by Lola Darling
But I’m afraid to say it in person, too, because I know myself. I’m weak. If he says the right thing, gives me the right puppy-dog look, I’ll fall all over myself to forgive him. I need to be stronger than that. I need to do what’s truly right for me.
So I wait until he’ll be in class on Monday morning, the class I’m skipping today, and then I call his cell phone. As predicted, it goes to voicemail in a couple of probably silent rings. I wait for the tone, swallow hard, and go for it.
“Jack, I got your voicemails on Saturday. And the suitcase you had delivered to my dorm on Sunday, thank you for that. I’m sorry that I didn’t let you know I made it home safe—I hope this message eases your worries on that count. As for the rest . . . I just don’t think this is working. I’m sorry to do this to you while you’re going through heartbreak at home too, but I need to concentrate on what’s best for me right now. I hope you can understand that.”
I love you, I think. “Goodbye,” I say, and I disconnect the phone before I melt into a puddle of tears.
#
Class the next week is surreal. I watch him at the front of the room speaking, and I can still hear his voice so much closer. I can’t live without you.
You’re acting insane.
I can’t be with someone who does that. Who switches from getting-serious to telling me I’m a child in a single day. Mentally, I know this is for the best.
Emotionally? Well.
My eyes track him across the classroom. Even from the middle of the room, I can make out deep purple bags under his eyes. His handwriting on the chalkboard is shaky, and his voice scratches a few times, halfway through the lecture. He doesn’t look like he’s been sleeping.
I think about everything he’s going through right now, and I physically ache to just wrap my arms around him, try to take his pain into me. His father’s death, after the rocky relationship I knew they had, hit him harder than he’ll admit.
But for my sake (and his sake, even if he can’t see it), I know I need to stay strong. To stay away.
So I take notes, my eyes glued to my textbook and paper, and resist the urge to go to him.
#
Throwing myself into my work is easier than thinking. Luckily, for some reason, the deadline on the Eliot papers has been kicked into high gear. I hole myself up in my room for the next two weeks, sending Jack—Professor Kingston, I correct myself—updated page proofs every couple of days, with nothing written in the body of the emails. He replies with corrections, suggestions, and requests for my next section of work. But he always signs the emails with the same line.
Please talk to me.
I hit reply, attach the new pages, and that’s it.
Finally, after two weeks of almost constant labor, I reach the end. When I send him the final draft, he invites me to help present it to the dean. For the first time since leaving him my final voice message, I write out a reply.
Thank you, but I’m afraid I have to decline the offer.
Stupid career move, but what would be worse: avoiding this presentation, or having the dean or some other higher-up find out about Professor Kingston’s and my history? I’m not sure I could remain professional and stand in the same room as him, in close proximity, presenting on the same material.
So I take the safe route out.
In the meantime, however, while he’s gearing up for whatever the presentation will be, I have other work to do. Specifically, capturing the poems that are pouring out of me right now. I write pages and pages of first drafts, at least ten of which are decent enough that I can settle in to revise them.
I’m not consciously thinking about it, not every day, but I have the pamphlet about the poetry grant pinned above my desk. The requirements may or may not include a sampling of ten original poems by the applicant.
I may or may not be hyperaware of that now.
If nothing else, it’s a good way to keep the isolated, obsessive work pattern going. And an even better way to keep myself from thinking about anything else whatsoever.
Three more months and I won’t have to worry about this anymore anyway. I’ll be on a plane back to the US in January, and this will all be a distant memory. Maybe someday it won’t hurt anymore. Maybe someday I’ll be able to look back on this whole experience and smile.
Maybe.
Jack
“Thank you for bringing this to my attention,” Warden Johnson replies as I finish speaking.
I’m having flashbacks of my PhD defense all over again, only this time it’s five deans of the college, the warden, and, even more terrifyingly, the vice-chancellor of Oxford University on the whole all staring at me from the front of the room with the analysis Harper and I co-wrote spread before them.
A now-familiar pang jolts through me: the absence of her at my side. She should be here for this. Half the paper is hers, she deserves the credit, the recognition she’d earn from this. But I can guess why she decided not to come.
I can guess, and it makes me feel even worse than I already do about what’s happened between us. I can stand the pain of separation, if that’s truly what she wants. But I can’t stand the idea of hurting her career on top of it all.
Warden Johnson clears his throat, and I snap to attention. Concentrate, Jack. The fate of the department depends on this moment. I know our analysis is spot-on, and the presentation was as good as I can give. The rest is up to them.
“We will be bringing this under consideration as we move forward with our allocation decisions this year. Now, have you considered which publications you would like to pursue with this article?”
Publications. Which is essentially signing off, giving the paper the university’s blessing. I steal a glance at Pierson and catch him flashing me a thumbs up from under the table.
Then I fight to keep the sheer, exhausting relief from my face as I start to list which journals I’m looking at sending this to, once we’ve finished polishing it up. If nothing else, Harper will have a publication credit to her name, since I’ll obviously be listing her as my co-author. That will help, even if she couldn’t be here for this presentation.
It makes me feel only slightly better.
