by Nana Malone
“Looks that way, doesn’t it? What’s your first move?”
I exhaled. “Step one is get a job. I have some money saved, but I’ll be needing equipment and stuff. It’ll be easier if I don’t have to deal with the parentals to get it. After that, I need to head to campus and do some administrative stuff. I was lucky they still let me into the course since I was so late accepting.” What I didn’t let on with Faith was how dire my money situation really was. I had just enough to make it through the semester, but that meant no extras.
Faith nodded. “I still can’t believe what Easton did. Sophie called it though. She’s always hated him.” I suppressed a shudder. If only Faith knew what else he’d done to me over the years.
“I wish I’d seen this coming. Maybe I wouldn’t have wasted my college years with an asshole.” I squared my shoulders. The sooner I got on with my life, the sooner I’d forget what I’d left behind. It was time to take back some of the control Easton had stolen from me. “But I’m here now, and I’m about to start living. Which means I better get ready for class.”
Abbie…
An hour and a half later, I sat in the back of the small auditorium watching as everyone took their seats one by one.
A collective hush fell over the room the moment Xander Chase walked in. I had seen photos, but they were nothing compared to seeing him in the flesh. I’d known he was young, but honestly, he could have been one of the students. And smoking hot didn’t even begin to cover the description.
“You can call me Xander. Mr. Chase is my father.”
He was tall, at least six foot two, with broad shoulders and playful dark eyes. Shaggy dark hair framed his angled jaw and features. He also had a smile hot enough to make any red-blooded female consider dropping her panties. Self-confidence and sex appeal oozed off of him in waves.
“So, for those of you who don’t remember, I’ll give you a brief overview. During the course of a week, you’ll have one lecture, two advisory sessions, an assignment, and a critique.”
A legend like him was going to give me critiques and advice. Bile churned as my stomach flipped. Of course, I’d expected that, but still. Theoretically knowing my work was going to be picked apart and actually having it happen were two different things.
Then there was also the small matter of being stuck in a room with a man, any man, and only one exit. I wrapped my arms around my middle. I’d better learn to steel myself or I wouldn’t survive a day, let alone the whole term. He might be good-looking and in a position of power, but he was not Easton. I’d faced Easton and hadn’t died. I could deal with this man.
“Oh, and one other thing to get out of the way. I want to remind the female and male students alike that it’s pointless to try to sleep with me. I don’t sleep with my students. I promise you it’s not going to happen, so save us all some time and don’t try it. I'd rather get on with teaching you.”
Wow.
Okay. Way to put it all out there. I snuck a look around the room and instantly understood why he’d laid out his cards. Every single girl—and at least a quarter of the guys— appraised him. I had to wonder if anyone would make the attempt. There were only fifty students in the program, and of that fifty, only twenty of us were female.
A tiny brunette sitting next to me whispered, “Just a tad full of himself, isn’t he?”
I giggled and whispered back, “I'd heard British men had a problem with confidence. I see he doesn’t suffer from that affliction.”
The girl grinned. “I'm Ilani Bruce, by the way.”
“Abbie Nartey.” I smiled back.
As I listened, energy hummed through my veins. The work would be exciting, though I certainly wasn't going to enjoy the critiques. But then again, who did?
Xander was speaking again, and I dragged my attention back to him.
“Remember, I hand-selected each of you based on your portfolio submissions. I think each and every one of you has a raw talent waiting to come out. I need your commitment to be honest. Don't give me trite and pretty. I want you exposing yourselves and putting yourself in every single image.”
We all nodded enthusiastically.
“Okay, first assignment is as follows. Since all of you are so fresh faced and bushy tailed, I want you to photograph joy. In all of its forms. Gritty, serene, blissful—I want it all. Think you all can manage that?”
There was a general murmur of accord. The excitement was palpable as each of us fiddled with our cameras.
“Good. Now go and do your worst. And by worst, I mean better than your best.”
