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  "Kind of. He dated a girl I danced with. I think that's what scared me the most. He wasn't someone I was familiar with and even when you do know someone...you just never know."

  I felt like I had already said too much.

  He paused for a few moments, still staring down at my hands, and I felt the intense need to get out of the room. He wanted me to tell him what had happened, but those were my memories, memories I wasn't willing to share. I stood, taking my hands from his.

  "I need to go find Javi," I said. "He might not have noticed that I'm gone yet, but that means he might be dancing with random people."

  I tried to laugh, trying to seem dismissive, but he continued to stare at me, his expression unchanging. I thanked him again and walked out of the office, not letting myself glance back over my shoulder at him though I wanted to. I could feel his eyes still on me, following me until I turned the corner and got back into the elevator. Leaning back against the cool wall, I drew in a breath.

  The stretch between the Humanities building and the student commons where the party was being held seemed even darker as I stood at the door, readying myself to step out. I knew that I was safe. I knew that there was no one watching me, even though I always felt eyes on me. I knew there was no one following me, even though my mind created phantom footsteps wherever I went. My hand rested on the handle of the door and I forced my mind to think of what that stretch of campus looked like during the day. I had seen it countless times before, walking through it nearly every day for the last three years. This was the heart of the campus, the center of a spoke layout that allowed students to gather at the central commons for studying, food, and activities, and then spread out throughout the rest of the campus buildings for their classes.

  I had never felt unsafe crossing the campus during the day. I wasn't going to allow myself to now. I pushed the door open and stepped out into the muggy August air. The sound of the music was fainter here, but I forced myself to focus in on it, allowing it to create a path ahead of me that I could follow. My jaw ached from how hard I was gritting my teeth, but I refused to let the thoughts that were still looming in the back of my mind control me any further. I had spent far too much time and energy trying to force those thoughts and memories into the darkest, furthest recesses of my mind. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to rid myself of them. There would never be a time when I wouldn't have those thoughts when I wouldn't have to live with them. But I could contain them. I could dig a place for them in a part of my mind I hoped was far enough from my consciousness that they wouldn't torment me. I had fought to put them there and for them to stay there. They had slipped through long enough to terrify me that night, but I couldn't let it go further. I couldn't give over another night.

  Keeping my eyes focused directly ahead of me and my thoughts only on the sound of the music, I crossed through the darkness and back into the lights of the sidewalk and then the glow pouring from the commons. I was nearly there when I was realized that my phone was buzzing in my pocket. I wondered how long it had been ringing and if I simply hadn't noticed it. I pulled it out and looked down at it.

  "Hi, Javi," I answered.

  The music streaming through the phone was so loud that I could barely hear him.

  "Purple drank...drag queen...running."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Bubble tank...dry clean...running."

  Neither option sounds terribly promising.

  "I'll be there in a minute."

  I tucked my phone back into my pocket and headed toward the building at a slightly faster clip. Once inside, I let my eyes scan over the various parties happening in rooms throughout the building. I used the clues that I might have deciphered from what Javi said to narrow down where he might be. I was climbing the stairs to the upper mezzanine when I saw Javi running past on the opposite side.

  At least I got that part right.

  He was making his way around the perimeter, so I got to the top of the stairs and waited until he was coming toward me. When he noticed me, he got a look of tremendous relief on his face and reached his arms toward me. I took his hands and pulled him to a stop in front of me.

  "What did you do?" I asked.

  Javi looked at me like he wanted to be offended, but he had been running too long to really muster up the indignance. My dearest friend had many amazing qualities, but athleticism wasn't one of them.

  "What do you mean what did I do? Why do you automatically assume that it was something that I did?"

  I looked at him with a slightly tilted head.

  "Because I have met you."

  Javi glanced over his shoulder, his eyes widened slightly at something I couldn't identify and then grabbed my wrist.

  "Come on," he said. "I'll explain it in the Battle of the Boy Bands room."

  He dragged me with him through the crowd and into a room brimming with enough sappy angst to make me wish I had a diary just so that I could write a withering entry. I highly doubted that I was going to hear the actual explanation of what had happened before I showed up, or ever really know what he was saying to me on the phone, but I knew that I was safe now. And I was going to have enough fun with Javi to drown the sounds of the screams in the back of my memories.

  Chapter Two

  Jude

  I continued to stare at the door to the hallway even after Veronica disappeared. I wished that she had remained there longer instead of rushing out so quickly. I hoped that she would return. I hoped that she would change her mind on her way down the hallway and come back. But even when she didn't, the impact of her there lingered. I could still remember her vividly from the semester that she was in my class. The image of her the first time that I laid eyes on her was still as bold in my mind as if it had only just happened. I had started that semester with very little expectation of anything remarkable about the weeks that lay ahead of me. My Alumni Professorship was something I valued, but I had begun to feel stagnated and what I had experienced thus far of the students who populated my classes hadn't filled me with optimism that that was going to change.

  Then Veronica came in.

