put her arms round her and given her a big hug. Ellie embraced her anyway, while Maya watched, admiring her balls.
    “Boy,” she murmured, when Miss Lottie did not hug back, “are we in trouble.”
    “I’ve come to take you home, Ellie,” Miss Lottie said coldly. “Mr. Morris agrees with me, that there’s no point in you girls staying at college if you’re not going to learn anything. And, of course, the Dean agrees as well.”
    “But Gran …”
    “You’re forgetting your manners, Ellie. Please say hello to Mr. Morris.”
    Ellie shook hands, smiling uncertainly at Maya’s father. “There’s nothing for it, but to apologize, to both of you,” she said humbly. “Maya agrees with me on that.”
    “Sure,” Maya mumbled in the background. “Hi, Dad. Hi, Miss Lottie.” She waved a limp hand, eyeing Ellie, hoping for a miracle.
    “Gran?” Real tears stood in Ellie’s eyes and she touched Miss Lottie’s arm uncertainly. “I didn’t realize … I mean I didn’t know how I’d upset you. I’m sorry, truly, I am.”
    She meant every word of it, Maya could tell, and tears pricked her own eyes. “Oh, hell, Dad,” she said, hurling herself up the steps and into his unwilling arms. “We only meant to have fun.”
    Shaking his head, Mr. Morris glanced down at his beautiful daughter. “I guess you did, punkin,” he agreed. “But somehow you just forgot about work.”
    Then they had all gone out to lunch and Miss Lottie and Michael Morris had decided on a three-month probationary period, with mandatory good grades, and the pressure was off. Except this time, they’d shouldered their responsibilities and gone to classes, worked nights in the library and gotten those decent marks. Then, since they did everything together, they had both fallen in love.
    Maya’s beloved was a visiting professor from London, all tweeds and a pipe and argyle socks; and Ellie’s was Italian, an artist-in-residence. Young, sexy and built like Michelangelo’s
David.
That had lasted a whole year, until their lovers returned to their respective countries, and to the girls’ shock, their wives, leaving them devastated and in floods of tears.
    “So much for men,” Maya had said bitterly. Then Ellie had pulled herself together. “Think of it this way,”she’d said, “we’re free again. Have you ever been to San Francisco?”
    And they’d shot off, on the scarlet Harley, across the Arizona desert to California, free as birds and giddy with youth and enjoyment, for a final summer of total irresponsibility, before settling into their senior year, and hard work and graduation.
    They had fallen in and out of love several times since then, but only one was