As soon as class was over, I headed over to Xander. Unlike the other students who crowded him, I stopped well outside his sphere of personal space. “Excuse me, Xander?” I forced a deep breath and squared my shoulders. I would have to learn to talk to him if I wanted to work for him.
He cocked his head, and his almost-smiling mouth tugged into a glimmer of a real one as he assessed me. “Little Bird. I’d wondered if you’d come and introduce yourself.”
Little Bird? He remembered my photo? I flushed. It had taken me three days to find the hummingbird nest and capture the mother feeding her nestlings.
Up close, I realized Xander’s eyes weren’t dark at all, but rather a slate gray. I forced out my carefully selected words. “I, uh, wanted to say thank you for giving me the opportunity to study with you. It’s already changing my life.”
He chuckled. “Well, if you think today was life-changing, then wait until I actually start teaching you something.” He studied me closely. “I’m glad you accepted. I was starting to worry that you wouldn’t when we hadn’t heard from you.”
My skin prickled with embarrassment. He had been waiting on my acceptance? “I had no idea you were waiting on me—”
“Like I said, Little Bird, I hand-selected all of you. In the process I became quite attached to your works. To you.” This time his grin was the slow, cocky, confident smile of someone who was accustomed to women falling at his feet.
It fell flat on me. The longer I stood in his presence, the less nervous I became. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard after all.
“Right. Well, anyway, thank you again. I’m looking forward to learning from you.” With a little boost of confidence, I turned to leave.
He called out to me, “Don’t you want to know why I selected you for this program?”
I turned but walked backward to keep my momentum. “Nope. You already told me why. And I know what I can do with a camera.” I didn’t wait for a response as I turned back around and strode out of the lecture hall.
Ilani followed me out of the building, and we made our escape.
“You're a Yank, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I guess the accent gives me away.”
My new friend grinned. “Only a little. Listen, some of us took Xander for undergrad and used to get together right after crits to drink our sorrows away. You game for a bit of a laugh after the first one?”
“Yeah, sounds good. The critiques sound pretty scary.”
Ilani followed me out of the main lobby into the rare British sunshine. “They are. He's usually not satisfied unless at least one person cries.”
My eyes widened, and I swallowed hard, resolute not to be the crying student. “Ouch.”
“It's his way, I guess.” Ilani shrugged. “Anyway. Good to meet you, Abbie. See you next week.”
“Yeah you too.” I smiled encouragingly, even though my stomach pitched at the thought of those crits.
As I turned, a chill skittered over my spine, but it wasn’t cooler air; it was more of a warning. Almost like I could feel a gaze on me.
You’re being paranoid, who would be watching you… besides the obvious.
No. I had to stop. Easton was at home in DC. He wasn’t in London. That was the fear talking. That was the little part of me that listened to my family, the part of me that had stayed with Easton. It was the part afraid of change, of greatness. The part of my brain that would have done the sa
fe thing and gone to law school.
If I was going to make it here, if I was going to have my dream, I was going to have to get used to kicking that part of my psyche in the nads at every opportunity.
I wasn’t going back to fear. Fear had never made me happy. So I took a deep breath, forced my mind to calm down, and made my brain work. Easton was thousands of miles away. I was afraid of failing, but the only way to truly fail was to not try.
So get off your ass and do this.
As I headed down the cobblestone steps of the Ealing campus and made my way to the bus stop, I let my lens be my eyes. The excitement of the new city fueled my blood. The first step to living my dream was already in motion.
5
Abbie…
I hovered outside Dr. Kaufman's office. Easton might be a lot of things, but he did have one smart idea.
In his quest to win me back, or whatever the hell that was, he'd mentioned therapy. And considering that there was still that weak, small part of me that had almost caved and gone back to him, I figured I needed plenty of it.
The problem, now that I was here, was facing the reality of speaking my truth. I was terrified. What if she judged me? Worse, what if she told me that I should go back to Easton? Or that I should work it out and say I was sorry?
You know better than that. No professional is going to tell you to go back.
