Chapter 13
There’s something to be said about finding yourself in the exact same position you were in eight years ago.
I don’t just mean figuratively, but literally, as I sit in the second row, second seat across in the old Susan Hall Lecture Theatre at Melbourne University.
Always my preferred seat when I started my marketing degree all that time ago.
Figuratively too, as I admit that so much has changed in that time, but really, nothing at all.
If you told me back then that years from now I would be sitting in the same seat, separated from my husband, no job, no money and starting my degree from scratch, I would have laughed in your face.
Now I don’t find anything particularly funny about my situation at all.
But still, underneath all the disappointment, there’s a flutter of excitement at the fact that I’m at least making progress.
Deciding to come back to uni and start my life again has evoked an overwhelmingly freeing sensation within me, and I’ll be riding on the coattails of that feeling for as long as I can.
That also includes stuffing away and ignoring anything that tries to ruin my newly found high, including certain ex-boyfriends that choose to reappear in people’s lives and hack open old wounds.
The lecture hall slowly fills around me as I unpack my notepad and pen, and it hits me how young everyone looks. I’ve become the dreaded mature-aged student.
Regardless, I still had to awkwardly explain why I ran from lunch a week earlier, which I lamely blamed on a hangover.
A lecture from my parents about how I’ve been drinking way too much alcohol lately beats admitting to them that Zayn was my first love.
The one I snuck around dating for six months right under their noses without ever breathing a word of his existence to them.
Yeah, that would have gone down as smoothly as swallowing a cactus.
The lights dim just as I snap my compact closed and pop it back into my tote. The professor now stands before the projector, and my mouth falls open.
Brett?
I bite down my delight in seeing my old friend for the first time in years.
He used to sit in the seat next to me instead of standing behind the lectern.
He speaks and the familiar deep rumble of his voice sounds slightly more gravelly since I last heard it.
His boyishly warm, handsome features have sharpened and matured in the way most men’s do in their twenties, but I can tell by his open, deep-honey coloured eyes and the way a smile falls to his lips so easily that he’s still the kind, funny guy I befriended in this very hall.
Something else stirs within me as I take Brett in.
How easily recognisable he is after six years without laying eyes on him, when I didn’t recognise Zayn after a decade.
Granted, Zayn was still a boy when I last laid eyes on him.
A boy I tried hard to forget, to completely wipe from my mind to the point I could barely conjure up a picture of him if I had tried.
Brett was already a man when I knew him.
I spend the first five minutes not taking in a word he’s saying, staring at him with a Cheshire-cat grin, waiting for him to notice me sitting here.
He flicks the slide on the PowerPoint behind him, casts his gaze across the second row and stops mid-sentence when he finally spots me.
Surprise registers on his face briefly before his grin spreads to mirror mine.
The moment lasts only a couple of seconds before he looks away, shaking his head.
“Er, where was I?” he asks, muddled, glancing back at the screen.
“Oh, yes, right, we will be building your leadership capability by developing intrapersonal and interpersonal skills,” he continues, not before sending a wink my way.
In the front row, a pretty blonde girl turns back to eye me with a frown marring her delicate brows, forcing a smile to play about my lips.
It’s not surprising Brett already has a student admirer.
He’s handsome in a ruffled, careless kind of way.
I bet he even still skateboards here in the mornings.
Over the next hour, I take notes while simultaneously marvelling at the fact that Brett, my closest friend for the two years I was at university, is now the one teaching my classes instead of being the disruptive student distracting me while I try to concentrate.
Having Brett be apart of this experience just adds on a whole new level of weirdly comforting nostalgia.
Or if I dare say it, it feels like fate that I’m back here.
When the lecture’s over, I pack my stuff and head down to the podium, where Brett’s disconnecting his laptop and grinning at me like a loon.
“Gia! What the heck?” he greets me, wrapping his massive arms around my waist and lifting me off the floor.
