Trapped in Professor's Playroom

Lena wants Ryan to see her as more than a bookish, unremarkable girlfriend, and she cannot get it. He breaks up with her in front of others, calling her boring and unattractive, and walks away with no plan to look back. She goes to a bar alone that night and drinks more than she means to. There she meets Adrian, a man old enough to be settled in his life, a professor with money behind him. They spend the night together and she leaves before morning without exchanging real names. Days later she learns his full name and that he is Ryan's father. The discovery does not end things between them. Adrian steps into her life again, first as a source of scandal, then as someone who pays attention to her in ways Ryan never did. Rumors start at the university and among people who know the family. Adrian tells her at one point that what happened between them was not an accident on his side. Lena has to decide what to do with a connection that embarrasses her, benefits her, and ties her to the family of the man who humiliated her. She stops asking Ryan for anything and starts making decisions about her own life without checking whether they are respectable first.