Chapter 11 #2
“Who's behind this little brat showing up?” He stepped toward Davian, his index finger pointing at me. “Monica? Anthony?”
Now Davian looked at me again. His eyes were unreadable. And yet searching...
I wanted to give him a smile to let him know that everything was okay. That I would answer all his questions. But it wasn't that simple...
“I don't know. And it couldn't be less important.” He focused on Troy again. “But I'm definitely not going to stand by and watch you continue to bully students who don't fit into your pigeonhole.”
Troy snorted contemptuously and looked at me with obvious disdain.
“She thinks she's better than everyone else.”
“Maybe because she is.” I felt myself getting hot far too quickly. Troy's head snapped around and he stared at Davian. “When are you finally going to get it through your head that things aren't done your way around here?”
He stepped toward Troy, clenching his hands into fists, and my inner turmoil returned.
“For now.” Troy laughed coldly again. “For now, Davian. But soon the tables will turn, and you'll wish you'd kept your well-paid job in D.C. and never returned to Maplecrest!”
I raised both eyebrows.
For how long had the two of them known each other? And if he and Troy knew each other, did that mean he also knew Anthony? And how well did he know... my father?
More and more questions, whose possible answers planted nervousness within me. Because I was starting to realize which ones were the correct ones.
Troy's final death stare solidified my resolve: at the next lecture, I would make it clear to him that he couldn't treat me like this.
Then he strode past Davian and marched loudly down the corridor until, ten seconds later, a door slammed.
Silence.
Two Sides Of The Same Coin
Carlos Rafael Rivera
Now we were alone. Two authors who didn't know what words were appropriate in a situation like this. Two confused souls.
I still wanted to throw my arms around him, convinced that was all I needed right now, but it felt inappropriate.
That was Lara's dad.
I swallowed.
He automatically looked at my throat, but quickly looked away again, as if something was bothering him. He seemed to be in some kind of shock.
“The other students…”
“Are busy with an essay.”
Silence. Again.
What should I say? Was he expecting something from me?
This wasn’t us. These were two completely different people playing two completely different roles, and I couldn't even tell him what was wrong with me because that would completely freak him out.
He didn't know that I knew his daughter.
But something was messing with his head. Something was wrong...
And then I realized it.
He knew. He knew I had lied to him.
The lump in my chest fell out of its socket.
I had hurt him. Something I had never intended to do. Something that cut me deeper than razor blades ever could.
The price liars paid.
“How old are you?”
His voice was hoarse, sounded unsteady.
I had dug my own grave.
“Quill.” A hint of despair settled in his eyes. “How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
The number hovered between us like a dark omen, and I saw the moment when the knife of my betrayal sank into his realization.
I had known it. My age would scare him away.
The feeling of being lost returned from the depths where I had been able to bury it after our first encounter.
He would abandon me. Yet he had only held my hand twice, never taken me in his arms.
Davian pressed his lips together, turned halfway away from me, and ran his hand over his face.
He pursed his lips, his jaw a working mechanical powerhouse.
Then he turned back to me, stepped closer, and I cursed the moths in my stomach that reacted to his proximity like magnets did when they got closer to their opposite pole.
“You said you had studied.”
He didn't want to believe it. As if I had gotten under his skin just as much as he had gotten under mine...
Helplessness overwhelmed me and I looked at him with glassy eyes, unable to admit my lie.
Everything good that life had given me, I threw on the ground and trampled on it like an ungrateful toddler.
“You lied to me...”
His voice was toneless, but his equally glassy eyes shoveled the first shovel of dirt into my open grave.
You're stupid, Quill. So incredibly stupid.
“I was afraid you would leave me alone on that bridge.”
My voice was fragile, half a whisper.
The tension in his jaw hurt even me.
“No.”
He shook his head, laughed, but the desperate smile didn't reach his eyes.
“No.”
He pressed his lips together again.
We both remembered the same things. Things I never wanted to forget, but which would now have a bitter aftertaste.
“Tell me this is all a big joke that I haven't understood yet.”
Yet, that was only part of the truth. A sign that this man would have broken me sooner or later anyway, and that I should never have even made eye contact with him.
“Please, Quill.”
The desperation in his voice was now clearly audible.
Instinctively, I lunged forward and grabbed his hand.
He looked down before shaking his head.
“No.”
Under
Alex Hepburn
He stepped back, pulled his hand out of mine, and it felt like a punch to the gut.
“I'm sorry, but...” He hesitated again, his chest rising and falling. “This...”
“What exactly is this?”
We both sounded desperate. Two clingy authors who had formed an uncategorizable bond with each other far too quickly.
But how could I not?
“I don't know.” He took another breath, a weight on his chest that I wanted to take away but couldn't. “All I know is that it can't work. You're my student. I could be your father...” He laughed as if he were about to lose his mind. “God, Quill, I have a daughter your age.”
I just nodded, bit my tongue, and couldn't hold back the tear that slowly ran down my cheek.
His gaze followed it. And there it was again. The storm in his eyes.
“I'm sorry.” My voice was just a frail whisper, and I wiped the next two tears from my eyes. “Is there anything I can do to make you forgive me?”
Davian swallowed, and all emotion disappeared from his gaze.
“Staying away from me.”
The coldness in his words paralyzed me.
“What?”
What else had I expected? That he would ignore all the things he had just listed and press his lips where I needed them most?
I was a mess. None of this would have happened if I had been honest from the start.
I swallowed.
If I had jumped.
“We never met.”
The force of his lie shoveled another heap of dirt onto my motionless body.
He would bury me. Alive.
His gaze was distant. This wasn't Davian, the author who spoke the language of my soul. This was a man I didn't know. The man who held inside him what so desperately wanted to break out.
“We...”
“There is no we, okay?”
Another lie. The truth was in my notebook. A memory of touches I would never feel again, and it buried me mercilessly.
“You're a student at Maplecrest. I'm your professor.”
Impatience and tension. That was all there was in his voice.
I wanted to resent him for it, but he had every right, enough compelling reasons to push me away.
The blue thread between us was stretched tight. It would snap. Our paths would diverge.
Even if I dropped out of Maplecrest, the age difference and my lie gaped between us. Lara gaped between us.
I was too young for him. He didn't need me, had never needed me, while I had immediately clung to the first person who had given me even the slightest sense of security and hope.
We were two writers, yet we wrote two different stories, living the two miserable extremes of authorship.
I nodded, but my tears spoke the truth. A truth he obviously couldn't bear, because he turned away, much too quickly, and disappeared around the corner.
How could I stay at Maplecrest when I would see this man at least twice a week? How could I stay strong when I let the person who had been my rock slip through my fingers like sand?
Until now, I hadn't wanted to admit it. But that evening, when I had asked him to give me just one reason, the reason had been right in front of my eyes.
Which devil sent you?
The one from down there, or the one from above?
– Leaking Batteries Diary