DOCTOR'S ORDERS

by Bella Grant

  They were silent for a moment, neither moving. He didn’t want it to end, but he knew it had to. He let out a deep sigh. “You should go,” he told her gently.

  When Amelia looked at him, her face crumpled and her chin trembled a little. He knew she would be hurt, and he hated himself for it. Her brow furrowed again, and her big eyes shined a bit more from the tears pooling in them. She pressed her lip together and nodded once. Then, without saying a word, she shoved her laptop in her bag and left the office.

  It wasn’t until he heard the door slam at the end of the hall that Theodore realized she’d left her coat behind. When he picked it up, it jingled, and he reached into her pocket and pulled out a set of keys.

  “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath. Not only was she going to freeze out there, who knew how far she’d get before realizing she didn’t have the keys to get into her apartment.

  He didn’t know what to do. He waited a moment, hoping she’d realize what she’d forgotten and come back for them, but the building was silent. In a snap decision, he flipped open his laptop and pulled up the student directory. He searched for her name and local living address and found her apartment number. Pulling on his own coat, he wrote the details on a post-it, grabbed her jacket, and ran down the stairs.

  When Theodore got to her apartment, it was in darkness. He had feared she’d been locked out and would be waiting on the steps, not sure what to do. But as he approached the dark building, he realized how stupid that was. Amelia was a resourceful girl, and to think she’d be sitting on the steps of her own apartment, freezing in the cold, flummoxed by what to do since she was locked out, was preposterous. It was a stupid idea, and it made him feel like a stupid, chauvinist to think she needed him to rescue her.

  Theodore left her a note with his cell number saying he had her coat and keys and to call him when she got home. He wasn’t sure where to go, but the thought of going back to his office or his dark apartment seemed unbearable. He pulled his collar up and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. He turned down the side streets on the edge of campus and walked to the bar downtown.

  He thought about texting David, but he didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t quite grasp what he had gotten himself into, and as he pounded back a shot of whiskey, gesturing to the bartender for another, he felt a frustration build within him.

  The system is so fucking stupid, he thought to himself. Yes, Amelia was his student, but he had real feelings for her. She wouldn’t be his student for long, and any implication of impropriety came from the expectation that he would show her favoritism. Not only am I an ethical guy, Theodore rationalized, I don’t even need to adjust her grade. Amelia was the smartest student he’d ever had. The whole issue was bullshit. Stupid, arbitrary bullshit. With that, he swallowed the second shot, threw a twenty-dollar bill on the bar, and shoved out the door into the cold.

  CHAPTER 7

  Amelia was halfway to her apartment before she realized she had left her coat and keys in Professor Bell’s office. She stopped and looked behind her towards campus, debating whether to go back for them. A rush of energy had filled her in the office. She couldn’t believe she’d done it. She had kissed Professor Bell. Theodore. What the hell had she been thinking?

  She couldn’t go back for them. He had stopped it. He had pulled away and said they couldn’t. She wasn’t surprised, really. She told herself it was the right reaction, the normal, expected response to what had happened between them. What had she been expecting anyway? Had she imagined him shoving all his stacks of paper off the desk, throwing her on it, and taking her? Expected? No. Wanted? Yes.

  As Amelia stood, trembling on the sidewalk, her breath fogging up in a cloud before her, she realized two things—she was freezing, and at any moment, she was going to break down and cry. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and began to text Frankie. Something happened, she wrote. I can’t go home. Can I come over?

  She started walking towards Frankie’s apartment without waiting for a response. She was about a block away when her phone buzzed. Yeah. Are you OK? Doors open, come in when you get here.

  She took the flight of stairs up to his apartment two at a time, hardly feeling the steps under her feet. She was numb and exhausted, and she hadn’t realized how tenuous her control over her emotions was until she entered Frankie’s apartment and he jumped up to greet her.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “Did you walk here? Where’s your coat?”

  “I forgot it,” she replied. “In Professor Bell’s office.”

  “What happened?” Frankie pressed again. “Are you okay?”

