Chapter 10
JANE
PLAYLIST: QUIET COMPANY – JACK HARRIS
The past night has been the first night ever in my life that I couldn’t fall asleep. Thoughts possessed my mind. Thoughts I never believed I would ever have. I have never broken a rule in my life before. Never. Until yesterday.
Technically, it was her breaking the rule, not you, I tell myself in my mind. But you didn’t stop her.
I stare at my alarm clock. It’s 5:05. My eyes wander back to the ceiling as I lie in my bed with my arms on my chest, as always.
There is no point in sleeping. So I get up.
Black Matter looks reproachfully at me. She hates changes of routine as much as I do.
“Sorry,” I say. “Rough day.”
She gets up with me, stretches, and gives me the angry I-am-hungry-meow.
“It’s not time yet,” I say, and get to the bathroom. I am followed, of course. There, I sit on the toilet, she opposite me. We always watch each other peeing. It’s what we do. Just in case someone, a dangerous cat-eater, appears out of nowhere and attacks us.
I read about cats protecting each other when they love each other, so I let her. I also watch her when she uses the litter box. Because it’s important to her. She only has me.
I get up, wash my hands, and stare at myself in the mirror. And while I do, the kiss flashes through my mind. Mindlessly, I caress my bottom lip with my finger.
She touched me.
And I didn’t even mind.
It felt good.
It felt so good that I let it happen.
I twitch and draw back my shoulders.
“I have to set a boundary,” I tell my mirror self. And so I will.
I get to campus early and use the time for some quiet time in my lab before my lecture with the graduate students.
The lecture is hard for me to focus on. I catch myself several times staring into nothingness, losing myself in the sensation that lingers with me since last night.
I enter the lecture room for the undergrad course with quite a bit of apprehension, my heart beating slightly faster. I have no idea how it will be after what happened.
To my surprise, she isn’t there. No overly attentive young woman staring at me, with her hand up almost all the time, asking questions and answering every single one of mine with ease. The other students' boredom makes me miss her quite a bit. But I am also concerned.
Did something happen to her? Did she go off the rails?
She’s definitely the type to go completely off the rails if someone triggers the right spot. She has impulsivity issues, probably hidden anger issues, the perfect combination for reckless behavior.
When the lecture is finally over, I pack my stuff fast and get back to my office.
There, I pace. Thinking. Making up my mind.
Or rather, convincing myself not to do what my body wants.
Because what my mind wants is to get the folder with the NDA from my lab, get her phone number from it, and ask her if everything is alright.
“No,” I tell myself. “You are not responsible for her. You will stop thinking about it. She might just be sick, and you will sound like an idiot.”
And what if she lies somewhere OD’d? asks a voice in my mind. The anxious overthinking one.
I close my eyes for a moment and take a deep breath.
“No. She is alright. I am not her mother. She is a grown woman.”
I try to get on with my day as normally as possible, but I can’t. It is 8 pm when I slam my hands on the desk.
I can’t do this any longer. I need to know.
So I do the one thing I will regret, grab the folder, and open it. My eyes fly to the personal details.
Amelie Degard, born June 3, 2007. Address: 53 Walker St, New York, NY 10013.
“Huh,” I say and mumble, “Walker Street. Tribeca. That’s hell of an address.”
And it makes me hesitate for a moment, wondering if my first impression wasn’t that far out of the park after all. She overpowered a man with a gun. She reacted so fast. The drugs. The knowledge. The way of asking. The past she doesn’t want to talk about.
I stare at her writing for another moment. It’s very orderly, straight, and clear. She is a messy person—she said it about herself.
The letters are pressed onto the pages just a bit too much. As if she has forced herself to write with clarity.
I rewatch every conversation we ever had.
“No,” I say and give myself a pep talk. “You are going crazy because of the stalker thing. You will not be ruled by fear. She is a student. A normal girl. Maybe she has rich parents. I can’t walk around expecting everyone to have malice in mind.”
It calms my nerves. And because I have calmed down, I press the button and call.
It rings, and rings.
My heart skips a beat. I hate phone calls, but they are required in this timeline. I dislike not seeing the person, not getting any visual cues.
It rings the fourth time.
But she doesn’t answer. No mailbox.
I hang up, none the wiser.
There is not much I can do, so I get home.
Do I have the thought of just checking her address? Yes. But that would make me a crazy stalker.
That night I sleep, at least. Not very rested, but I am so tired I can’t keep my eyes open. When I wake up the next morning, my pajamas are as wet as my hair from sweat.
I can’t quite grasp the dream as it fades, leaving blurry images in my mind.
Before I shower, I check my phone, half-hoping to see a missed call—but there is nothing on it.
I am in the lab all day, but my mind can’t focus, not with music, not with distracting myself by mentally creating a chart with all Fibonacci sequences from the numbers 0 to 100 until I reach a trillion.
Just when I start with 99, my phone vibrates. I always have my phone on mute, but even the vibration makes my blood pressure spike. I jump up with my heart stumbling over itself—only to see my mother’s picture on the screen.
