Chapter 13

Waking up the next day wasn’t unlike when she rolled out of bed on New Year’s Day. There was no real hangover involved. She had a bit of a headache from all the tequila and salty food she ate without following it up with the proper amounts of water, and she was more tired than she wanted to be since her sleep was restless and filled with bouts of rather racy dreams of the professor and her. But what she felt that morning were consequences. New Year’s Eve was the time to kiss whoever she wanted, eat and drink whatever she wanted, and then deal with it on the morning of the first day of the year.

That was her that morning; the first thing she thought of was how Erik had seen them, how they had not been anything close to careful with dinner last night, and everything awful that could follow that up. She sprung out of bed as if her hips were a well-oiled hinge. She stared at her clock to find she’d awakened five minutes before her alarm.

“Shit.”

She jumped out of bed and tried to think of the best way to deal with this. She’d gone on a date with her mentoring professor, there was no negotiating that at this point. She’d then proceeded to get fairly buzzed at dinner with him, invite him back to her apartment, and make out with him in her kitchen. She also very nearly got close to copping a feel and doing something entirely more adult. Only she and Dr. Tekkin knew that, but Erik, who was jealous and possessive, saw them together. It wouldn’t take much, just an inference, a suggestion that something unethical was happening, and she’d be out of the program, Dr. Tekkin would be out of a job. Everyone lost.

So, her first order of business was talking to Erik. She had to find a way to talk about this with him without revealing everything that had happened. He was her friend, she believed that; first and foremost, he was her friend, no matter his feelings. She just hoped he believed that too. She fired off a text to him.

Meet for coffee?

She put her phone down and paced around. She poured herself a bowl of cereal, not caring for once how childish it looked to be a grown woman pouring herself a bowl of Apple Jacks. She needed the sugar and the comfort. She woofed it down and swallowed the remaining soy milk laced over with residue, turned a strange greenish brown. She checked her phone. No answer yet. He could still be asleep, he was kind of a late sleeper compared to her. He could easily just be waiting to roll out of bed just before his morning class.

She drank some water, trying to calm the headache. She followed it with Tylenol and threw another couple of mouthfuls of cereal into her mouth. She paced some more. Still no answer on the phone. She should get ready, shower, do her makeup, and put on clothes. She needed to busy herself before she drove herself completely nuts.

So, she went through the motions of getting dressed. She pulled out clothes to wear, and started her shower. She made it as cold as possible when she first stepped in, letting the shock and the chill go through her. It was a nice little reprieve. She turned it back to warm and then let herself get washed over in the hot water. She slowly massaged the shampoo into her scalp and ran her fingers through it like so many rakes to get all the soap and dirt and sweat and shame and fear out of it. Then she lathed it over in conditioner, massaging again to work the kinks out. She tried to calm herself with the smell of her lavender body wash as she moved it across her body. When she had nothing left to wash and she was getting pruny, she forced herself to turn the shower off and step out, wrapping herself in a towel and relishing at the chill in the air.

She slipped her clothes on, telling herself she wouldn’t check her phone again until she was completely dressed. It was good to give herself a timeframe. Alessia did her best not to smudge anything as her somewhat shaky hands applied her makeup. She looked at herself in the mirror. She was the picture of confidence, ready for class and all sorts of other things that had nothing to do with sleeping with a superior professor who also happened to be part of a terrorist cell. None of that here, no, ma’am.

Sure. Tell me when and where.

He’d texted her back. She could hear how curt he was, even in the minuscule texts. This wouldn’t be easy. She wondered if she should invite him here, give them some privacy in case he got a little too loud and anyone overheard their situation. That would probably just be a slap in the face for him though, to be invited back for coffee to be begged not to tell the world that she may or may not have gone on a date with a professor the night before.

She told him to meet her at Starbucks before their seminar. She wanted to work through whatever tension they had going there before they were surrounded by everyone else in their class. It wouldn’t translate well to work if they were ready to jump at each other’s throats in the middle of debating ethics for shifters in the workplace. He sent her back a message with an affirmative answer and she looked in the mirror, fixing her hair just a bit before stepping out her door to meet him.

Did she look like someone who kissed someone last night? Was there a guilty tell for that? Was there anything for that like sex hair or hickies? She walked as if there was nothing wrong, nothing had happened. As far as everyone knew who met her eye as she walked across campus, she was just another grad student making her way to classes, already behind in grading papers for her students. Which was true, to an extent.