  Amelia started to cry. She wasn’t okay. She felt rejected and alone, and all the beauty of the evening had been washed from her in the cold deluge of his words. I’m sorry, we can’t, Professor Bell had said to her. And his words, coupled with that kiss—that body-shaking, mind-melting kiss that made her heart swing like a yoyo—had taken all of her sanity and left her with only raw feelings.

  As Frankie reached out to hug her, pulling a sweatshirt around her shoulders, she collapsed into his arms and sobbed. “Okay, seriously, what the fuck?” Frankie asked, his voice raising an octave with anxiety. “Ames, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on. I’m losing my shit here. Are you hurt? Did Professor Bell do something to you?”

  Amelia wiped her eyes and tried to quell the tears with a few shaky, determined breaths. “I’m fine,” she said quietly. “I mean, something did happen, but it wasn’t bad. He didn’t attack me or anything.” She was silent for a moment, fighting the tears that threatened to roll down her cheeks. Finally, she said, “We kissed. And he rejected me.”

  “Whoa, okay, you’ve got to back up,” Frankie stammered. “What happened?” He handed her a box of tissues and grabbed the bottle of whiskey from on top of the fridge.

  “I went to his office to work on the discussion panel,” Amelia explained. “And we had this amazing afternoon. You saw us in the coffee shop. Something… changed. Something was different today. He was different. We were different. Anyway, we were back in his office, and I guess I was testing the waters. We kept getting closer and closer to this feeling, and then finally, we kissed.”

  “He kissed you?” Frankie demanded, and Amelia couldn’t tell if he was astonished or angry.

  “No, actually. I kissed him,” she clarified. “And… um, well, then he kissed me. Frankie, it was the best kiss of my life. I’ve never felt so much for anyone,” she said, her voice quivering.

  “So what happened?” Frankie pressed.

  “He stopped it. We had this intense, incredible kiss, but he pulled away. He said we couldn’t, it wasn’t right, and we had to stop.”

  “Well, he’s not wrong about that,” Frankie said reluctantly.

  “What does that mean?” Amelia asked defensively.

  “Nothing.” Frankie back-pedaled. “I just mean it’s totally against the rules. Not that the rules aren’t stupid, but you could both get in a lot of trouble.”

  “I think that rule is so fucked,” Amelia said angrily. “It’s not right for the university to dictate who I can and can’t be with. We’re all fucking adults.”

  “It’s more about the ethics of you being his student,” Frankie said gently. “You know that. Come on, Ames. You can’t tell me you’re blind to the consequences.”

  “I know,” she said, defeated. “You’re right. I know that. My brain knows that. But my heart has been waiting all my life to feel this way, and now I have to convince it that I’m not allowed to feel what I feel because of some stupid fucking bureaucracy.”

  “He’s your professor, Ames,” Frankie said, determined to reason with her. “You must see how that looks. What would you say if I started dating my professor?”

  “I’d say good for you,” she lied.

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Frankie insisted, filling her glass with a few fingers of whiskey. Amelia swallowed it in one gulp and made a face. “You’d tell me I was being reckless and try to reason wit
h me,” he continued. “You would talk me back to my senses, and get drunk with me, and convince me what I was doing was a terrible idea. And that’s what I’m going to do with you.”

  Amelia looked at him, and her face crumpled. She sobbed silently. Frankie reached out and pulled her to him, and she curled up in a ball with her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her and stroked her hair.

  “You’re going to be okay, Ames,” he whispered. “You’re going to get over this.”

  “I don’t know if that’s true,” Amelia said, and meant it. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to let someone in, and it’s never happened until now. I don’t know what it is about him, but there’s something different. It doesn’t feel like a fling. It feels like this is the real deal. I’m not sure I can let it go.”

  “Oh, babe,” Frankie said, and squeezed her tighter. “I’m so sorry.”

