“I’m sorry if I did something to hurt-”
Whitney snorted and shook her head. “Just so you know, you are the worst person to fight with.”
“I think I’ll take that as a compliment.” Relieved that the unnatural tension between us had been broken, I dropped my chin into my hands and sighed. “And for the record, I’ve never thought of you as a - well, you know.” I couldn’t even make myself say the word. “Not once,” I emphasized.
“I know, I know.” Whitney waved a hand dismissively in the air and rolled her eyes. “I was just being a snarky bitch because I was mad about the muffins.”
The muffins again.
“I don’t understand.”
“Which is why I can’t be angry at you.” Reaching across the table, she grabbed my hand and squeezed. “You’re so adorably clueless sometimes, Mo.”
“I’m not clueless,” I said, even though at the moment that’s exactly what I was since I had absolutely no idea what Whitney was talking about. “I thought you liked the muffins.”
“I loved the muffins, but-” she broke off as the waiter returned with our drinks “-that’s not why I was upset. Ew, there’s a lemon in my soda. Am I going to die?”
“Even if there is fecal matter on the lemon, your immune system is more than equipped to deal with it. So no, you’re not going to die.”
Wrinkling her nose, she poked her straw through the middle of the lemon wedge and flipped it up and out of her cup. “There.”
“You contaminated your straw,” I said mildly.
“Oh, whatever.” Dipping her head, she took a big gulp of soda and smacked her lips together. “Live dangerously and all that, right? Besides, if I die of fecal poisoning I’ll just sue this place and become a millionaire.”
“But you’ll be dead.”
“A small detail. I’ll work it out. Anyways, what I was saying…well” - her brow creased - “it’s kind of hard to admit, actually. Well, not technically hard. But it’s weird. Definitely weird.”
“We’re best friends.” Nudging my water aside, I rested my forearms on the table and leaned towards her. “You can tell me anything, Whit. I won’t judge you. I promise.”
“I’m not making a confession, for God sakes.” The whites of her eyes flashed as she rolled her eyes again. “I’m…jealous of you, that’s all. And just so you know,” she said, noting my stunned expression, “the way you look right now is exactly how I feel.”
“But…you have no reason to be jealous of me.”
Growing up with wealth meant jealousy was an emotion I was very familiar with. It had come in all shapes and sizes, from all sorts of people. But it had never come from Whitney. If anything I was jealous of her. I’d always secretly envied her self-confidence. Her natural beauty. Her ability to walk into a room and strike up a conversation with anyone in it. What could I possibly have that she would be jealous of?
“Um, hello.” Shifting her weight to the side, Whitney crossed her legs under the table. Her ankle bobbed restlessly in the air, keeping time to a tempo no one by Whitney could hear. “You have a man hunk who brings you muffins and cuddles with you in the living room and wants to take you hiking.” Her mouth wobbled into a frown. “I want a man hunk to take me hiking.”
“But…you hate the outdoors.”
“So? If someone who looked like Daniel wanted to go climb a mountain with me, I would be game.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, still not completely understanding the point Whitney was trying to make. Seeing my confusion, she sighed.
“I know it sounds crazy, especially coming from me. I go through boyfriends like popsicles. And that is not a sexual metaphor.” Her lips twitched. “Well, actually it sort of is. Anyways what I’m trying to say is that I’ve been dating since I was in freakin’ middle school but I’ve never found a guy who looks at me like Daniel looks at you and it’s not fair and I’m jealous and that’s why I got pissed off. There. The end.”
My mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” Her ankle stilled, but only for a moment. “It’s my problem, not yours. I’ll find the perfect guy someday.” Eyes narrowing with determination, she muttered, “I just have to track him down first.”
“Well if it makes you feel any better, Daniel and I aren’t technically together. Well, I guess we are. I mean, we definitely are,” I said, recalling what he’d told me only this morning. You’ll never be a regular twenty-four-year-old. You’ll never be normal. And that’s why I’m in love with you. “But I don’t know if we should be.”
