A Wifey for the Bad Boy(211)

My breaths slowed and I pulled my fingers out of me. The image of her faded from my mind. The burst of color was gone and I was back in the darkness. My eyes opened to see the wan moon staring at me, pitying me in my state of loneliness as I wrapped the covers around me and curled into a tight ball, ignoring the movie as I tried to sleep.





Chapter 5

For some time I had been thinking about writing another novel as a way to deal with the feelings that were like a hurricane inside me but anytime I sat down to start typing I could never find the right words. I knew what I wanted to say but when the black letters appeared on the screen it never seemed quite right. So I ended up staring at a blank screen and then turned away in frustration. Perhaps it had just been so long since I had written fiction that I had lost whatever small shred of talent I had for it, in which case I had probably been vindicated in giving up on writing when I did, but it was annoying because it was the one method I thought for sure would work in excising my feelings for Lucy. At least then I could have pulled them out of my soul and thrust them on the page, and once the story had been written I would have been free.

That was the theory anyway.

What it meant was that I went to work feeling even more frustrated than usual. But when I arrived and went to Lucy's office for our normal meeting there was something different. I could feel it in the air as I walked down the hallway, but then I saw her and I couldn't believe my eyes, for on that day Lucy looked like a real person.





Chapter 6

You may think that is an odd thing to say so let me explain. Lucy had always been like a goddess to me and I had never seen her look anything less than perfect. She always took pride in her appearance but not in a way that made her seem vain. She certainly didn't plaster herself with makeup, merely used it to accentuate her natural beauty, but whenever she was out in public she always wore nice clothes and looked professional and presentable, almost like a movie star, as though every appearance went through a committee to ensure that she looked nothing less than perfect. It was another reason why I envied Wendy, for she got to see Lucy behind closed doors. I knew that there must have been days where Lucy looked normal but I had never been privy to that, and I got the feeling that it was something saved for the special person in her life.

But on that day her hair was unkempt and she looked tired. There were bags under her eyes and her shoulders were hunched forward; a sharp contrast to the usually impressive stance she took.

“Are you okay?” I asked. She looked at me as though she had only half-heard me, like her mind was somewhere else, and smiled thinly. Her face was paler than usual and I became sick with worry.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“It's nothing,” she sighed, and quickly changed the subject to something more professional. We spoke about the class later for I didn't want to press if she didn't want to share what was going on with me, although I have to admit that it hurt because I thought that we were good friends, and I was there if she needed to confide in anything with me. But I didn't press her because that's not how Lucy worked. She only did what she wanted, and if she wanted to share things with me then she would do so in her own time. There wasn't anything I could do to change that.

Everything we talked about seemed hollow because it was obvious that there was something wrong with her. I maintained a professional distance but she seemed like she was in another world. Even during the lecture she was losing her train of thought and seemed to get distracted. At one point I had to jump in and basically take over from her, which didn't look too good from her standpoint but in the state she was in I don't think she really cared.

The students could tell that something was wrong too. They were just as astonished as I was at the change in Lucy's demeanor, but none of them were in the same position as me, so they were reduced to hushed whispers and speculation, whereas I was determined to find out the truth. She wasn't only the woman I loved but she was my friend and my colleague, and I owed it to her to find out what was going on.

After the lecture finished Lucy sat back in her chair and held her head in her hands. She looked exhausted and drained, as though something had sapped all the energy out of her.

“Are you sure you're okay?” I asked again, taking on the responsibility of cleaning the notes off the board while Lucy languished in her apparent state of hell.

“Yes. No. I don't know,” she said wearily, “have you ever had a moment where you think that you have life all figured out and then something happens that turns it completely upside down?”

I wasn't sure if the question was rhetorical or not.

“I'm...not sure,” I said. Lucy sighed again.