I sit down and rest my face in my hands, ignoring the call. I can’t deal with my mother right now.
I don’t know how it got to a point where I can’t function properly because of some student, some woman. I don’t do messy. I do rules. I should just stop thinking about her.
“Listen,” I tell myself when the nasty vibration finally stops.
“She was absent before. It’s her MO. She’s probably just having the best time of her life, not giving you a thought, and you’re sitting here like an idiot thinking about her.
Get a grip on yourself. You’re Jane McKenzie, you’ve better things to do than get distracted by a girl sixteen years younger than you. ”
And with that, I get up and go home.
But whatever I told myself, my body has other opinions. It leaves me no rest. Not knowing is the worst.
When Thursday morning comes, I cannot wait to get to campus and the lecture to start.
But when I enter the room, she isn’t there. It is the moment I get restless. I am worried. So worried that I ask the other students if anyone has heard of her. I disguised the request because she missed an appointment with me.
Interestingly enough, no one has. They all see her as the outsider who feels above everyone else, only hanging out with the banker girl from Economics. Banker girl. I assume that’s the blonde girl I met.
One of them tells me that the banker girl is the daughter of a finance mogul, and they hang out all the time; no one else is allowed in their circle.
It is interesting information how differently Amelie seems to interact with the other students.
I thank them and store the information in my mind. Adding a little note to myself, that I now started lying because of her—something that doesn’t go unnoticed by me.
The entire day, I am restless. And at 6 pm, I decide to call her again.
It rings.
My heart beats faster as I count the times it rings.
Nothing.
I sigh as I grab my bag.
I walk to the subway and get on the C train as usual. But when I reach my station, I just stay seated. I might be the biggest idiot for doing it, but I need to know. It’s my responsibility as a professor to take care of my students. At least I tell myself that.
I get off the train at Canal Street. I grew up in Manhattan, so I know every last corner of the city, and Walker Street is a three-minute walk from the station.
The city is bathed in a beautiful sunset orange when I come to a halt in front of a building with the numbers 55-57 on it. To its left is 57, to its right 51, but no 53. A fact that doesn’t help my already strange gut feeling.
There is a door without a number in between, with just a camera following my movements as I walk past it several times. As I glance around, the only thing that catches my eye is a black Range Rover, but I don’t see anyone inside.
“Hm,” I say and stop in front of the door. I look up the building, it’s a newer 7-story sandstone building with huge windows.
Suddenly, the door buzzes, and I am close to getting a heart attack.
Could it be that she—
I glance at the camera.
Push the door.
And enter.
I follow a corridor that leads to an open elevator. A very tight elevator.
It has only a single button to press.
This might be the stupidest thing I have ever done.
I should get back, get back home—
She must be alright. She must be living here. Why would the door have opened if not for her seeing and recognizing me?
Yes. I can leave, she will be alright.
What am I even doing here?
I should—
At that moment, the door closes, and the elevator is riding up. All the way up.
It opens, and there she is, leaning causally in a door frame. Perfectly alright. Slightly messy hair. Just a t-shirt and underwear on.
My jaw drops open—unwillingly—as I take her in.
“Hi,” she says. “A surprise seeing you here.”
I don’t find words.
Stupid.
I am so, so stupid.
“Come in,” she says and tilts her head, pointing me inside.
“I’d rather not,” I bring over my lips. “I just—are you alright?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asks.
“You weren’t in the lectures, I was—“ I begin and swallow the rest of the sentence down. Why am I behaving like a stupid schoolgirl with her?
Boundary.
I have to set a boundary.
“I figured you might need some distance,” she says.
“Me?”
“Yes, who else?”
“I—you cannot do that again,” I say.
“Uh-huh,” she says in a way that angers me. And because I am angered, I find myself again.
“I mean it,” I say in a harsh tone. “You can’t cross the rules. You signed. Rules apply.”
“Okay,” she says way too casually. “Come in.”
“I’m not coming in,” I say. While I’m very curious about how she lives, I don’t have enough recklessness in me to do so. “Monday, 8 am, my office. You will be on time and sober.”
“I have been sober since—the night,” she says.
“Good,” I say, pressing the elevator button to get back down, but nothing happens.
“Yeah, about that,” she says and walks over to me. She steps into the elevator and bends forward to hold her phone to a sensor above the button.
Suddenly, she is so close.
Her scent washes over me as she comes up.
The wild hair.
The intense eyes.
The lips, slightly parted.
My breath flattens as a jolt rushes through me.
I want to grab her, kiss her, feel her—
And fear surges through me.
What the hell am I doing here?
Even thinking about it—
I press myself backward into the elevator to get the biggest possible distance between us.
She smirks.
“Monday,” she says and presses the button for me.
She does not wait for the doors to close. Instead, she walks away in her panties. Presenting me with an ass so firm and round, I get goosebumps just watching her walk.
In me, a desire I haven’t felt before.
A desire to feel.
To touch.
Me.