Okay, maybe not. But she was definitely going to force me to take a look at things I didn't want to look at. While I was in London pursuing my dream, there were parts of me that were still terrified and afraid. I'd left him behind, but I was still scared.
I walked into the reception area and checked myself in before having a seat. A part of me was desperate to pull out my phone, to lose myself in the banalities of my Instagram feed, but I forced myself to sit there. To look around at my surroundings. I wasn't going to numb the feeling.
No. I wanted to do this. Enjoy this. Be this. This version of myself that I could actually be proud of. Numbing the pain of being here wasn't going to help me do that.
Five minutes later, I was ushered into Dr. Kaufman's office. I was surprised when I walked in. I expected an old woman that looked like someone's New York grandmother. Short, with kinky curling hair, glasses, slightly frumpy.
But no. Dr. Kaufman was certainly not frumpy. She was elegant in her movements, and she marched up to me and shook my hand. "Abena Nartey? Hello, I'm Dr. Kaufman. Most of my patients just call me Elisa."
I stuttered. "Oh, I, uh… Sorry, yeah, I'm Abena. Most of my friends call me Abbie."
Her smile was soft and kind. "Abbie, welcome."
As she marched back to a small corner of the room, I watched her. Her hair, dark, sleek, and flat-ironed within an inch of its life, swung and bounced as she walked. She was trim, fit. And she looked young. Her face was smoothed and aligned. Not a single grey hair on her head. She could have been me at thirty. When she turned, she asked, "Would you like some water?"
I shook my head. "No, thank you. I'm good.”
She nodded and watched me. "Okay then, why don't you tell me why you're here?"
She gestured me to a seat while she took one across from me. And I silently wondered where the couch was. Weren't all therapists supposed to have a couch? "I— I just moved here from DC. And there're some things I want to work on, to make sure I have the fullest London experience. And I know that if I don't talk to someone, I'm always going to be looking back, I guess. Or even worse, making the same kinds of mistakes I've made before."
She nodded. "Okay, why don't you tell me about some of your mistakes?"
The fear rose up inside of me, like bile trying to make an eruptive escape, but I shoved it down. I was doing this. I wasn’t running anymore. I wasn't going to swallow the truth. The truth was like vegetables. It was good for you, even if it tasted like shit. "My ex-boyfriend… abused me for years. When I came here, I was basically running away from him. "
I don't know what I expected. Shock. Surprise. Something. Instead there was a somewhat detached empathy, but her eyes were soft, and she nodded encouragingly. She gestured for me to keep talking. So I did. I told her all of it. How we'd met. How I'd felt. How I'd soon come to feel. How I'd stayed, like the coward that I was.
His betrayal, hiding my acceptance letter, shredding my passport, tearing up my birth certificate. How I'd gone home because I couldn't leave and then ran away from my parents in the middle of the night. How I turned up in London ready for a new chapter, a new adventure. But part of me was still afraid. Part of me thought I should go back. A part of me believed the things Easton had told me.
It all poured out of me. It didn't take long, because once I was on a roll, the words wouldn’t stop. I was desperate to purge it. Like I'd overindulged on alcohol. Something that was, in essence, poison to me. And it had to come out, one way or the other.
When I finally finished, she sat back. She made a few notes and then watched me closely. "Can I ask you a question, Abbie?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"Do you love, Easton?"
"Of course, I love him. I mean, that’s what got me into this whole mess, I think."
She cocked her head. "Okay, well, what does love mean to you?"
I frowned at that. I had no idea how to answer. "Um, I don't know, that feeling where you know you belong to someone and how they make you feel, and like you could do anything. It's hard to quantify that. It’s not even about sex, or about you doing anything to be near that person.”
I paused and thought it through. None of those feelings described how I felt about Easton. Maybe in the early days, but lately? No. I'd mostly stayed to keep the peace. To stay safe.
She smiled at me then. "You're thinking it through now, aren't you?"
I nodded. "Um, I guess. Once I heard myself say it out loud, I guess that’s not love." The shame was quick to follow, punching me in the gut, making me want to bend over at the waist and ride out the pain. "I don't think I've loved him for a long time."
