Me, Cinderella?

by Rose, Aubrey

  “I don’t understand. Do you just not care about me?” His eyes flashed dark and accusing at me.

  “I care about you a lot, Mark. Just not in that way.”

  “So what?” He threw his hands up in the air angrily. “Are you going to pine forever for him?”

  “Who?” My face turned hot as I realized what he was saying.

  “You know who I’m talking about. You light up whenever Herceg comes into the room.”

  “So?” Was it that obvious?

  “He’s a professor, Brynn.”

  “So?” I shuffled the papers again in my hands, trying not to admit what Mark already knew. That’s not the least of it, I thought. He’s also a prince and heir to a fortune. He lives in a castle, for god’s sake.

  “So you think he would care about some dumb student?”

  “No!” I threw the papers down onto the desk, and tears sprang to my eyes. “I know that! Of course he doesn’t care! That’s not the point, Mark!” Fury raged in me. He had no right to talk about Eliot in that way. I had never heard him speak so bluntly, so meanly.

  “What’s the point?” he said.

  “I don’t feel that way about you, and that’s all there is to it.” A frisson of energy crackled between us, and I could see that things wouldn’t go back to normal anytime soon. If ever.

  “Okay.” Mark stacked my scattered papers together and pushed them back towards me on the table. “I’m sorry.”

  I saw the rejection ripple through him and sag his limbs, but I couldn’t do anything. Sorrow ran through my, but I couldn’t fix this thing between us right now.

  “Me, too,” I said.

  The space between us had grown too dangerous to stay in. We couldn’t be friends, not like we had been before. I wanted to throw myself into the river outside and freeze until I couldn’t feel these emotions anymore. The pain of being rejected by Eliot was almost as bad as the pain of hurting Mark. I could deal with being hurt. I had always been the one who could handle pain. But dealing it out to someone else was too much. The two people in my life who I felt closest to here, and they had both been torn away from me. More alone than ever, I retreated back into the safety of mathematics, and the dam inside of me that I thought had been torn down now stood taller than ever, my protection from the messiness of he outside world.

  Eliot sat at his desk, reluctantly petting the gray ball of fur that sat purring on his lap. As the phone rang again, he prayed for Marta to stop calling him. After the tenth ring, he gave up pretending to be in the shower.

  “Eliot? Finally!” Marta said, her voice bright and enthusiastic. “I’ve called about that damned cat you wanted to get rid of.”

  “Oh!” Eliot breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m so glad.”

  “Did you think I was going to ask about that girl of yours? I convinced the Lustigs to take her cat in a couple of days. How is she?”

  “The cat?”

  “The girl.”

  “Marta, the subject is over.”

  “I was just asking how she was.”

  “She’s doing well. She’s done some good work on the project with another student.” His voice caught on the last syllable, and he coughed to cover it up, but Marta didn’t miss anything.

  “Another student? A boy? Eliot, are you jealous?”

  “It’s not my place to be jealous.”

  “You don’t have any competition.” Marta seemed unworried. “She’ll come back around.”

  “Thanks, Marta, but I’m really not looking for any kind of relationship right now.”

  “You’ve been saying that for ten years, Eliot.”

  The pause between them stretched and curled across the phone connection. Eliot shifted uncomfortably back in his chair, leaning his head on the hard leather. A burning desire flickered up in his consciousness and he stamped it down.

  “I can’t.” I won’t.

  “Why not?”

  “She’s a student—”

  “So what? Eliot, don’t think her heart isn’t in the same place as yours.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’ve seen my share of lovestruck maidens.” He could hear the wine being sipped at the end of her sentence.

  “You’re being absurd.” As insightful as Marta was sometimes, she couldn’t help but insert herself into drama. Or create it if none existed. And he was sure that none existed here.

  Marta sighed, a heavy sigh meant to chastise.

