One
Emery
I rolled my shoulders twice and yawned. I hated being at the office this early. It was mind-numbing, but at least I got to see Mitch. He didn’t have class for another hour, and I figured we could use that time to get some coffee…or just occupy his office. I could think of a few things that I preferred to working.
My feet carried me straight down the hallway of the history building at the University of Texas, Austin. I was anxious for that uninterrupted hour alone with my boyfriend. It might be a bit taboo that he was also my professor and the advisor for my PhD, but it worked for me.
I reached his office and opened the door. “Mitch, I thought we could—” I stopped mid sentence and stared at what was before me.
Mitch was seated in the chair behind his desk—the very desk I had been fantasizing about. And a tiny blonde undergrad was sitting in his lap. Her skirt was hiked up; I could tell even from my vantage point.
My stomach dropped out of my body. This could not be happening. I could not be this naive.
“What the fuck is going on here?” I demanded.
The girl hopped up and straightened out her skirt. “Nothing,” she squeaked.
“I was just helping her with some last-minute…assignments,” Mitch said.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, my voice low and menacing. My eyes snapped to the girl. “You should leave. Now.”
“Emery,” Mitch said consolingly.
“Now!” I yelled.
The girl grabbed her purse and rushed out of the room. I slammed the door shut behind her and glared down at the man I’d thought I loved for the last three years. But looking at him sitting there, adjusting himself, all I saw was a pathetic excuse for a man.
“God, this is embarrassing,” I snapped. “I’m leaving. I’m leaving you, I’m leaving the program, and I’m leaving the university. I’m fucking done.”
“You can’t leave the program, Emery,” he said, not acknowledging what else I had said.
“I can, and I will.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he said, pushing back his messed up hair. “You only have a year left.”
I shrugged. “Don’t give a damn right now. You fucking cheated on me, Mitch.”
“Come now, Emery. Do you really believe that?”
“Um…hello? I just walked in on you with Angela! She’s an undergrad!”
“You don’t know what you saw.”
I snorted. “That’s rich, coming from you. I’m well aware of what I saw. I doubt it was the first time, too. How many others are there?”
He stood and tried to reach for me, but I pulled away.
“We can make this work, Emery.”
“God, do you think I’m an idiot?”
“Oh, Em,” he said, straightening his black suit coat. “Don’t act so childish.”
I fumed at those repulsive words. “I am not acting childish by accusing the man I loved of sleeping with someone else. I’m standing up for what I think is right, and your bullshit routine is far from that. Are you sleeping with other students?”
“Honey, come on.”
“You are, aren’t you?” I shook my head and retreated. “Wow, I am an idiot. Not only do I really not want to be in academia, but I also really don’t want to be with you.”
“Emery,” he called as I marched toward the door. “It’s been three years. You can’t do this.”
I whipped around. “Tell me you’re not fucking anyone else and that I’m the only girl for you.”
He ran a shaky hand back through his long blond hair. He thought he was the cool professor, the one everyone could talk to about not just their research problems, but also their life problems. He’d reeled me in that way, and like a fool, I’d been blinded by the nice suits, fancy dinners, and finally finding a man on the same level as me. Turned out…he was a rat.
When he didn’t respond, I scoffed at him. “That’s what I thought.”
Walking out of his office was one of the most liberating experiences of my life. He deserved to lose his job for what he had done all these years, but I didn’t have it in me to go there yet. I walked into the history department and filled out the appropriate paperwork to withdraw from the program. Maybe, one day, I would want to go back and finish my PhD, but today, I knew that I had come to the end of the line. One too many panic attacks, my first ever prescription for Xanax, and a dissertation topic that seemed perpetually out of reach had done me in.
Screw academia.
I drove my Subaru Forester back to my one-bedroom studio, cursing Austin traffic the whole way. How was it possible for there to be bumper-to-bumper traffic at all times?