So I kept living with my roommate, Cara, a fellow graduate from the UCSD writing program. She was saving money and teaching a couple of writing courses while she worked on her first novel, and I was trying to do the same. Her longtime boyfriend, Henry, was a surgical resident in New York, and she planned to move at the end of the school year to be with him. I knew I had to figure something out by then, but arguments like this made me think Trevor and I still weren’t ready to take the next step.
“I’m going for a run,” I said to Trevor as I hurried toward my bedroom to get dressed.
“What? One minute you’re worried about a tsunami and the next you want to go for a run? What the hell?” He followed behind me. “Emi, you’re going to have to deal with your shit at some point.”
“My shit? What about your shit?” I said flatly as I sat on the floor, tying my shoes. I wasn’t even looking at him. I got up and tried to move past him to leave the room. I might have been carrying around some baggage, but so was Trevor.
“You have to stop running every time I want to have a bigger conversation with you.”
“Later,” I said.
“No, now,” he said firmly.
I shimmied between his body and my bedroom door and headed toward the kitchen. I busied myself filling up a water bottle.
“We’ve been together since we were twenty, Emi.”
“Jesus, I just asked you to read a fucking story.”
“It’s not about the story.”
“What is it about, then?” I asked sharply.
He looked frustrated and defeated, which was rare for him. I felt a twinge of guilt and softened.
“Trevor, I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m having a hard time with my writing right now. I don’t want to be an adjunct creative writing professor forever. Do you get that?”
“You’re already a writer, Emi.” He seemed sincere, but it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear.
“All of the other adjuncts have been published in some right, except for me.”
“Cara’s been published?”
“Twice,” I said under my breath.
He hesitated before continuing. “You want to know what I think? It’s not a lack of talent, Emi. I just don’t think you’re writing what you know. Why don’t you try writing about yourself? Explore everything you went through when you were a kid?”
I felt myself getting mad again. He knew my childhood was off-limits. “I don’t want to talk about it, and besides, you’re totally missing the point.”
Pulling my hoodie up over my hair, I pushed the door open and jogged down the stairs toward the walkway as the rain pelted my face. I heard Trevor slam the door and jog down the steps behind me. I stopped on the sidewalk, turned, and looked up at him. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going home,” he said.
“Great.”
“We still need to talk.”
I nodded. “Later.” He turned on his heel and walked away. I stood for a moment before turning in the opposite direction . . . and then I was running.
I was convinced that the years of therapy my aunt Cyndi and her partner, Sharon, had paid for guaranteed my past would always be just that. Still, I knew in the back of my mind that I hadn’t quite dealt with what happened on that long dirt road in Ohio, all those years before I came to live with Cyndi and Sharon. I was guarded and withdrawn, hiding in my relationship with Trevor, in my job as an adjunct professor, in my writing. I knew all of this, but I wasn’t sure how to get out of the rut.
After a few miles, I found myself jogging through the parking lot at UCSD, getting thoroughly soaked by massive raindrops.
“Emi!” I heard Cara call from behind me. “Wait up!”
I turned and tightened the strings on my hoodie. “Hurry, I’m getting drenched!”
Cara’s straight blonde hair clung to her cheeks, making her look even thinner than she was, as she jogged toward me. She was the opposite of me—tall, lanky, with light hair and light eyes. I had frizzy, dark hair that flew everywhere, all the time.
We took cover beneath the overhang of the building that housed the creative writing department. “Jeez, Emi, your hair.” Cara tried unsuccessfully to pat it down as we walked into the building and shook the water off our clothes. Before I could retort, we caught sight of Professor James as he was locking up his office.
“Professor!” Cara called.
He fit every possible stereotype of a college professor. He was plump, had a thick beard, and always dressed in herringbone or argyle. It was easy to imagine a pipe dangling from the side of his mouth as he talked.
“Do you have those notes on my story for me?” Cara asked.
“As a matter of fact, I do.” He shuffled through his distressed leather briefcase and handed Cara a stack of papers. “I’ve written them in the margins.”
Cara craved constructive criticism, but I never found the professor’s notes all that helpful, even when I was in the program. After I graduated, I stopped letting him read my work.
As she scanned his marginalia, Professor James looked me over. “What are you working on, Emiline?”
“Just doing scene exercises.” I looked away, avoiding his stare.
“I didn’t mean with your students. I meant with your personal projects.”
I thought idly that the only personal project I wanted to work on was plucking my eyebrows and shaving my legs. “Oh, just some short stories.”