  “If you think she doesn’t love you, you’re either so stupid you can’t see the nose in front of your face or so scared that you’re pulling back into your shell. And I know you’re not stupid, Eliot.”

  “I don’t believe she does love me. If she ever did, I’m not convinced she does anymore.”

  “I am.”

  “Marta, even if we both wanted something, I can’t.” Eliot stood up from his desk and began to pace from shelf to shelf, the phone pressed to his ear.

  “Whenever you say you can’t, it usually means you’ve just gotten in your own way, Eliot. You always trip over good intentions. Don’t let them get in the way of love.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Can’t what?”

  “Love!” Eliot rested his head against the wall. “I can’t love anymore. Not again.”

  “You won’t let yourself. Eliot, when was the last time you went to church?”

  Eliot smiled wanly. Otto wasn’t exactly the religious type, but Marta strove to get him to church every Sunday. Whether for the publicity or for the moral salvation, Otto usually obliged.

  “It’s been a while.” Ten years is a while, isn’t it?

  “Try it, maybe. You might learn a little something about forgiveness.”

  “I don’t deserve it. The accident was my fault.”

  “And it’s in the past. The long past. You deserve a future.”

  “Thank you for your concern, Marta. Give my love to Otto.”

  “I will. Forgive yourself, Eliot.”

  Eliot looked at the phone, then hung up.

  I don’t deserve a future, he thought. And even if I did, she deserves a brighter one than I could give her.

  Weeks passed. Eliot kept his distance from Brynn, and she kept hers. Her work, already impressive, had become near-professional in its diligence, and she made sure to document not only her successes, but the avenues of inquiry that led to failure. She stayed late at the academy every night, or so his assistants told him. He wasn’t quite sure what happened between her and the Joseph boy. Either she hid the relationship from him so well he couldn’t figure it, or nothing had happened after that first night he caught them together. Regardless, on the rare occasions he came to visit the academy and saw them working together, he felt a tug of jealousy.

  Why should he be jealous? It had been his decision to stay out of her life, and the choice had been made for her own good. Every time he saw her, though, he came closer and closer to ruing the decision he had made. In her time at Budapest, he saw her grow and mature, not only as a mathematician, but also as a woman. Each visit made him more aware of her budding grace, her beauty that was no longer childlike. He began to make excuses to come to the academy more often, every time knowing that he was playing with fire.

  The semester went on and on, and his work made progress in leaps and bounds now that he was actively sharing ideas with the interns and assistants. Each day brought him closer to the answer to his problem, and at the same time closer to the day when Brynn would leave and go back to America to graduate, find a job, marry someone else. Eliot tortured himself with imagining her future husband, her future family, her future life without him. He was no idiot. She was young and had the rest of her future in front of her, and he was sure her brief experiences with him had disillusioned her about the possibility of staying with him. No, that chance had come and gone, if it ever existed.

  He lectured at the front of the classroom, but his lectures were directed solely towards her, and although she never raised her hand to
ask a question, he tried to read her expression to know what parts he needed to explain more thoroughly. And although she stayed quiet, the last words she had directed his way echoed incessantly through his mind:

  When will you go to visit your wife?

  It was a beautiful spring day, only a few weeks before the semester was due to be over, and driving down to the academy he opened the windows and breathed in the fresh cool air. Normally he would have turned off of the main road to the academy to avoid passing the cemetery, but for some reason that day he didn’t; not a conscious decision, no, not at all. When his car passed by the cemetery he braked hard and pulled over to the curb. Sitting at the wheel, his throat choked with tension, and he willed himself to relax. He looked up to the front of the cemetery, and the open doors seemed to call him inside, the sun shining brightly above.

  When will you go visit your wife?

  He left the car at the curb and walked through the iron gate. The grass underneath his feet squished wetly with the dampness from the thawed winter frosts, and everything grew bright and green between the stone graves. In places where the caretaker had forgotten to mow tiny alyssum blossoms had taken hold and spread their white petals in the shade of gravestones. His feet took him quickly to the family plot, though he paused before opening the gate and walking over.

