11. Flapped
Chapter eleven
Flapped
‘You’re on the right track, Dylan, but you need to think more critically.
’ Dr Holland peered over her rimless glasses from across the mahogany desk before taking them off and allowing them to hang on her chest from their chain of plastic pearls.
Dylan nodded politely. ‘This is Masters level writing. While I appreciate the challenge, you must make the leap to post-grad. You have to question absolutely everything and think—’
‘Critically. Yeah, you said,’ Dylan interrupted with a half-smile and a slow nod, her tone both soft and polite but with a subtle edge of exasperation.
Dr Holland was Dylan’s new mentor, and so far, she hadn’t been particularly helpful. Or maybe that was unfair. Maybe the woman’s only fault was that she wasn't Greta, but either way her dissertation remained unwritten.
After her meeting, she headed to the library to return some books, stopping dead in her tracks at the sight of the woman using one of the printers.
Dylan’s heart rammed into her rib cage over and over as it attempted a bid for freedom via the muscle and bone.
Greta hadn’t seen her, giving Dylan time to feast her starved eyes on her.
Dylan allowed her eyes to rove over her glossy dark waves and the dark blue V-neck dress, flaring into a skirt that sat at the level of her calves.
The thin brown belt cinching her waist held her gaze.
She wanted so desperately to say hello, to ask how she was—but once again, it wasn’t allowed.
A quiet, dull-ache pulled at her as she watched Greta collect her printing, holding back her free-flowing hair behind her ear as she dipped her head.
Suddenly feeling bold, and with nothing to lose, she walked over, announcing herself by clearing her throat.
‘Hi, Doctor Vincent,’ she said in a voice befitting a library.
‘Dylan!’ Greta exclaimed, in a voice far too loud for a library. She lowered her volume, scanned the room, and tried again. ‘What are you doing here?’
Dylan rolled out her hand that was holding two textbooks pressing into her forearm.
‘It’s my library. Well, it’s not mine… It doesn’t belong to me.
Like, I-I didn’t buy it—I don’t own it,’ she explained, as if she needed to.
She stepped toward Greta and continued to speak before Greta had a chance to. ‘You look amazing.’
‘Thank you,’ Greta replied without missing a beat. ‘It was nice to see you. I have to go.’
Greta moved to walk past Dylan, who was too fast for her, gently grabbing her wrist, stopping Greta in her tracks. Without drawing attention to herself, Dylan closed the distance between them even more. She glanced around the quiet corner of the library; it was empty.
‘I’ve missed you so much, Greta,’ Dylan confessed barely above a whisper, her fingers lightly dropping onto Greta’s, interlacing them gently.
As Greta’s eyes drifted shut and she drew in a long breath, Dylan felt the weight of the silent admission.
Had Greta missed her just as deeply? Had she thought about her non-stop?
Dreamed about her? Why couldn’t she admit the same stubborn longing was undoing her too?
Dylan felt a sudden shift and the potential answer to her questions as Greta’s fingers gently moved around hers, breathing deeply through her nose, as if their closeness and the scent of them together was unpicking the new stitching of Greta’s resolve.
‘Dylan,’ Greta started, her tone softer than the one Dylan was expecting. She had thought Greta would immediately admonish her for daring to approach her. ‘Don’t do this.’
‘I miss you, Greta,’ Dylan repeated emphatically. She snagged Greta’s gaze, pleading with her eyes.
‘Move on,’ Greta said coldly, as she tried to retract her hand and walk away.
Greta’s head fell forward as Dylan tightened the grip on her fingers.
‘I can’t,’ Dylan confessed. ‘I’ve tried. I can’t stop thinking about you. It’s killing me.’ Greta didn’t respond, seemingly using every fibre of her being to simply breathe. ‘Have you moved on?’
Raising her chin, Greta met Dylan’s gaze. She inhaled through flared nostrils, giving her all to an apparent air of resoluteness. ‘Yes,’ she replied bluntly.
‘A new escort?’ Dylan said, dipping her voice on the word.
From the fleeting twist in Greta’s expression, she was clearly reluctant to hurt Dylan, but she quickly squared her shoulders and pulled her hand away from Dylan’s soft grip as if determined not to let a single chink in her armour show ever again.
‘Yes. I have found one.’
The words seemed to wound Greta as deeply as they did Dylan but they were out there now, hanging heavily in the space between them.
‘I see,’ Dylan replied. She couldn’t read Greta properly; she was giving nothing away. Dylan narrowed her eyes and smiled. She waited a beat, scanning Greta’s face. ‘You’re lying,’ she bluffed.
Greta’s facade slipped with the blush of her cheeks. ‘What I do with my time is none of your business, Miss St John.’ The harshness of her tone struck Dylan as overcompensation.
‘You’re fucking lying.’ A wide smile slowly spread across Dylan’s face.
She moved toward Greta, positioning herself directly opposite her.
Greta dropped her gaze, avoiding Dylan’s eyes as she watched Dylan’s hand reach for hers again.
‘Why can’t you look at me?’ Dylan said softly.
Ignoring Dylan’s hand, Greta huffed a burst of air through her mouth as though the whole interaction was becoming far too tedious.
‘Look at me, Greta,’ Dylan insisted in a low whisper, dipping her head to find Greta’s gaze.
Greta hesitated before looking up, and Dylan witnessed the sudden undoing of weeks of self-restraint.
The brown of Greta’s eyes lacked their usual depth; dark half moons rested at the tops of her cheeks.
As she looked at Greta, Dylan’s eyebrows pushed together, the agony of being without her now on the cusp of being too much to stand.
She closed the gap between them. Reaching forward, Dylan slid a hand around Greta’s waist. ‘Meet me later—’
‘Are you finished with the printer, Doctor Vincent?’ A nasal voice pierced the tension, shocking them both back into the room.
As she quickly withdrew her hand, Dylan’s head fell forward with a breathily muttered, ‘For fuck’s sake.’
‘Huh?’ Greta said, blinking rapidly. ‘Oh yes, sorry, those are mine.’ Looking flustered, she took the papers handed to her by a woman, who was the most librariany-looking librarian Dylan had ever seen.
The woman suspiciously scanned them both.
‘My office printer is broken,’ Greta said jovially, adding a huff and a theatrical eye roll. ‘Probably the bloody toner again.’
Dylan tilted her head, watching Greta’s terrible improv with a smirk.
‘Have you logged it?’ the librarian asked. Her investment in Greta’s printer started to irritate Dylan.
‘A-ha,’ Greta replied breezily, clearly desperate for the interaction to be over.
She turned to Dylan, avoiding her gaze. ‘Anyway, Miss St John, I’ll leave you to it thank you for these goodbye.
’ The words melded into one rushed sentence as she waved the papers back and forth in the air at the librarian.
Passing Dylan, Greta had a telltale flush of red across her neck and chest, the skin visibly blotched with a nervous rash.
Knowing she was well and truly under Greta’s skin unleashed a deluge of satisfaction—Dylan was done fucking around.
Standing still, a small smile on her lips, Dylan watched the apparently unflappable Dr Greta Vincent leave the library, flapped.