  That night, Amelia slept on Frankie’s couch. They finished the bottle of whiskey and she threw up twice before falling into a drunken haze. She watched the ceiling spinning above her, wondering how badly she’d fucked up. She wondered where Theodore was, and what he was doing, and if he was thinking of her, too. It was unlikely, she conceded. It was three in the morning and she should be asleep, but she couldn’t quiet her mind.

  In the morning, she called off work at the coffee shop, saying she was sick. She was sick—hungover from the whiskey—and her head was killing her. She moved slowly from the couch to the bathroom, threw up again, and borrowed a sweatshirt and her spare key from Frankie to walk home. As she shielded her eyes behind her large, dark sunglasses, trying to make it home without incident, she felt as if yesterday was a million miles away and the kiss that had taken place between them was so alien and removed from her present that she could almost pretend it hadn’t happened.

  Amelia continued to live in this bubble of denial until she reached her apartment. Mounting the front steps in the slow, deliberate trudge of the severely hungover, she looked up to find a note wedged in her door. Above a hastily scribbled phone number was the following message:

  Amelia, I have your things. Please call me. I want to see you. - Theodore

  Amelia felt her stomach drop, and her heart began to pound. A rush of adrenaline coursed through her body as she read the note again. I want to see you, she repeated in her head. Theodore hadn’t written “We need to talk” or “Let me explain.” It was “I want to see you.” Surely that had to be a good sign, right? As she read the note again, folding it and putting it in her pocket, she was certain of one thing—she wanted to see him, too.

  But I can’t, she told herself. This whole messy relationship, or what there was of one, had spun way out of control. She had let him in, and he had rejected her. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with that, but she was positive she couldn’t stomach it a second time. She felt the sudden urge to throw up and scrambled quickly to unlock the door with Frankie’s spare key. She tossed it on the counter and hurried to the bathroom.

  When she had washed her face and calmed down, she looked at the note once more. Theodore. Well, that wasn’t surprising. They were definitely more than Amelia and Professor Bell now.

  Amelia paced the house until this became too strenuous for her current physical state, after which she curled up on her couch with a comforter and hugged her knees to her chest. She started crying. She didn’t often feel lonely. She was used to being an independent person without a big circle of friends.

  Amelia had Frankie, and he was all she really needed. No other man had ever made his way into her heart before, and she wasn’t quite sure what to do with the fact that Theodore was the first person she had opened up to in her adult life. She didn’t know how to handle the truth that he was the one with whom she wanted more. The one she fantasized about having a future with.

  She spent the rest of the day studying and reading papers. After a few Advils and Vitamin Waters, she began to feel a bit more like herself. She started compiling her notes for her paper on Regency clothing in her 17th Century Literature class and reading the final book for her Modernism course, and by the time evening rolled around, she felt composed enough to look at Theodore’s note again.

  Amelia dialed the number and stared at it. She considered hitting the ‘call’ button, but she wasn’t sure what she’d say. Or rather, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to handle what Theodore would say to her. She couldn’t take any more rejection, and if that’s all it was going to be, she was better off not listening to it at all. She’d leave it in the office where his words had been so final. “We can’t do this.” Anything else was either a complication or a redundancy.

  What did she want? Did she want Theodore to want her? And didn’t he already? Did she want him to want more—a relationship with her, something more established? Probably. But she wasn’t sure how it would work, and the time away from Theodore and his penetrating eyes and his charming, crooked smile had been like a cold draft blowing through her brain. Frankie was right. What they were doing was wrong. She couldn’t sleep with her professor. And she couldn’t see the possibility of anything more developing right now.

  Amelia deleted the number and texted Frankie instead. He left a note on my door asking me to call him.

  Almost immediately, her phone buzzed in response. Did you?

  No, Amelia wrote. I didn’t know what to say. He said he wanted to see me.

  Wow, was all Frankie replied.

  And that he had my stuff, she added.

  Oh right, Frankie wrote. I forgot about that. Well, you have to get it back at some point, right? He can’t really give you your keys in front of the class.

  I suppose you’re right, Amelia agreed. I just don’t think I have it in me right now to have my heart shit on all over again.

