The Fall of Troy

by Dr. Rebecca Sharp

  I stepped onto the platform as he took my seat, flipping to a new page in my sketchpad and picking up my pencil.

  “You’re… going to draw me?” I squeaked.

  His eyes narrowed like he didn’t want to admit that that was what he was doing or that it was what he wanted to do.

  “I’m going to show you what I mean,” he said tersely, his eyes darkening. “I’m going to teach you a lesson, ma petite.”

  He was going to draw me. It was all I heard. All I could think.

  He hadn’t drawn anything—well, anything more than a quick half-sketch during class to explain something. I didn’t even remember seeing any easel or that sketchbook in his office. Was he working at all? On anything?

  “Sit,” he demanded.

  I did as he instructed and every molecule of my body went on high alert. I wasn’t naked. Far from it. I was fully clothed right down to my shoes. Actually, it was uncomfortable to sit with them, so I kicked them off before I sat Indian-style and stared at him, waiting for what came next.

  “What emotion do you want?” I asked when the silence became too much.

  He chuckled. “You’re no actress. You can’t pull up emotions from a request. No, your emotions are as clear as the weather. When you’re sad, I can feel it just like I can feel the wet drops of rain. When you’re angry, I can feel it just like I can feel the power of the wind and the boom of thunder.” My breathing turned shallowed as his gaze bored into mine. “And when you’re needy, I feel it like the burning sun on a summer day.”

  I stopped breathing altogether. Embarrassed. Touched. Aroused.

  I wondered what I looked like now.

  “Who called you?” he asked softly as his hand began to move.

  His question shattered my daze. What? No. I didn’t want to think about this.

  When I didn’t respond, he repeated, “Who. Called. You?”

  I winced. That was the emotion he wanted me to feel—the one I was trying to run from.

  “M-my dad,” I said softly. Anger, betrayal, pain… they all flooded back.

  “And earlier?”

  “Him, again.” I stared down at the white wood under me. I couldn’t look at him; I couldn’t bear to see the victory in his eyes.

  Needy.

  Daddy issues.

  “What did he want?”

  I let out a sad laugh. “What do you care?” I bristled. “You already told me to take my daddy issues elsewhere. You can’t have it both ways.” He bombarded me with questions to advance his position so I flooded the moat and pulled up the drawbridge. I did everything to stop him from getting inside my head. And my heart.

  “Wrong, ma petite. I can have you any way I want,” he growled, and I felt the vibration rumble right over my breasts, through my stomach, and settle his promise between my thighs. “Tell me what he wanted.”

  I choked on my inhale, the air heavy with need—the need to fall apart and fall into him. “Well, I didn’t answer the second time. But I’m assuming the same as the first. To apologize.”

  “What did he do?”

  I felt like I’d been injected with truth serum—or whatever that stuff was where I felt compelled to answer him. It didn’t matter what I wanted to say—what I wanted to hide—I had to answer him more than I needed to breathe.

  “H-he slept with my best friend.”

  “What did he do to you, Troian?”

  My gaze whipped to his for using my first name. Pet names. Insulting names. My last name. But never Troian. And it did exactly what it was meant to—pull a confession from the deepest part of me that only the sharpest knives seemed to reach.

  “He didn’t love me,” I whispered. “I did everything… I tried everything… to be what he wanted me to be. To make him see me. Grades. Awards. Clubs. College. Everything,” I whispered brokenly. “And she… she did nothing…” I laughed, hating myself, hating the words that were about to come from my mouth. “She did nothing and yet, she was the only one he saw.”

  My breath jerked into my mouth in uneven spurts. I only noticed my tears though when I looked at him—when I looked at him and saw his blank stare.

  Pathetic.

  Unremarkable.

  He forced me to rip my heart out and then stared at it like he was unimpressed.

  Rage. Loathing. It spread through me like wildfire, incinerating all things like composure and rationality.

