Chapter 11
Quill
Two Confused Souls
Beth’s Story
Carlos Rafael Rivera
Hope was a lousy traitor, obviously capable of sneaking into my life in the form of a wonderful man and then turning out to be a double-edged sword, on whose blade I longed to bleed to death miserably.
It wasn't even my addiction to playing with fire to stimulate my creativity that had gotten me into this situation. No. Fate simply seemed to want to slap me in the face.
Remorse. Guilt. Pangs of conscience. All of these should have overwhelmed me the moment the hope I had thought I had found came crashing down on me in the form of an unplanned dilemma.
A plot twist I should have seen coming when he had called his daughter Pumpkin on the phone and told me about his dog.
But I hadn't even been able to put two and two together when he had shown up at my family's house after my father had mentioned his name.
Important information often slipped my mind, causing me to fail many tests at school. My memory was like a sieve, which punished me afterwards with sobering – or in this case, painful – recollections.
This? A coincidence I refused to believe was true.
I was fucked. How was I supposed to look my best friend in the eye when we next met? Maybe with a “Hey, Lara. How was your first day? Oh, by the way. I rode the fingers of my professor, who, as it happens, is your father.”
The fire in my cheeks was literally blazing.
The fact that I had almost told Lara about that evening in the library didn't make it any better.
All the mistakes I had already made in my short life had left quite a few traces. I couldn't estimate how fatal this one could have turned out to be. One night and I would probably have lost my best friend for good.
I should look away, concentrate on the squares I had scrawled on the edge of my checkered notepad, and let all the shame wash over me, but I couldn't break eye contact with Davian.
He seemed to have the same difficulty. The rigidity we were both stuck in was our prison, in which we were perishing with every passing second.
My mind tried to reconcile the attentive, sensitive Davian I had come to know with the law professor standing here, but all I saw was the man who had reached out his hand to me on the bridge and kept me in this life.
His hair looked lighter in the daylight, an ashen brown-blond.
“Imagine that, Rydell,” Lucas said with mockery in his voice, turning to me. “The first woman here who thinks she can study law.”
Davian's appearance here had left me so shaken that I couldn't even process Lucas's words. Davian also seemed to be struggling with himself as he took his gaze off me, significantly reducing the tension that had built up between us. However, it wasn't enough to calm the pounding lump in my chest.
He was here. I was here. We had found each other again.
Davian cleared his throat and looked at Lucas with a stern, chilly gaze I had never seen from him before.
“First. Professor Rydell, for you.” Immediately, new murmurs and whispers erupted, while Lucas's grin slipped away as if Davian had unexpectedly ripped the rug out from under his feet.
“And secondly.” His gaze wandered back to me.
“I am convinced that this place is languishing due to a lack of input from female students.”
If any other professor in this place had said that, I wouldn’t have been able to suppress a smile, but I wasn’t even able to break out of my stupor.
Davian somehow managed to look away quickly, toward his papers, staring at them with intense concentration, as if he were about to tear them up, while the unsuspecting students exchanged amused glances and some of them were still grinning at Lucas, who was glaring some of his friends into the ground.
“Anyway...” He cleared his throat again, then held up the stack of papers, looked around the room and back again before his gaze even had a chance to meet mine.
“I've brought you a list of books, and it would be wise of you to read them all if you want to become lawyers who go to court with a critical eye and an unshakeable why for their clients.”
I didn't want to believe that he had once been a lawyer and now taught at one of the top universities. It made him even more interesting, without question. But it didn't fit with the Davian who had confessed to me wordlessly, in tears, that he longed to write again.
This man seemed like a successful member of the elite who had his life firmly under control. Not like an author.
Many new questions arose within me.
Was that the reason he no longer wrote? Could it be that this lifestyle had completely taken over his life?
“Since I don't want to waste time on organizational matters, I have a question for you right away.”
He handed the sheet of paper to the front row before walking back around the large table, picking up the chalk, and looking around the room.
“Can anyone list the core principles and issues of legal ethics?”
He turned around without even waiting for anyone to answer.
Zachary was the only one who raised his hand.