“Put me down you idiot,” I giggle in delight. “What are you doing on this side of the podium?”
“Tell me about it!” he places me down and rubs a hand through his stubble. “Never thought I’d be a stuffy professor, but here I am every Monday and Wednesday morning. I’m so happy to see you here, though.”
The last few rows of students filter past us to the door, leaving the lecture hall almost empty apart from me and Brett.
“What are you doing here? What happened to you? You just dropped out one day and stopped answering your phone.”
Brett cocks his head to the side and stares at me with concern etched into his face.
I glance past his shoulder to see a young guy slam dunk a banana peel into the trash on his way out, thinking about how to explain to Brett what happened six years ago when I just disappeared from here without a trace.
“Look,” he says, lowering his voice, obviously reading the disconcerting look on my face, “I have a pretty good idea what happened.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, I put a few things together that didn’t seem right at the time. Plus a, um, visit from Daniel really painted the picture for me.”
My mouth drops to the floor as a hot flush stains my cheeks. “Daniel came to see you?” I whisper, wide-eyed. I had absolutely no idea about this.
“Yeah,” he says slowly, checking his watch. “I have an hour before I have to be at the office. Wanna grab a coffee? We can chat then.”
I hike my tote bag higher on my shoulder. “Sure, my next class isn’t til eleven.”
“Bean & Cup?”
“Where else?” I grin at him.
Five minutes later, we take our favourite table near the front window of the cafe that hasn’t changed at all since I was last here.
The exposed brickwork on the back wall, black hardware, polished concrete floors and hanging copper pendants that round off the industrial fit out look all too familiar to me as Brett goes to order our lattes at the counter.
The cafe is pretty busy, which isn’t unusual at this time of the morning.
It’s a mostly student crowd, with professors preferring the more expensive but less busy cafe on the other side of campus.
Before long, Brett strides back over with our coffees, placing mine in front of me as he takes a seat.
“Feels like no time’s passed at all,” I say as I take a sip. “The only difference is your beard’s finally joined us.”
“Ha ha ha,” Brett says as he stirs two sugars into his coffee. “Still think you’re funny, huh?”
“I don’t think, I know.”
We slip back into the friendly banter Brett and I always shared, and I can’t help but smile at the unexpected turn of events this morning.
“So,” I say, my smile sliding away, “tell me what happened with Daniel.” My stomach clenches uncomfortably as Brett sighs and runs a hand through his thick, chocolate hair.
“He cornered me coming out of a lecture,” Brett starts, looking down at his cup and sliding his coffee between his hands. “Told me to stay away from you. Stop calling you-”
“Wait. How did he know you were calling me?”
Brett looks at me and shrugs. “I assumed you told him.”
I didn’t. I knew better than to tell Daniel Brett was calling me after he had voiced his concerns about my relationship with him. Had he been checking my phone?
“Okay. Maybe I did,” I lie, not comfortable sharing my suspicions with Brett. “Did he say anything else?” I look out the window to watch a couple sitting idly on a wooden bench, sharing a coffee and a few moments together.
“Just that you weren’t coming back and it would be in my own best interests to forget you existed.”
Brett is watching me more carefully now. “God only knows what that meant, but he seemed pretty angry. I figured it was what you wanted so I let it go.”
He takes a slow sip of coffee, a clear invitation for me to fill in some gaps for him.
I let out a resigned sigh. “He pretty much offered me an ultimatum. Drop out of uni or he would break up with me.”
Brett scoffs. “That should have been an easy decision, Gia.”
“The worst part is, it was.” I glance away. “We got married a year later.”
Brett’s eyes widen and his gaze flicks down to my ring finger. I let out a dark laugh.
“Separated. Took me way too long to figure it out, though.”
There’s a long stretch of silence between us as we both sit and process the new information.
Between bursts of anger directed at Daniel for interfering and controlling my life so thoroughly behind my back, I wonder what Brett thought of me after Daniel’s visit.