“Because he’s technically your student?”
“Yes.” I took another sip of water. “And I need to choose between him and my career. I need time to weigh all the pros and cons before I can make a well-informed, thought out decision.”
Whitney snorted. “That is such a you thing to say. ‘I need time to weigh all the pros and cons before I can make a well-informed, thought out decision’,” she said in a mocking parody of my own voice. “There are some things you can’t control, Mo. Some things you can’t plan and prepare for, no matter how hard you try. Babies are one of those things, which is why I have an IUD. And falling in love is another. Sometimes you just have to let go and trust your instincts.”
“Maybe.” Pensive, I stirred the ice cubes around counter clockwise in my glass. “We’ll see.” Maybe I did need to simply let go and trust my instincts. But to do that I would need to relinquish control; something I wasn’t exactly that great at doing. I was most comfortable when I had a plan. When I knew how something would start and finish. It was how I’d structured my entire life. How could I be expected to change in the blink of an eye? I didn’t even know if I wanted to change. And didn’t that tell me something? If Daniel was worth risking my job for, worth endangering my entire career, wouldn’t I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt?
Or maybe I already did, and I was just too afraid to admit the answer.
When the pizza arrived I drizzled blue cheese over my salad before using a handful of napkins to soak all the extra grease pooled on top of the cheese and pepperoni.
“That’s the best part you know,” Whitney said around a mouthful of crust.
For as long as I’d known her, she’d always eaten her pizza backwards. Crust to tip instead of tip to crust. I’d never asked why, and she’d never offered an explanation.
“Healthwise, it’s the worst part.”
“Like I said, the best.”
We devoured our lunches in record time, both of us too hungry to talk as we stuffed ourselves with pizza and salad. When we were finished I drained the rest of my water and pushed my empty plate to the side. Whitney sat back with a groan and patted her stomach.
“I ate way too much. I’m never going to fit into the skinny jeans I picked out for tonight.”
“You’ll be fine.” If there was one thing Whitney didn’t have to worry about, it was her weight. She may not have been as thin as I was, but she was curvy in all the right places and filled out her clothes in a way I could only dream about.
“You’re right,” she said thoughtfully. “I’ll look hot. TBoy817 won’t know what hit him.”
“TBoy817?”
“The guy I have a date with. We’ve been talking off and on for about three weeks.” By talking, I knew Whitney meant texting. The only people she actually talked to on the phone were her parents. Everyone else - including me - was delegated to text messages.
“You don’t sound too excited,” I noted.
“I’m not,” she said, toying with her straw. “I don’t think we have that much in common.”
“Then why are you going out with him?”
She blinked at me. “Free food and drinks. Duh. You know, before I forget I have one very important tip I wanted to give you before you go on your little hiking adventure tomorrow.”
“What is it?” I asked expectantly when she paused.
“Don’t
have sex against a tree. Tried it once, and I had bark burn on my ass for weeks.”
I threw my empty straw wrapper at her.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Final
I didn’t sleep.
For seven straight hours I alternated between lying on my bed staring blindly up at the ceiling and pacing tiny, endless circles around my bedroom. For seven hours I went back and forth between staying with Daniel and risking my position at Stonewall…or breaking up with Daniel and risking my heart. Either way, I lost something. Either way, we were both going to be hurt.
When dawn finally came, I dragged myself into the bathroom and took a shower, rinsing tears of frustration and anguish down the drain along with the suds from my shampoo. The same shampoo Daniel had used all those months ago after he’d made certain Whitney and I got home safely.
Wrapping a towel around my body and another around my hair, I padded silently across the hall and into my bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind me even though I knew Whitney wasn’t here (apparently her date with TBoy817 had gone better than she’d been planning) and Daniel wasn’t supposed to arrive until eight.