“Zach,” Davian called on him without even looking at him, and I raised both eyebrows when he began writing simultaneously with Zach answering.
Did they know each other because Davian was part of the same circle of men that Zach's father belonged to?
Another fact that I couldn't get my head around. But now it explained what he had been doing at my father's house that evening.
“The core principles of legal ethics are Confidentiality. Competence. Conflict of Interest. Loyalty. Honesty and Integrity. The foundational concepts and core values of legal philosophy are: Justice. Autonomy and human dignity. Legal positivism vs. natural law...”
Someone had memorized the textbook. An endeavor I had never understood in school because I had never particularly sought the attention of my teachers.
Teachers either hadn't been able to stand me or had pitied me. From the beginning, I had known that I would never be good enough for them and had given up after a pathetic attempt to improve my grades in seventh grade.
This system had failed me.
“Rule of law and fairness. Responsibility and liability. Common good and individual rights.”
Davian could barely keep up, but he nodded as he wrote, and I wondered if his mind was completely on Zach while I stared at the veiny artwork on his right hand.
A storm of euphoria, overwhelm, and adrenaline raged in my stomach, showing no signs of calming down.
I wanted to smile, wanted him to turn to me and make eye contact again, but the bitter aftertaste that this was one of those things a professor shouldn't do killed the urge.
He was my best friend's father, my professor, and in the back of the A4 notepad in front of me were pages I had wanted to give him. Pages inspired by his intimate touches.
This was wrong. So wrong.
I needed time, had to process this, needed fresh air to clear my head. And I needed distance. Distance from that man, between whom and me hung two beautifully intertwined deep blue threads that I didn't want to cut at any cost.
Repression. That was what I needed now, even if it wouldn't save me.
Far too quickly, I shoved my notebook and pen into the dark brown leather bag Anthony had given me, shot up from my chair, and turned around to hurry up the wide staircase, drawing more and more eyes as I went.
“Miss?”
Davian's firm voice made me pause.
Miss.
What did I expect? That he would call me by my first name in front of all these unsuspecting students when he didn't even know me?
I hesitated, turned around cautiously, and did my best to smile apologetically at him. A mistake, because now I was confronted with the concern on his face. Concern he shouldn't show here.
“Excuse me. I don't think I'm feeling very well.”
Something in his gaze shifted, but I couldn't tell what it was, didn't think about it further, and forced myself, with all my effort, to turn around and leave him behind again.
By now, I was convinced that fate would send him back into my life again and again, but before I could rejoice in that realization or shatter under its weight, I had to clear my head. I had to write.
I opened the door, slipped through, slammed it shut a little too hard, and took a deep breath. Then I hurried down the stairs, through the hallway toward the exit.
I didn't get far.
The Green Pills
Carlos Rafael Rivera
Someone grabbed me roughly by the arm and dragged me into a side corridor.
“Veritas.” I stared into the devastating face of Fitzek Junior, who, like Davian, was one head taller than me. “Not so fast.”
Panic overwhelmed me and I tried to break free, but that only made his grip tighter and he wrapped his other hand around my other shoulder.
“A woman,” he muttered, glaring at me with disdain. “Next thing you know, they’ll be letting children study here.”
“Let go of me!” I snapped at him, but he ignored my panicked plea.
“You think you can sneak in here and just sit in these rows as if you were someone special, huh?”
His head came closer.
Something inside me froze.
“Troy,” a tense voice rang out, and our heads turned toward the hallway.
My heart leapt with relief when I spotted Davian, who was glaring at his colleague. So fiercely that I felt a pleasant warmth run down my neck and almost completely blocked out the feeling of Troy's nails digging into my skin through my sweater.
He had followed me.
“I'll only say this once,” he said, stepping toward us. “Take. Your. Hands. Off her.”
Troy gave Davian a withering look, and Davian stared back as if he were seconds away from seriously hurting Troy.
At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to run to Davian and fall into his arms as if we were old friends who looked out for each other. I wanted to know what it felt like to be embraced by that man, whose touch felt like a warm bandage on all the cracks in my existence.
Hesitantly, Troy let go of me and stepped back. His prominent jaw ground against his cheeks.