Luckily, work doesn’t give me much time to think. Straight from the presentation, I’m ushered into a strategy dinner with Pierson and another dean. At least it allows me to ignore the burn in my chest, the searing pain that accompanies every quick glance she flashes my way in class, and every day that passes without a reply in her emails beyond the next assignment.
I have never felt like this before. This . . . weak. And yet, for the first time in my life, knowing that there’s someone out there who can do this to me doesn’t make me want to run away. It makes me want to run toward her.
But she’s made it clear what she wants. Which is nothing to do with me. So I keep my head down, and I get back to work.
Harper
It’s been three weeks. Three weeks since the funeral, and my heart splitting in half in my chest, and the whole world feeling like it will come crashing to an end at any moment.
So far, it hasn’t. But the night is young.
I’ve spent those weeks alternately embedded in my writing (including finishing and sending off the application for the poetry grant program) and sulking in my dorm room. Stacey and Mary Kate are having none of it tonight.
“You need to get out. Get some fresh air,” MK says.
“And some fresh booze,” Stacey adds, sniffing at the open bottle of wine I forgot about on top of my bureau with a grimace.
“I don’t know if drinking when I feel this shitty is a good idea, guys,” I mumble. They know the basics of the breakup, though obviously not the details. And that simple little fact, the fact that I can’t tell my two closest friends here what was really going on in our relationship, should be the wake-up call. It wasn’t working.
“Drinking is always a good idea,” Mary Kate contradicts me as she pulls one of my shorter, more revealing dresses from the closet.
/> “I’ll come out on one condition,” I say, snatching the dress from her to stuff it back onto its hanger. “It’s got to be a place where I can wear jeans.” I shake a leg at her, and she laughs.
“Fair enough.”
Less than half an hour later, we’re clustered into a back room at the Eagle and Child. It looks completely different than the last time I was here, way back at the start of the semester, when I had no idea what I was getting myself into, flirting with Jack in front of his friend at the bar.
This time, Christmas decorations cover the walls. An upbeat, overly peppy Christmas song I actually recognize plays on the speaker system, and the whole pub seems to vibrate with energy. The back room has been strung with tinsel and holly, and I catch a glimpse of more than one undergrad wearing a Santa hat or elf ears.
“Is there something going on tonight?” I ask MK as we pile into the booth.
“Tail end of Santa Con,” she says. “It’s this thing where—”
“Oh, I know all about Santa Con,” I interrupt, one palm raised. I remember enough from making the mistake of venturing into downtown Philly during one, and nearly drowning in a sea of overly festive red and white pukers. “I just didn’t realize it had infected this side of the Atlantic too.”
“Everyone here loves a good excuse to get pissed,” Stacey says. “Speaking of, here come two more!” Nick and Patrick join us, Patrick immediately sliding into the booth beside me, one arm draped along the back panel. Stacey wiggles her eyebrows at us both, then disappears to fetch a round of pints.
“So, I hear my favorite American eye candy is single again.” Patrick hip-bumps me, tearing me away from whatever whispered conversation Mary Kate and Nick have started up.
I must make a worse face than he anticipated, because suddenly Patrick’s pulling me into a tight hug. And it feels nice. Not sexual or anything. Just . . . nice. I squeeze back gently, before I draw away.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur. “I’m just, I’m not ready to—”
“Hey, hey, Harper.” He pats my hand. “I’m not trying to push you or anything. I mean, yes, if you want a rebound, I am 100 percent game, call me anytime.” He winks. “But it’s obvious this wasn’t just some fling, so . . . If you need to talk or anything. Y’know. Call me for that, too.”
Stacey reappears with our beers, and as he passes me my pint, a genuine smile sneaks onto my face for the first time in what feels like forever. “Thanks, Patrick.”
“Like I said, love.” He clinks his glass against mine. “Anytime.” We both take sips of our beverages, but then he breaks off to tug at my arm. “Hey, have you seen the décor up in the front room yet?”
“If that’s a pickup line, it’s the worst one I’ve heard you try yet,” I say.
“No, he’s right, it’s really pretty,” Stacey adds. “Let’s go check it out.”
Confused but obliging, I trail the two of them through the crowded middle room, past the bar just oozing with mistletoe (creative, guys), and into one of the other private rooms. The ones up here are occupied, but none of the mostly halfway-to-Piss-Town occupants seem to mind a couple more people popping in.
As far as I can tell, the decorations look exactly the same up here. I raise an eyebrow. “What gives, guys?”
“Just giving them some space,” Stacey says with a nod toward the back.
I blink a few times, but Patrick doesn’t look surprised either. “What, MK and Nick?” I glance back and forth between my friends, but neither one speaks. “Shit, what’s going on with them? I thought everything was okay.”
“Nooot exactly,” Stacey mumbles under her breath.
As if on cue, we watch Nick storm past the entrance to our side room, a furious scowl on his face. There’s a blast of cold air as he storms out into the night, and then the door slams shut behind him and I’m left gaping at my friends in surprise.
I am such a terrible friend. I’ve spent weeks moaning to MK over dinner every night, wrapping myself in a blanket in her dorm room on Saturday nights to marathon every Disney movie ever made while I sniffled into the world’s largest mountain of tissues.