What he thinks of me now. Back then, we were good friends.
We hit it off the moment we first sat next to each other in that lecture theatre and were inseparable at uni for the two years after.
There was an ease with him that I’ve only ever found with Anna.
No pressure, no romantic connotations, just friendship.
“Why did he ask that of you? To give up your studies?” The way Brett’s gaze softens, I think he already knows the answer.
“Daniel was -” I look back out the window, a blush creeping back over my cheeks, “jealous. Possessive, if I’m being honest. He thought you, er, liked me.”
At this point, my cheeks are at extremely high risk of bursting into flames. “I told him he was ridiculous, but -”
“He wasn’t ridiculous,” Brett interrupts me, and I look over to find him biting his bottom lip between his teeth. “Well, he was absolutely ridiculous, and fucking psychotic really to make you drop out of uni because of it, but he was right. I did fancy you.”
For the second time today, my chin falls to the floor. “What?”
“What?” Brett says, looking sheepish. “You were, and still are, the hottest chick I’ve ever laid eyes on.” There’s a mischievous glint to his eyes as my cheeks literally reach boiling point. “I told you that all the time.” Then he shrugs and takes another sip of his coffee.
“I thought you were just messing around!”
“I was. I never would have come onto you. I knew you had a boyfriend. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t true.”
I blow out a breath. “This seems wildly inappropriate now I’m your student!
” I rest the back of my cold knuckles against my cheeks in an attempt to cool them down.
Brett always told me I looked beautiful, or that my ass looked good in whatever outfit I was wearing that day.
I thought it was just a part of his cheeky personality.
I never suspected a crush! There was never sexual tension or anything evident between us. Well there wasn’t on my end, anyway.
“Relax. I’m not grading any of your work so it’s fine,” he laughs. “No conflict of interest.”
His words sober me right up. The same words I said to Zayn in his office barely two weeks ago. Zayn.
I check my watch. This morning distracted me from thinking about Zayn for approximately… two whole hours.
I’ll take it.
Brett and I make light-hearted chat over the next half hour about his role in a high-end marketing firm that he landed straight out of uni, how he was offered a teaching position here two mornings a week, and some of the campaigns he’s worked on.
As he talks, my mind flicks between listening to Brett and unwittingly comparing the man before me to the dark, captivating enigma that is Zayn.
Would Zayn have taken Daniel’s threats laying down like Brett did?
I can’t believe I didn’t realise Brett had a crush on me all those years ago.
Does he have a girlfriend now? A wife? I should ask, but it seems a bit forward after his confession.
I don’t want to give him the wrong impression, especially when I’m not looking to see anyone any time soon.
Brett would be the perfect boyfriend, if I allowed myself to think about it.
He’s kind. Smart. Funny. Attractive. Even now as I watch him, he smiles and his face radiates such warmth and comfort.
I just know he would never set out to hurt anyone.
Someone I would be well-suited to in the far off future when I’m ready to date again.
But I can’t even finish that thought without Zayn’s face taking over every facet of my brain.
Even the memory of him feels like someone’s applied shock pads to my chest and ramped them up to the highest voltage.
I don’t think anyone else in this world could force my body to react in the way it does to him.
An equally devastating and comforting thought.
At least I know it’s only him I have to avoid at all costs if I have even the slightest shred of self-preservation.
“I could help you out with that,” Brett shrugs casually after I finish telling him about my fundraiser for Hope House. “Sounds like a great cause. I have lots of contacts I can reach out to.”
“Really?” I ask, sitting up a bit straighter in my chair.
“Absolutely. We can liaise over the next day, tell me what you have in mind, then meet back here Wednesday to get some things in motion.”
“Brett!” I yelp, jumping up and down in my seat. “That would be amazing, thank you!”
He gives me one of his easy smiles, and I smile back. “No worries, Gia.” He continues to stare for a moment, the smile lingering on his lips. “It’s so good to have you back.”