  I shoved myself up and around to see what he’d done. My breath caught. My face… my face was on the paper. And my chin didn’t look too narrow, my eyes didn’t look too wide, and my lips—even though they were drawn exactly—didn’t look disproportional. I gaped. I didn’t see the imperfections that I normally picked out. Instead, all I saw—all I felt—was the truth.

  That the girl I saw when I looked at myself, who I’d called anger for so long, now looked out at me with sad but strong eyes and told me her name was grief.

  His portrait of me was a mirror and a magnifying glass all in one. It not only showed the hurt in my soul, it showed me just how consumed I was by it. I could see the way it ate at me from the look in my eyes and the weight on my shoulders. His drawing showed me everything that I was afraid of—that my past was going to destroy me.

  And I hated him for it.

  A harsh, angry laugh ripped from my chest. “I guess that shouldn’t surprise you; you yourself told me just how ‘unremarkable’ I am.”

  I heard his growl beside me, but I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at him without wanting to rip him apart like he was doing to me.

  “You did that to yourself. You made yourself unremarkable. Your whole appearance, your whole attitude belittled yourself. I merely gave you what you were asking for,” he shot back scathingly, like a hostile surrender to my self-deprecation. “Your father, what he did, doesn’t define you. Your emotions are what make you remarkable. So, find them, feed them, and let them do their job. If you want to be more, then give yourself more, give them more—give me more.”

  In an instant, all the anger I felt at that singular comment evaporated and I felt like I was seen. Not just my anger and hurt, but the very deepest part of me, the part I was afraid to tap into at the risk of being hurt again. He saw it all. And he made me feel like I could find myself, like I could become someone that I loved.

  “That’s all for tonight,” he said curtly and stepped back away from me and away from his drawing. “I want to see you after classes next week to work on your sketches before next Friday’s studio.”

  My eyes shot to him as he walked around me for the door, not waiting for my answer.

  “Oh… okay,” I said so quietly that if it hadn’t been for the vastness of the room echoing my words, he wouldn’t have heard me.

  I didn’t move. His steps halted at the doorframe as his gaze whipped back to me, like he was trying to imprint one last image of me in his mind before he left, to hold him through the weekend. And then he was gone.

  I gathered my things without paying much attention to anything but what I’d just agreed to.

  Dr. Shelly told me months ago that art wouldn’t just be my major, it would also be part of my therapy, part of my healing.

  Tonight, after the phone call, after these last few minutes, I felt like I’d taken the first shaking and stumbling step forward after months of being stuck.

  And it hurt like hell.

  Léo Baudin had the power to help me heal. But that was only if he didn’t destroy me first.

  Everything about this was a mistake. More time alone with her should’ve never been a thought in my mind. Until I saw the look on her face when her hurt broke open and bled for me. When I saw a little piece of her hurt dissolve because of what I drew… what I said, everything became a mistake except the part where I wanted to help her no matter the cost.

  The minutes that it took for the class to filter out of the room on Monday felt like eons until it was finally only her and I left.

  Today would be different. She would stay out there
, and I would stay behind my desk—behind my wall—where there was no risk of touching her… of tasting her.

  “Get out your work from Friday, Miss Milanovic,” I instructed her questioning eyes. “Put it on the desk next to you and work on the face in your smaller sketchbook. Fifteen minutes and then you’ll show me.”

  She stared for a moment before she stood and my body jolted. She wasn’t supposed to do that. She was supposed to stay seated where I couldn’t see the way her black yoga pants molded over her tight ass and lean legs like she was an onyx statue, seated where I couldn’t watch as her shirt pulled and rubbed over her tits as she dragged the neighboring desk in front of hers so she could prop the large newsprint up against it.

  Finally, she sat back down, and I could breathe again, even if my dick didn’t deflate quite so easily.

  Once settled, I watched her eyes flick back and forth between the image and her sketchbook, her hand moving tentatively over the paper.

  “Are you just going to watch me the whole time?” Her nervousness wavered through her question.