Mary Kate never said one word about needing support herself. But now that Stacey brings it up, now that I bother to think about it, I remember the slump I’ve seen in MK’s shoulders, the way her head hangs heavy on her neck. “I’ve got to go talk to her,” I say, pushing past Patrick and Stacey without another word.
I fight through a particularly thick crowd of people around the bar, and eventually burst into our back room, only to find it filled with complete strangers this time. Of course, if MK was here on her own, she probably wouldn’t want to stick around the booth just waiting for us.
I think for a moment, then wind my way back through the bar into the cramped bathroom. Sure enough, I spot a familiar pair of high heels under one stall, from which a distinct sniffling sound emits.
“MK?” I knock softly.
There’s a really long sniff, and then the door unlocks and swings inward. She’s fully dressed, perched on the lid of the closed toilet, daubing at her eyes with a wad of toilet paper. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs for no comprehensible reason.
“Hey, hey.” I suck in my stomach far enough that I just manage to squeeze the door shut behind me. Then I cross my arms and lean back against it to study her expression. “What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Okay, now you definitely have to talk to me.” I reach across to squeeze her shoulder. “What happened? Come on, you’ve been here for me this whole time, the least I can do is the same thing for you.”
She pauses to cram half the toilet roll into her face, which does wipe away most of the worst mascara stains from her cheeks. Then she sighs and gives up, dropping the roll into the trash bin. “I broke up with Nick.”
That is . . . not what I expected to hear. He’s annoying as heck, sure, and I can’t understand what she sees in him besides that he’s American and she seems to like the frat bro type. But they seemed fine. In fact, he’s been doting on her harder than ever the past week, constantly showing up with flowers and leaving boxes of chocolates around her flat. I crouch down beside her. “How come?”
She shakes her head. “It wasn’t real. It never was. He’s been sleeping with other people the entire time and I—”
“Excuse me, he what?” Any good feelings I ever had toward Nick vanish that instant. My hands ball into fists of rage as I think about the glowering expression on his face when I saw him last. “Where did he go? I’ll tear his damn balls off.”
“No, no, Harper.” MK grabs at my arms. “It’s not like that. I knew about them.”
“How dare he fucking—wait, what?” I stammer to a halt, as my brain catches up to what she just said.
“It’s complicated, okay? But we . . . When we started hooking up at the start of the semester, he asked if I’d be okay with an open relationship. I said sure, because . . . uh, to be honest, I wasn’t really feeling anything beyond the physical with him. And he was hooking up with other people, but it was also only physical for him too, I mean, he never wanted anything serious. But last month, I . . . I met someone else, and. Shit, this sounds so idiotic.” She buries her head in her hands, but I rest my hand on her hair, the same way she’s done for me a hundred times.
“It doesn’t sound idiotic, MK. It sounds like life.”
She snorts into her palms, then groans. “Anyway, I, uh, I think I’m starting to have feelings for the other guy. Real feelings.”
“Wait, whoa, who?” I gape at her. I can’t believe she hid all of this from me.
Then again, I hid an awful lot from her this semester, so I suppose I can’t really talk.
Mary Kate shakes her head. “You don’t know him. That whole thing is a mess anyway, but . . . ugh. It’s happening, so. I told Nick that we had to end it. Um, but it turns out, he started to have real feelings too. For me.” She grimaces, biting her lip. “I feel like such an arse.”
“You’r
e not an arse. You can’t stay with someone you don’t truly care about. That’d never work.”
“Yeah, I know, but . . . ugh. Nick made so much sense! He’d met my mum, my brothers, my step-dad. He’s majoring in the same thing as me, we have all the same friends. I should have feelings for him, you know? I just . . . don’t. And now I don’t even know why I’m crying except ’cause I feel super guilty,” she adds with a derisive snort.
I’m staring at the back of the door now, my mind flying a million miles away. Because suddenly all of this sounds so very familiar.
“Hello? Earth to Harper?” MK waves a hand in front of my face, and I blink back to her, startled.
“That sounds totally normal, though. You don’t have feelings for the practical person, the one who makes the most sense. Otherwise humans would all just be robots—program in perfect companion settings to the computer, spit out the ideal match, and we’re all set. We’re messier than that. We have to be, or online dating would work every time,” I add with a smirk, cause god knows MK and I have both suffered through some epic failures at that.
But also, I’ve realized something.
All along, I thought Hannah was Jack’s ideal woman. They make sense, after all. They’re both professors. She knows his whole family. She’s gorgeous, he’s hot.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she’s not right for him at all in real life, even though they’re a perfect match on paper. Maybe she’s the Nick to his Mary Kate.
My heart twists. Even if I’m right, though, it doesn’t mean I’m the new guy to his MK. Just because Jack doesn’t want her, doesn’t mean he wants me instead.
“You’re doing the zoning thing again,” MK points out with a wry smile. “Do you think we should vacate the premises? Netflix and chill at my place?”
“Oh, no.” I unzip my purse and pull out a whole stash of fresh makeup for her. “You dragged me out here tonight. We’re staying out. No moping from me, no dwelling for you, no boys—”
