Chapter 34
ASHER
I’m at Dean Callahan’s office before he is the next morning. I’m standing in the hall anxiously tapping my foot while I wait.
Summer’s words echo in my head, and I know that I have to beat her to this decision.
She can’t quit the program. She can’t transfer somewhere else that won’t accept all the credits she’s already worked so hard for.
She’s so close to being done. She’s supposed to be doing her clinical work with actual patients through a local school.
This isn’t something that I can let her do. It’ll set her so far back, career-wise, timing-wise, and financially.
I can find another job. Dean Callahan likes me, despite how he may feel about the situation; it’s the only negative mark on my flawless reputation at Cascadia University.
I truly believe that if I take responsibility for the situation, he won’t put anything on my record that could affect my chances of getting a job elsewhere.
He’ll see it as a bad call in judgment, not something more malicious.
Because it wasn’t. I love her. I can’t lose her. It doesn’t matter that she didn’t say it back.
I can’t let her go through with this.
At some point, I’d started pacing and was about to wear a hole through the carpet when Dean Callahan finally approached.
He meets my gaze, and I can see his shoulders droop as he deflates just slightly. He quickly looks away as he pulls out his keys to unlock his office.
I’m on his heels as he walks inside, and I don’t bother taking a seat when he does. I shake my head. “This won’t take long,” I say as I cross my arms and brace myself for what I’m about to say next. “I’m here to resign,” I state firmly before he can speak up.
He sighs and fiddles with a pen on his desk, still unwilling to meet my gaze. “Asher, that’s unnecessary.”
“No, it’s not, I heard what you said the other day and—”
“She already transferred, Asher,” he cuts me off.
“What?” I ask, dumbfounded. I blink, wanting to believe that I must have heard him wrong.
“She informed me of her decision to transfer a few days ago. She went to her administrator and immediately dropped all her current courses at the university after speaking with me. She never even scheduled her clinical placement interviews.”
I want to break something. I want to yell. I want to cry. I want to make demands, but instead I say, “Can you tell me where?”
“Even if I could… she specifically asked that I don’t.”
My stomach plummets. “What do you mean?” I ask, quietly.
A devastating feeling of defeat washes over me.
I had come in here intending to quit with some big speech about how much she meant to me.
With grand ideas of getting a job elsewhere and continuing to make a life with her while she pursued her career here. But none of that mattered.
She had decided to leave anyway. She’d made the decision before speaking to me. The conversation that she’d had with me last night hadn’t in any way indicated that she’d already made any drastic changes to her academic career because of what happened.
How could she leave without saying goodbye?
“She specifically requested that I not tell you where she had transferred to if you were to ask.”
Ouch. A sharp pain spears through my chest.
She’s gone. Not only is she gone, but she doesn’t even want me to know where she’s left to.
After everything… this is where it ends.
“Thank you for your time, sir,” I say with a curt nod of my head. I turn on my heel and head toward the door at a brisk walk. My dress shoes make dull thuds against the carpet, and it feels like they’re matching the slow pounding of my heart.
Blood rushes in my ears as my heart beats faster and faster, so I’m sure that I miss the first time Dean Callahan calls after me.
“Asher!” he repeats. I stop with my hand poised on the doorknob. I look over my shoulder before he continues. “I’m sorry. I wish… I wish I could’ve done more to help you both.”
“Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.”
I walk out of Dean Callahan’s office feeling completely numb.
I stumble out of the administration building and start to make my way toward my own office. I was so prepared to quit today that I have nothing planned for this week’s lecture. I shoot off a quick mass email to my students, letting them know I’ve canceled class today.
I know it makes me a shitty professor, but I’m not prepared, and I can’t be bothered to try and scrape some half-assed lecture together.
And all I can think about is that someday, she’ll end up with someone else. She’ll be someone else’s student. She’ll be someone else’s girlfriend. She’ll love someone else. Move in with someone else. Marry someone else. Start a family with someone else.