  After a moment, she typed, How are things with Frat Boy? She paused before sending it. Then she deleted Frat Boy and typed, Jake.

  They’re good, I think, Frankie wrote back, adding a smiley face. He’s so sweet when we’re alone. I think there’s something there. We almost kissed.

  What? Amelia typed. Are you serious? Why didn’t you tell me?

  It just sort of happened yesterday, Frankie replied. And you were kind of a hot mess, tbh. No offense.

  None taken, Amelia replied. Guilty as charged. So what happened??

  Instead of texting, Frankie called Amelia. “Hey,” she answered.

  “Hey,” Frankie replied. “So this is what happened. We were studying after class, and we were messing around, and all of a sudden, there was this moment. And he sort of got close, and I swear to God, I thought he was going to kiss me. I sort of froze because I didn’t want to push him into it, and I think maybe he wanted me to go for it, but I couldn’t, because it had to be on his terms. Anyway, he sort of played it off, and I went home. And I haven’t heard from him since.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yup,” Frankie replied. “Damn.”

  After chatting for a few minutes, Frankie had to go. Amelia tossed her phone on the couch beside her and made a cup of hot cocoa. She flipped through Netflix until she found a Jane Austen movie and pulled the comforter around her, ready to drown her anxieties in chocolate and an Edwardian romance.

  CHAPTER 8

  Theodore walked around his apartment in a daze, swearing as he tripped over empty boxes. He was distracted, unable to concentrate on anything, and he felt completely and totally useless. He had spent all of Friday night and most of Saturday morning holding his phone, waiting for it to ring, and checking it compulsively to make sure the ringer was on and he wasn’t missing calls.

  His phone never rang. Instead, he ate a bowl of boxed mac and cheese for breakfast on Saturday morning and tried to watch C-SPAN, which was an exercise in futility because even on a good day, he found it nearly impossible to watch. He wasn’t sure why he turned it on, resigning himself to the fact that he really had no idea what he was doing right now. After spending a few hours trying to grade papers and compile notes for his class les
sons, he gave up, slammed the book on the coffee table and put on his coat.

  Theodore wandered around campus. He initially set out for Amelia’s apartment again without even realizing it, but his brain hit the brakes on that one. Even in his confused, distracted state, he had to admit it was totally inappropriate to be essentially stalking his student.

  Instead, he turned towards downtown, determined to be around people and keep his mind off the fact that he had made out with his student. He was also hoping to think of something other than the fact that it was perhaps the single hottest kiss of his life and that he was afraid he had fucked everything up with her.

  Theodore’s stomach let out a loud grumble, and it was his only indication he was hungry. He felt like his brain was floating outside his body. He wasn’t interested in food, but he didn’t know what else to do with himself, so after walking listlessly up and down Main Street without any real purpose, he decided to stop in a little sandwich shop to kill some time.

  As he stood in line at the counter, he glanced around for an empty table. The place was packed, and he wasn’t sure if it that was good or bad in his current state. Ordinarily, he’d prefer to be alone in a quiet, mostly empty restaurant. Today, however, it might be good to squeeze into a little table between a pack of noisy kids and have the thoughts chased out of his head by their incessant, ridiculous stories about how much they drank at the party and which guy so-and-so was fucking.

  While he considered this, debating the merits of staying or going, his eyes gravitated towards the corner to the dark-haired girl laughing. Amelia. Amelia was there. Theodore’s heart skipped a beat and felt as if it lodged itself in his throat. His hands began to tingle and a nervous energy coursed through him. He ran a hand through his hair as if by reflex, wondering if she’d seen him.

  Amelia sat in the dark corner of the café with a guy. His back was turned to the counter, and Theodore couldn’t tell who he was. As he watched them, the boy reached out and touched Amelia’s face. Theodore felt a weird sort of panic at the gesture, this intimate moment between Amelia and an unknown guy. He was surprised by the feeling, taken aback by the intensity of his reaction to what could only be perceived as a threat.