"And why don't you think you loved him?"
The answer was quick. It jumped right off my tongue as if I've been holding on to it like the sour taste of lemons in my mouth for far too long. "Because he betrayed me the first time he put his hands on me."
She nodded. "And that's fair. He betrayed you again and again, didn't he?"
I nodded. "I didn't even think of it as bad at the time. I don't know what's wrong with me that I believed everything he said like it was my fault and that I was responsible."
Her smile was soft. "Well, there's a part of you that held yourself responsible."
"But I didn't ask for that," I whispered.
She nodded, but more in an encouraging way. And I kept talking. When I finally tripped over the answer she was looking for, she put her pen down. "Tell me Abbie, why do you feel responsible?"
Something tickled my cheek, and I swiped at it before I realized that it was a tear. I was crying. In a stranger's office. Fan-fucking-tastic. "Because I stayed. Because I didn't tell anyone. After that first time, I should have told someone. I should have run fast."
She nodded. "So, you and I are going to work on you not feeling like that. You and I are going to work on the things that led you to that position, to that moment where someone hurt you and betrayed your trust, and you blamed yourself. And we’re going to figure out all the reasons why."
"God, I'm to blame."
She sat forward and put her hand over mine. "No, you are not. That’s not how this works. Here, inside these doors, we tell the truth, and we put the blame where it belongs. When you met him, you were a kid. But I suspect there is a very strong woman in there who's been battling her way out, who's been propping you up. She's the woman who walked out on him. She’s the woman who walked out on your parents. She's the woman who flew halfway around the world for a chance to be amazing. Without anything encumbering her, she made it happen, so I want you to focus on that part of you."
I nodded. “I'm scared. I'm not going to lie.
I'm scared that he's going to come here and find me. I am scared that I'll be weak and go back. I'm scared of maybe meeting someone and not being able to have a normal relationship because he’ll move too quickly. I'm young. I should meet lots of someones. I shouldn’t have to be afraid of my own shadow."
"I think you should be meeting lots of someones. If you’d walked in here and you told me you were still in love with him, that you were still heartbroken, I’d feel differently. But I think you haven't been in love with him for a long time."
She was right. But the truth of that burned like acid. So if I hadn't been in love with him, I'd let him hurt me for no good reason?
"I can see your wheels turning right now. Angry that if it wasn't love, then why did you put up with all that?"
I nodded and fresh tears started to fall. The rack of tissues arrived at my side as if by magic.
"You'd be amazed at the things the human mind will do to validate our choices. On paper, Easton seemed like the man you should want. The one who would get your parents' approval. But you're an adult now. You need to think about the one that gets your approval. And I'm going to encourage you to do that. This is a clean slate. I'm not suggesting you fall in love with the next man you meet, but you're young. I encourage you to meet people. Learn to discern the differences in how they treat you and what you're looking for, because I don't think you know yet. And where most women would be figuring that out, you know, when they were teenagers and young adults at the university, you were with Easton, trying to follow a specific path. And that didn't make you happy. You're in graduate school now, and it’s as good a time as any."
"But what if someone hurts me?"
She shook her head. "Look, life isn't about getting hurt. Because why would we even live it if that was the whole purpose? We would all stay in our boxes and ordering food and be agoraphobic crazy."
I chuckled. "Are you supposed to say crazy?"
She shrugged. "I'm a little unconventional. Life isn't meant to be sanitized. But I want you to be able to recognize the difference between someone who will hurt you and someone who won't. You don't even have to go on a date to figure that out. There's an intuition that women in particular have. We know. It's instinct. I want you to start to do that, to explore, to do the things that you've always wanted to do, the things that you automatically said no to because Easton or your parents wouldn't allow it. If it fascinates you and you want to do it, I encourage you. In the meantime, you and I will talk weekly. We'll explore your thoughts, what you're thinking, and how you're feeling. Get your brain to start making good choices through things that enrich you and make you happy instead of things you feel like you should do."