  I grunted. I shouldn’t, but once I started, it was hard to stop. She was like a living masterpiece that I could sculpt with a single word. “Maybe.”

  She was right, I should’ve stopped looking. Instead, each second found my stare strengthening like it was forged from steel.

  “Why did you come here?”

  Her eye shot to mine before she retorted, “Because you told me to.”

  My head shook. “No. I meant to Rhode Island.” I wanted to hear about her hurt. I wanted more of her catharsis to bleed from her body so that I could capture it for myself. She was the only thing I’d found to be stronger than the anger that held me back from my work.

  She shifted before speaking slowly. “I didn’t want to live with my father anymore and my mother lives here.”

  “So you didn’t come here for art, then?” My fingers toyed with the pencil in my hand, a small tick to do something other than reach for her.

  She laughed sadly and shook her head. “No… what I wanted to be was… something to make someone else happy. So much so that it broke me.” Her words were drawn and thoughtful as she was lost in her work, not realizing until too late just how personal her answer had become. When she did, her face flushed and my body ached to know how far down the warm pink extended.

  Glancing at the clock, I saw that fifteen minutes had passed. I should’ve made her come to me, but instead I stood and approached her desk, like I was going to comfort her for the flash of hurt I saw in her eyes. I wasn’t. I couldn’t.

  My jaw tensed as I apprised her work. It was decent—that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the jealousy that flared again, even without Luke here, I was still asking her to think about him. And I didn’t want her thinking about anyone else except me.

  “Better,” I said gruffly. “Start again. This time, draw the Bernini on the board—something that has a little more depth.”

  It was an unnecessary insult to Luke, but I couldn’t stop myself. There was a poster-sized image of Bernini’s David propped up against the board that I’d been using to go over proportion. I turned and walked away, hearing her flip to a new page in her sketchbook.

  “So then why are you here, in this class, if art wasn’t your choice?” I heard myself ask as I sat down again.

  Her eyes swung up to me as she answered, feeling like she was taking something from me even as she gave me more of herself. “I never said it wasn’t my choice. In fact, it might have been the first thing I chose to do for myself,” she began with a small shrug. “I like art, even if I’m not the best at it.”

  I cleared my throat. “Your work is good.”

  Her eyebrows rose in disbelief. “You told me it was shit last night.”

  “It’s good… I didn’t say it couldn’t be better,” I groused.

  Those almond eyes blinked wide at me. “So, just to clarify, you’re saying that I’m doing good?”

  I frowned. “I can stop saying it if you prefer.”

  Our eyes toyed together for a moment before she grinned and replied, “No, that’s okay.”

  We both sunk into a moment of silence, feeling out this strange truce of teases and terrain of compliments that hadn’t existed before. I liked how she looked when I told her she was doing well. I liked it too much.

  “What else do you enjoy, Miss Milanovic?” I mused, craving to know about the woman who she’d locked up behind her anger and sharp remarks.

  She hummed. “Well, I enjoy poetry—French poetry, actually.” Merde, I groaned. She was dangerous. “And I like to cook. I make a really delicious chicken parmesan.” She grinned and the only delicious thing I saw was her.

  “Making things is what makes you happy,” I rasped.

  “I would assume that making things makes you happy, Professor Baudin, given your profession,” she mused. “But I hardly see you making anything…except maybe threats.”

  Her eyes glinted deviously. She was teasing me, luring me to tell her more. I wished I could say it wasn’t working—just not quite enough for me to tell her that. Especially because the only thing I could seem to work on lately was sketches of her, a stack that would grow later tonight once the building was empty.

  “So, chicken parmesan is your masterpiece?”

  Her smile grew and I swore the room got ten degrees warmer. “That’s what I’m told. My mom still has me making it every Tuesday night because she loves it so much.”

  I hummed deep in my chest as my fingers drummed on my desk, changing the topic. “Well, your mother is happy you’re here. I met her the other week. She certainly cares about you.”

