Brigs McGregor.
What stars had to align for that to happen? Two meteors crashing into each other would do it.
But I don’t know where to go. I run down the stairs, faster, faster, students staring at me in concern, all the way to the first floor. I duck into the handicapped bathroom, locking the door behind me, and sit on the toilet, head in my hands, my heart dancing with my tonsils.
Breathe, I tell myself, trying to inhale through my nose, but I crave air so much that I’m gasping it in through my mouth, tears burning the corners of my eyes.
Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic.
You’re okay.
“How the fuck am I okay?” I cry out loud, my voice bouncing around the cold tiled room.
I try and focus on breathing, getting my lungs full, letting it out.
I’m shaking.
Fucking hell.
Brigs.
He would have come back out into the hall and seen that I’m gone.
The lady vanishes.
I start to feel bad about leaving him like that. But if I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that I have to protect myself first. I worked really, really hard to get back to London, to get accepted here, to finally pull myself up. I can’t let anything or anyone jeopardize that.
And Brigs most certainly would.
He’s the reason I fell to begin with.
Shit, shit, shit.
I make fists and press them into my temples.
This isn’t a problem I can run away from. Brigs is a professor here. Fuck, he’s Melissa’s fucking teacher. And I go to this school and will be for the next two years.
Dear god, what if he’s my damn teacher next semester? Then what?
It becomes harder to breathe again. I have to force myself to concentrate, to slow my heart rate. I wish I had gotten another refill of Ativan when I had the chance. It’s just that I was doing so well. I’m going to need a bucketful to even make it through this day.
I don’t know how long I stay in that bathroom, my phone vibrating repeatedly, most likely Melissa wondering where I am and what’s happening. I don’t look at it. I don’t look at anything except my feet and the gross linoleum floor.
My mind keeps tripping over itself, replaying the sight of him.
It hurts, hurts, how handsome he still is. More handsome than before. Standing there before me, in that sharp suit, looking every inch the put together professor. Tall, lean, with those shoulders I remember grabbing that one night, digging my nails in when my body and soul went wild with hunger.
The night we almost slept together.
The night he told me he was leaving his wife.
That night that became the last night for us.
How horrible it must have been for him to see me just now.
I ruined his whole life, sent it off the rails.
It crashed and burned.
All because of me.
And that will never ever change. I’ll never be able to take anything back and neither will he. We’re both doomed to live with our actions, he even more so.
God. The pain cuts deep, to the bottom of my lungs.
Breathe, I tell myself again, and a single tear splashes on the floor.
Eventually, somehow, time passes. The tears stop coming and my heart beats steady and slow. I feel like I’ve been drugged, the emotions riding me too hard and I’ve come out exhausted.
I sigh, getting to my feet. My legs ache from sitting for so long.
I check my phone.
Melissa has texted a million times, worried out of her mind. She’s at the flat now, with alcohol and the need to talk.
I step into the hallway, conscious that someone might have seen me go in. But the halls are practically empty. Still, in case I run into him again, I don’t waste any time getting out of there.
I’m back on the streets of London, the rain having stopped.
I’m back on the tube, crushed against commuters, nobody talking.
I’m back at the flat, going up the stairs instead of waiting for the lift.
Then Melissa is opening the door before I can even unlock it.
“Where the bloody fuck were you?” she cries out, hands flailing all over the place.
I usher myself inside, head down, avoiding her eyes. “I was in the toilet.”
“The toilet?” she repeats, while I throw my purse on the kitchen table. She already has the Stoli out, making martinis. “With Professor McGregor?”
“No,” I say, sitting down at the table and resting my forehead on it. “I was alone. I didn’t…I ran away.”
“What? From Professor McGregor?”
I find it funny how she keeps calling him professor. She even did that back then, along with Mr. Married Man McGregor. The constant reminder of how careless I was being, what a fool I was to fall for someone who wasn’t mine.
“Yes,” I mumble. “I panicked. I couldn’t help it. It seemed he wanted to talk to me, like go somewhere, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it, Mel.”
She takes the seat beside me, and I hear her pouring a drink. “Good,” she says. “You don’t owe him anything. Especially with how he ended it with you.”
But I never blamed him for that. He only spoke the truth.
Our love was wrong.
A lie we told ourselves.
And it cost us the world.
As much as it stung to hear it, as much as it made me lose myself, it was well-deserved.
With us, the truth didn’t just hurt.
It killed.
“Here,” she says, and I look up to see her sliding me a drink. “It’s on the house,” she jokes. She’s the cheapest roommate ever and I feel like I’ll somehow have to pay for this in the end.