She got to the Starbucks early and downed a shot of expresso as if it were Jack Daniels. It wouldn’t exactly have the calming effects, but at least she could wear it like battle armor. It was energy, it was something. She held onto the bitter taste of the espresso in her mouth like it was a hard candy or a stress ball. She looked up and saw Erik walking in, looking just as miserable as he had the last night. She tried not to panic, tried not to read too much into it. He sat across from her.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hi.”

He was quick and quiet already. She could work with it. Or work around it.

“How have you been?”

“You mean since we saw each other last night with your new older boyfriend?”

Yikes. She winced, just a little bit. But she wouldn’t let Erik dictate the conversation. He was very good at things like that, making his voice heard, shutting other people down. She wouldn’t let that work here though. This was a conversation between friends, not a debate in class. She leaned forward to get closer to him. She felt like she had more control over the situation if he was closer.

“Look,” she said. “He’s not my boyfriend. He was taking me out to dinner as an apology.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes!”

She wasn’t technically lying on that part. Dr. Tekkin had taken her out to apologize. Not that Erik knew what he was apologizing for or the extent to which she let that apology go (very nearly to her bedroom), but the point right now was that he was assuming. He was assuming things that were true but he was doing it for the completely wrong reasons. He was jealous, she needed to sort that part out first.

“Look, Erik, I like you, you’re my friend,” she said. “And I trust you but I also need to know you won’t go and do something stupid.”

“You think I care about your little romance so much that I’d kill myself?” he asked with an exasperated laugh.

She rolled her eyes. “Like go telling someone just to try to get Dr. Tekkin fired.”

“Why? You want to protect him now?”

“Did you tell someone?”

“And what if I did? Is there a story people should know about?”

“Erik.”

She went from trying to be the understanding, patient friend to seeing red in a second. He was a jealous little boy, she decided. She’d known he had an attitude like this about him; he was the type of person used to being heard, used to getting everything he wanted in any given situation, used to being everyone’s favorite. And now he was second fiddle. He wasn’t even a fiddle really. Alessia had no intentions of ever having a relationship with him, despite what he would try to swing for her. She wanted to tell him that, to rip into him the truth of all that, and let him know how utterly wrong he had been to assume he could just have her.

But he was still her friend and she couldn’t bring herself to purposefully hurt him, no matter how much she was sure he deserved it.

“Erik, I don’t know what fantasy you cooked up in your head but you need to snap out of it,” she said. “You’re my friend, a very good friend, but a friend. Even if I was dating someone, it wouldn’t be your place to be angry about it. Dr. Tekkin did something nice last night to make up for some unfortunate stuff that’s happened recently with class and our politics. Please don’t try to punish him because of some misplaced jealousy.”

Well, it wasn’t exactly misplaced, but he didn’t need to know that right at this second. She looked at Erik and watched his eyes soften. He desperately tried to cling to his own anger, but it was slipping away from him at every second. She watched it disappear, dissipate, vanish from his face until it melted into nothing short of misery. She didn’t like hurting him, she didn’t want to hurt him, as much as she liked knocking him down a peg.

“I didn’t tell anyone and I wouldn’t,” he sighed. “Honestly, doing that never even really crossed my mind.”

“Good.”

“So, there’s really nothing here?” he asked, his hands gesturing between the two of us.

She frowned. “You’re my friend, Erik. Do we have good chemistry? Yeah. But that doesn’t mean I want to start something. I like you as my friend too much to chase after something as silly as that.”

“You think something with me would be silly?”

There they were again, the walls, the chip on his shoulder. He had the most fragile ego of any man she’d ever known and one day, she would do a long dig into his history to figure out exactly where that inferiority complex came from that manifested itself in the form of total asshole-ish behavior.

“You know that’s not what I’m saying but please pick a fight if it makes you feel better,” she said, crossing her arms. “Chemistry isn’t something to ruin an established relationship over. We can have chemistry with anyone. I like you too much as you are to try for more.”

“Don’t you think this should be a two-way decision since I’m also part of this hypothetical we?”

“No,” she said plainly. “This is my decision how to act on my own feelings; it has nothing to do with you.”

And that was that. She wouldn’t go as far to say she broke his heart because she didn’t think his feelings ran deep enough for that. He was enraptured by a pretty face and got a little too excited at how well he argued. Maybe he even thought she was smart but beyond all that, there was nothing there for him to get overly bent out of shape over. She was a possibility, a prospect, not his true love.

“Well, this has been a miserable and frustrating conversation,” Erik said. “I’ll see you in class.”

And then he was gone. She let out a breath. She may have lost a friend, but her position at the school was still intact. Small victories.