All the things we’d never get the chance to do; she’ll do with someone else.
And even though I know that she left because she thought that’s what was best for me…
a part of me can’t believe she never even said goodbye.
She came to my apartment to have that conversation with me and didn’t bother to mention that she’d already made the plans she was treating like hypotheticals.
I don’t understand.
I can’t understand
It’s late. I’m still sitting in my office, staring at my laptop screen where the email I’d tried to send failed to deliver. Summer’s Cascadia University email has already been disabled, which isn’t surprising, but since she won’t answer any phone calls or texts, that felt like my only option.
“Hey,” Jared says with a soft knock on the open door of my office. “I know it’s bad form, but we brought beer.” Elijah stands behind him and holds up a six-pack of some shitty light beer.
“Didn’t even bother to get the brand I like?” I ask in what I hope is a teasing tone, not an annoyed one. I’m not upset with them. I’m just upset.
“We thought about it,” Elijah responds as they both waltz into my office and plop down in the two chairs across from my desk. “But then we realized that we were the ones paying and decided we didn’t want to drink your beer.”
Elijah uses a bottle opener to crack open three beers and hands me the first one.
I take a hefty swig of the bitter liquid, where it immediately gurgles in my empty stomach.
Jared gives me a smile laced with pity before he pulls a brown paper bag out of his backpack.
He hands out wrapped sandwiches to each of us.
As I bite into the simple ham sandwich, I realize that even though I gripe about my two best friends… they really are amazing men. Sure, they make mistakes, but we all make mistakes. They always show up when it really counts.
It’s in this moment that I feel nothing but gratitude for my two friends.
We’ve been through so much together. College.
Grad school—well, Jared and I went through grad school, Elijah got his bachelor’s in criminal justice, and began apprenticing with a local PI.
We had been roommates. Shared late study nights and laughed over terrible dates.
We’d been Jared’s groomsmen and consoled him through heartbreak.
We’d celebrated each other’s highs and helped each other through the lows.
“You know I love you guys, right?” I ask suddenly. The memory of Summer’s tortured face when I told her I loved her flashes through my mind. So does the pain of not hearing her say it back.
“Dude,” Elijah responds around a large bite of sandwich. “I know your girlfriend bailed, but moving on this quickly is fast, even by my standards.”
I launch the wrapper from my dinner at his head, and he snickers in return. Jared chuckles alongside him, and I roll my eyes and let my head fall back, prepared to ignore my friends until I finish my beer and can get out of here. That’s when I see it.
Jared is still in the middle of speaking when I hurry across my office and reach for the scrap of paper.
A beautiful book sits on the filing cabinet in the corner of my office.
I can’t believe it took me this long to notice it.
I carefully detach the paper stuck to the book, not wanting to rip any of the words written there.
Jared and Elijah are both looking at me like I’m crazy, but her handwriting is the only thing I can focus on.
I’m sorry.
I want to crumple the note in my fist.
That’s it? She leaves the book I gave her—leaves me—with nothing but an I’m sorry?
I hate that she left me. I hate that she didn’t give us a chance to fight for our relationship. I hate that she didn’t believe we could find a way around this. I hate that she didn’t say goodbye. Don’t I deserve a goodbye at the very least?
“I’m sorry, Asher,” Jared says quietly from behind me as he places a comforting hand on my shoulder.
“Is there anything we can do that might help?” Elijah adds.
I shake my head as a numbness spreads through my chest.
I toss the book on my desk before falling into my chair. Both of my friends give each other concerned glances before starting up small talk that I completely ignore.
Will I ever get over her? Because right now it feels like I’ll be heartbroken forever. I’m just like the poor saps I used to laugh at. I let her get under my skin, and I risked everything. And in the end, I lost everything. I kept my job, but I lost her. And she is my everything.
She left her copy of The Great Gatsby. The special edition that I had gifted her, she just left it behind.
Like it was nothing to her.
Like I was nothing to her.