  His mother had not wanted Clare buried in the same plot, but Eliot had insisted that she was just as much a part of the Herceg family as any other. They had only been married less than a year before she died. Before he killed her.

  Drawing closer to the gravestone, Eliot blinked hard. The stone was surrounded by grass but right in front of Clare’s stone lay a small bouquet of white roses. He bent down and picked them up, brought them to his nose and inhaled. The smell was still fresh, the roses new and alive. His eyes turned to the gravestone, reading the words engraved there.

  “Clare, oh Clare.” He fell to his knees and pressed his forehead to the cold stone, his eyes closed. He began to talk, haltingly at first, in a low whisper that couldn’t be heard by any living soul.

  “I miss you Clare. I see you—god, I see you every day, everywhere. It’s a beautiful day today. Sunny and cold, your perfect day. I’m sorry you can’t be here to see it. The ice is melting and the stream has come up in the back. I go out and sit there and think about you.

  “The problem is going well. We just solved another specific case; this one was much harder, but I think I can generalize it—of course, don’t let me go on and on about math. You always let me go on for far too long. There’s someone helping me—”

  Eliot breathed in deeply before continuing.

  “She’s lovely. You told me that if anything happened to either of us, we should find happiness.”

  Eliot’s voice shattered on the last word, and tears streamed down his cheeks. The guilt he carried inside of him flared up and made his skin burn with shame.

  “I haven’t been happy, Clare. I haven’t. I haven’t ever let myself be happy. And I know—I know you would want me to let go, but I can’t. I just can’t. I miss you so much and I’m sorry I hurt you. I wish I could go back and live through it again. I would—”

  He stopped. He thought of what he would say—that he would never have tried to woo her, never taken her away from her life and put her in a place where she would die so meaninglessly. But that wasn’t right. He couldn’t erase the past like that. Every beautiful moment spent with Clare taken away? No. No. He did not know what he wanted, but it was not that.

  As he opened his eyes he realized his tears had stopped. His fingers moved over the letters of her name and he whispered to himself.

  “You’re right, Clare. As always.”

  There was nothing he could do now, nothing that would reverse the chain of motion that led to her death. There was only the here and now, a sunny day that she could not see. He looked down to the bouquet of roses. He had clutched the stems too tightly, and the thorns had pierced his hand. He opened his hand slowly, watching the beads of red appear in the punctures. He was alive, this proved it. The ache that shot through his hand as he flexed it open proved it. He breathed slowly and let the pain ride through his body, his palm throbbing with his heartbeat. Blood smeared the petals of the roses, red on white. They looked beautiful, like the hybrid varieties that bloomed at this time of the year in the gardens of his estate.

  She would never come back, and he would have to keep on living.

  He stood, and placed the blood-smeared roses on top of the stone carefully, smoothing the petals. He bent down to wipe his hand on the dew of the grass. The blades of grass were wet and cold, and his fingers grew chilly as he wiped his wounds clean. He pressed the tips of his fingers to his lips, then to the stone.

  “Goodbye, Clare. I love you always.”

  He felt love surge through him, and he was crying again, softly, for he knew that the love would stay with him even though he must leave her there, dead in the ground. He closed the wrought iron gate behind him and turned to leave the cemetery. Looking up, he saw Brynn standing in the path ahead of him, looking back.

  The sunlight haloed her hair, tinging it red, and for a moment Eliot thought he would see Clare again. Then he blinked hard and there was only Brynn, nobody else.

  “Hello, Eliot,” she said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.” - Poincare

  I had gone back to visit my mother every weekend with the small amount of free time I had. I talked with her, told her about the work I was doing. Inevitably I would tell her about Eliot. If he had come to lecture, I would tell her about what he had said, how he had looked at me. If not, I told her about how much I missed him. In this new country, I did not want to find my heart stolen away, but my attraction to Eliot was harmless. He would never love me, so he was safe to love. I told my mother that I would find romance when I returned home in a few weeks.