One hour and seventeen minutes to make the most important decision of my life, I thought as I glanced at the clock on my nightstand. One hour and seventeen minutes before I decided to go up a mountain with Daniel…or end our relationship for good.
Yesterday I’d thought I could make my decision after we came back down from Mt. Battie, but I knew myself, or at least I knew the woman I had become over the past five months, and that woman wouldn’t be able to spend the day with Daniel and then send him away. That woman wouldn’t be able to make the hard decision. The logical decision.
Dressing myself slowly and methodically in a rugged pair of jeans and a thick green wool sweater, I combed my hair out and left it to dry naturally on my shoulders. I didn’t put on any makeup. Whether I ended going up the mountain or I staying here, I wouldn’t need it.
I looked at the clock again. The short dial pointed at the seven. The long one was just shy of the six.
Thirty two minutes.
“Oh my God,” I murmured as I sank down on the edge of my mattress and dropped my head between my knees. “What am I going to do?”
I knew for some people - maybe even most people - the decision would have been a simple one. Stay with Daniel and just not get caught. But I knew the guilt would eat at me. I knew every time we were out in a public place I wouldn’t be able to help but wonder if this was the day another student saw us. If this was the day I would be fired. If this was the day everything I’d worked so hard for came crashing down around me.
And I couldn’t do that to myself. More than that, I couldn’t do that to Daniel.
He deserved more.
He deserved to be loved by someone who wasn’t filled with doubt.
He deserved someone who would pick him first.
He deserved someone who would choose him instead of their career.
And that someone wasn’t me.
Pain like I’d never felt before sliced through me like a knife, cutting me from the inside out. Doubling over with a soundless cry I hugged my knees and waited for the doorbell to ring.
* * * * *
I was waiting for Daniel when he arrived. Whitney still hadn’t come back, for which I was deeply thankful. I didn’t want anyone, not even my best friend, to witness what was about to happen.
Pulling up next to the house Daniel left his car idling as he walked quickly up to the front walkway. He lifted his hand to knock, but seeing me through the window waved instead. Keeping one arm wrapped securely around my middle, I unlocked the door.
A gust of cold morning air blew in with him, lifting my loose hair, still damp from my shower, away from my face. I stepped back, giving him room to step inside before I closed the door, sealing us in. He grinned at me, cheeks flushed pink from the wind.
“Are you ready to go? You’re going to need something a little heavier than that,” he said, eyeing my green sweater. “It should warm up a little bit as we climb, but you’ll definitely need…” Abruptly he stopped talking, and in that moment, in that awful, agonizing moment that separated us from what we had been to what we were about to become, I knew he knew even though I hadn’t spoken a word.
“Daniel, I-”
“Why?” he said flatly. “Just tell me why, Imogen. You at least owe me that.”
Had I thought the air from outside was cold? It was nothing compared to the chill suddenly emanating from Daniel. Folding both arms tight across my chest I struggled to explain a decision that had taken me seven hours and one broken heart to make. “I want to be with you. I do. But I can’t stop teaching at Stonewall.”
“I never asked you to stop teaching.”
“I know. I know you didn’t. But that doesn’t change the facts.”
“And you’re all about the facts,” he said bitterly.
I ignored the tiny barb, for it was no less than I deserved. “Someone has to be. I wish I wasn’t your professor,” I said hoarsely as my throat turned raw and ragged. “But I am. And I wish I was the sort of person who didn’t care about the consequences of their actions, but I’m not. And I can’t logically give up something I’ve been working for my entire life for someone I’ve only known for five months, no matter how much I care for them.”
He stared at me in disbelief. “You don’t have to choose one thing over the other, Imogen. It doesn’t work like that. Life doesn’t work like that. There are other choices. Other decisions. I can switch classes. I can transfer to another college-”
“No,” I whispered. “That won’t change my mind. I’m sorry, Daniel. I’m so sorry.”
“That’s it, then. That’s your decision.”
