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.