  The sunny morning I visited her, I again left half of my bouquet at Clare’s grave, as I had each week, replacing the wilted flowers from the time before. Here I simply left the bouquet—I had nothing to say to Eliot’s dead wife. When I returned from visiting with my mother, however, I saw someone kneeling inside of the Herceg family plot. I stepped forward, curious despite myself, and Eliot turned to see me standing there. His eyes were red with tears, but his face looked somehow happier, less anguished. He looked like he was glad to see me.

  “Hello, Eliot,” I said.

  He smiled and stepped forward. I inhaled as he bent to kiss me warmly on the cheek. His chin, unshaven, scratched my cheek slightly, and when his hot lips pressed against my cheek I wanted to throw my arms around him. I thought that I was safe, but his touch set my body aflame in just seconds. He kissed me again on the other cheek, and then pulled back.

  “Will you let me buy you a coffee?” Eliot said. “I believe I owe you one.”

  He owed me nothing, but I said yes and walked with him to the cafe a few blocks away. We ordered our coffees and took them down to the river to sit on a bench beside the Danube. The ice had cracked apart, and only small chunks of frost still clung to the riverbanks. All the rest had been swept out to sea by the currents of the river.

  “How have you been, Brynn?” Eliot spoke kindly, and I felt myself drawn close to his kindness.

  “Fine,” I said, meaning a hundred other things. “We figured out another piece of the algorithm yesterday. You told us to try and simplify the projective matrix, but I think that it’s easier to simplify the result after it’s been applied—”

  “I didn’t mean the work,” Eliot said. Unspoken words hung in the air between us. My heart wrenched as I watched his eyes track the eddies in the river, and I felt a mixture of anger and longing race through my body.

  “Are you and that boy…”

  “No.” I spoke too quickly, and Eliot turned toward me with the question still lingering in his eyes. “There’s nothing between us.”

  Eli
ot put his hand on mine. I wanted to cry out with joy, but I also wanted to tear my hand away. Do you know what you’re doing to me? I screamed inside. Don’t make me love you again. My mind raced ahead with images of Eliot kissing me, embracing me, peeling off my clothes slowly.

  “Brynn. I would not stand between you and happiness.” His fingers curled over mine, and I choked on my words.

  “It wouldn’t be happiness. I don’t want that with him. I want…”

  Eliot paused, waiting. I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t. I never wanted anything. Or, at least, I never admitted to wanting anything. That was just how I grew up. If I didn't want anything, I couldn't be poor. This was the first time in a long time that my desires had become so apparent.

  “What is it, Brynn?”

  “You.” My voice was barely a whisper. “I want you.”

  Eliot withdrew his hand, and I immediately knew that I had made an error. My eyes blurred with tears and I bent my head down, staring at my hands. Pretending that I hadn’t said anything, and willing back the urge to sob.

  “I’m going to go back to America, Brynn.”

  My head snapped up.

  “You can’t! What about the internship?” The problem. We couldn’t solve the problem if Eliot left. And I couldn’t stand to live here with just Mark and the other interns. I didn’t want to be here without Eliot.

  “I supervised it remotely before.” Eliot’s voice was calm, too calm. I felt the tension hiding underneath the stillness of his surface. “I can do it again.”

  “But we’re so close to the end.”

  “There are still a few weeks left.” Eliot’s words were patient, but I could not be consoled.

  “I mean the problem. We’re so close, and you’re leaving?”

  “I appreciate your optimism, Brynn, but even with the work you’ve accomplished, we’re not close to a general solution.”

  “How can we get it if you leave?” I turned squarely to him and took his hands in mine, squeezing tightly. The only person I cared for, and he was leaving me. Suddenly I found a newfound determination. I couldn’t lose him. “Don’t.”