  Troy’s head ducked. “To a fault, it seems. She shouldn’t have talked to you about me. I’m fine,” she insisted.

  “Being fine doesn’t mean it’s not nice to have someone there.”

  Her hand tensed around the pencil. I knew she fought with herself, wanting someone—a parent—to be there, but afraid of being hurt again. Part of me wanted to strangle her father for whatever he’d done. The other part wanted to thank him because his actions had driven her here. To me.

  “That’s easy to say for someone who has someone there for him. I bet you have perfect parents back home, so proud of their son who rivals Da Vinci in his talents and Van Gogh in his temper.”

  Only when she looked at me did I realize that my growl had escaped my chest. “I don’t have a relationship with my parents anymore.” There was no reason to tell her. No reason to share this part of my life with her—my student. Still, my pain reached out to hers.

  Her pencil clattered to the ground and she scrambled to pick it up, blurting out, “Why?” Like the very thought was incomprehensible to her.

  My hand began to scribble on the paper on my desk, spurred by the raw astonishment and empathy on her face. I should say something to keep her at arm’s length because this wasn’t supposed to be about me. I shouldn’t be giving her something to fuel the need that toiled in her eyes—the need to burn back together all my broken pieces until I was whole again.

  “The day I chose who I wanted to be, the day I chose this” —I motioned around the room like it clarified that it meant being an artist and a professor—“was the day they cut me off for not taking over the family business. They sat me down and told me their plans and that if I chose differently, I would be dead to them.” My father always had a flair for the dramatic.

  Louis and Jeanette Baudin had the perfect marriage and were the perfect parents until, in their mind, I showed them the greatest dishonor by not taking over the Baudin Corporation, betraying everything and every advantage they’d given me. I never spoke to them. I never spoke about them. It had been over a decade ago and the least of my concerns in my life at the moment, but for her… for her I dug deep for the hurt I’d long ago forgotten, the betrayal of someone I thought would always be there.

  “Then you should understand me for not wanting anything to do with my father,” she said resolutely.r />
  “Wrong. Does he care about you?” I asked sharply, repeating the question a second time when she gaped at me. “Does he care about you?”

  “No!” she practically yelled, pulling her hand away from the sketch.

  “Wrong,” I accused again. “You are a lot of things, ma petite, but you aren’t a liar. Liars are unremarkable. So, tell me the truth.”

  She shook her head like she didn’t want to admit what she was about to. “He hurt me.”

  “People are going to hurt you, Miss Milanovic, whether you expect them to or not. Whether they plan on it or not. Especially people who you care about and who care about you. But it’s whether they wanted to that should make you stop and think and move with caution.”

  I rose up, seeing the anger flare in her eyes, knowing I was about to tell her she was wrong and hating me for it. Rather she hated me then continued to let the struggle inside in destroy her from the inside out.

  “How many times has he called you?” I demanded.

  Her mouth opened and closed and I knew she thought better of asking ‘who.’

  “I don’t know. A lot.”

  “Do you know how many calls I got from my parents after the moment I told them I actually planned on using my art degree and not just to impress their social circle, parents who’d been immersed in every corner of my entire life up until then? None.” I dropped my pencil on top of the sketch of her face I’d drawn while talking and stepped around the desk. “They made a choice to hurt me. Did your father choose to hurt you?”

  Her lips thinned, confirming what I knew—hurting Troian had been a by-product, an unintended consequence of what her father had done. Last I checked, a girl like Troy wouldn’t be so tortured by a man sleeping with her friend if she’d hated him all along. What mattered was that she wanted to forgive him and she didn’t know how to let herself.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Wrong again.” I ran a hand through my hair, not caring which way it ended sticking up. “Did he fuck your friend with the sole purpose of hurting you?”

  Her chin rose defiantly even as it wobbled. “You don’t know what I want. You can’t say that I’m wrong.”