“Yes,” I forced myself to say. “It is.”
Shoulders rigid, jaw set, expression frozen, he turned to leave.
“Wait!” Suddenly desperate to make him listen, to make him understand, I said the one thing I knew would make him stop. The one thing I hadn’t been able to say. The one thing that had remained trapped inside of me…until now. “Daniel, I love you.”
“You don’t get to say that to me.” He whipped around and the burning heat in his eyes, the boiling hatred, made me stop dead in my tracks. “Not now. Not ever again. Do you understand?”
“Daniel, please.” Tears thickened my voice, but I refused to let them fall. “We can still talk about this. We can find a way to still be friends. Please.”
“No,” he said simply when I reached for his hand. “We can’t.”
And then he opened the door…and walked out of my life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
April
I threw myself into my work. It was the only thing that kept my mind off Daniel.
The only thing that kept me sane.
It had taken me three days to realize my mistake. Three days to come to terms with the fact that I’d made the wrong decision. Three days to bolster the courage I needed to apologize.
By then it was too late, of course. When I tried to call Daniel it went straight to voicemail. When I texted he never replied. When I saw him at night class he was the last to arrive and the first to leave, making it impossible for me to speak to him.
So I focused on my classes. I took on an extra course. I started tutoring after hours. I did anything and everything I could think of to forget about Daniel, but nothing worked.
Nothing except for time.
As January turned to February and February gave way to March and then April, I still thought of him every single day, but I’d become so accustomed to the pain I was almost numb to it. And because numbness was better than feeling too much, I embraced indifference. I craved detachment. All of the progress I’d made in abandoning the old Imogen and embracing the new faded away, leaving me a shell of my former self. Or, as Whitney called it, ‘a hot looking zombie’.
And my life went on like that for a while…until in the blink of an eye, everything changed.
Scanning the papers I held in my hand to make sure I was bringing John the right ones, I knocked absently on his door, a cursory brush of knuckles against wood before I twisted the knob and pushed it open. I didn’t expect him to be in his office. He’d mentioned earlier in the day he would have meetings until after five, and to drop off the book list I’d put together whenever I had a chance. It was a list I had been working on for the past two weeks. New novels (or rather, very old novels) I wanted introduced into the curriculum. After polling my students and realizing almost half of the books on the syllabus were ones they’d already read and studied in high school, I was eager to introduce fresh material, but for that to happen I would ultimately need John’s approval.
I was halfway across his office - a bright, sun filled space twice the size of my own - when I heard a soft, breathless moan. I froze in my tracks, the soles of my shoes anchoring to the plain beige carpet as though they’d been coated in sticky glue. The papers fluttered silently to the ground in a wash of white as I looked up…and saw John sprawled lengthwise on the brown leather sofa he kept against the back wall, his arms and legs entangled around a slim, shorthaired redhead wearing nothing more than a pink bra and yellow lace panties. “Oh,” I gasped. “Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry. I knocked but… Maddy?”
The shock in my voice mirrored the shock on my student’s face as she slid off John and leaped to her feet, awkwardly using her hands to cover herself as her gaze darted around the floor, looking for her missing clothing. John was slower to react. While I stood there stupefied, not knowing what to say or whether I should stay or go, he slowly sat up on the sofa. Unlike Maddy he was fully dressed. Neither of us said a word as she scrambled around, picking up her shirt from the back of a chair and her jeans from behind his desk.
“I’m sorry,” Maddy whispered, and I wondered if she was apologizing to me or John. She stared straight down as she shoved her legs into her jeans and shimmied them up to her hips. Her face was bright red and tears glittered in her eyes. Given our rough start we’d never struck up much of a teacher-student relationship, but I still felt a strong surge of sympathy for her nevertheless. I wanted to help. To comfort. But I didn’t know what I should say. After all, I’d never taken a class in what to do when you found the director of the English department with a naked student on top of him.
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