  She was running late and came rushing into the lecture hall a few moments after the class had technically begun. Breathless, the color high on her cheeks and her eyes wide, she was captivating. I was struck by her immediately, and when she turned those eyes directly to me, catching me in a stare that was so blue I could distinctly see the color even in the dim lighting of the lecture hall, I felt locked in place. It was a reaction that I was not familiar with, one that I had never felt with that intensity since the moment that I had first seen my wife so many years before. I thought that I would never feel something like that again and it burst inside me like a shock of electricity, almost taking my breath. At that moment I didn't know how I was supposed to respond to that feeling. Part of me was angry. I was never supposed to feel that again. I was never meant to have that rush or for the fascination to take over that way again.

  The rope had stolen that from me. There were times when I believed that it had drained more from me than it had from her. At that moment the exhalation drawn from her lungs had become only air, but mine had remained breath. I drew it in almost frantically then, trying to find the last remnants of her, pulling them into me so that they didn't dissipate completely. This was all that I could do and I continued to do it, the frenzy aging to ritual as the years slipped by. She had become ephemera, an essence in the world around me, but I was here, solid contrasting with intangible, though she still seemed more real. I lived each day with that rope around my neck, rough on my skin though no one could see it. The rope had been her punishment. Living with the memory of it became mine.

  Seeing Veronica for the first time at once felt like cool air and fire, both reviving me and reminding me of the emptiness inside. I had learned to live with it, never thought that I would experience anything else, and the sudden attraction had been like a powerful shock through me. I watched her come down the a
isle of the lecture hall, her eyes scanning the rows beside her looking for a seat. The flush on her cheeks had deepened slightly and I knew that it was now not from running, but from the self-consciousness of her new classmates watching her struggle to find a place to settle. Soon she realized that the only place that was left in the hall was the seat in the very center of the front row, directly in front of my podium. It would mean that I wouldn't lose her in the sea of other students, something that I both hoped for and dreaded.

  She lifted her chin as she walked directly toward it, placing her bag on the floor before she took her place in the seat. As she sat, the hem of her skirt rose up over her thigh, revealing a long scar near the top. Her hand grasped her skirt, tugging the fabric down so it concealed the scar, then rested over it as if trying to cover it even more. I wondered what could have caused such an injury then, and now as I sat in my office I thought about it again. While it could easily have been caused by an accident when she was younger, I couldn't help but question whether the scar had something to do with what happened that night. What she had called a joke from the boy that I had sent scrambling away from her had been distasteful and I could imagine that it would scare most people. But Veronica's reaction had been extreme. She hadn't just been frightened. She had been terrified, and even when she knew that she wasn't really facing any threat and had been safe in my office, she seemed deeply shaken.

  That intensity came from something. There was something happening in her mind that she wasn't willing to share with me. As much as I wanted to know what it was, I also knew that there was no reason for her to open up that way to me, especially if it was about something as serious and painful as would justify that type of response. Veronica had remained in the same seat throughout the entire semester, even when she had every opportunity to move to another. It meant that we were able to build a connection, as tenuous and unspoken though it was with the very little actual interaction that we had. That connection showed me that she was smart and insightful, and sexy in a quiet and reserved way. She carried herself in a way that showed a sort of self-assuredness that was difficult to find in people her age, but there was still something in her eyes, something about the way that she looked at me, that told me that deep within her there was a timidness, a lack of true confidence. I wanted to explore that, to learn more about her and what had crafted the hardened exterior around the vulnerability.

  I had tried since that first moment that I saw her, and harder the longer that she was in my course, to not feel the attraction to her. I didn't want to allow myself to feel and acknowledge the draw to her, much less to actually act on it. I was far older than she was, the streaks of gray through the dark hair at my temples a testament to having lived twice the life that Veronica had. Even beyond that, though, I was her professor. The very fact that she had come into my course put a barrier between us. The reality was that I was an Alumni Professor with a personal wealth that well exceeded anything that would necessitate work, much less the earnings of most professors. But I valued my position. I had thrown myself into my studies after my wife's death, losing myself in the words and thoughts of others when I felt like I would never be able to find my own. Over years they had come to define me, to be as much a part of me as my flesh and blood. Though I had found myself in a slump by the time that Veronica came into the lecture hall, the teaching starting to feel stale and unsatisfying, I still had the hope that I would rediscover the passion that I had had. I wanted to find the thrill, the energy that had filled me when I was able to bring insight to my students.

  I rediscovered that awakening in Veronica. When I taught the seminar I often found myself focusing only on her. It was as though the other students faded away and everything closed in on the single clear point that was her, sitting in that front row seat, her eyes locked on me as she absorbed everything that I said. Those eyes were the reminder of why I couldn't allow myself to acknowledge how much I wanted her. Now, though, I couldn't push away the thought that she was no longer my student, no longer in my charge. The instant and intense draw that I felt toward her was still startling, but I no longer felt the obligations of my professional life hanging over me. The university had no rules against faculty and adult students dating when the student wasn't currently enrolled in the professor's courses. Besides, I didn't even want to date her. I didn't want a relationship. I only craved her. I wanted to touch her, to taste her.

  Gathering my briefcase, I turned the lights off in the office, locked the door, and headed out of the building. I could hear the music from the party streaming through the air and I wondered where Veronica was among the revelry. She had mentioned a man named Javi, but she had referred to him as her roommate rather than giving him any sort of romantic title, but I had learned over my time of teaching that these students had no qualms about maintaining purely sexual relationships with each other under the blanket descriptors of "roommate" or "friend". This served my purposes well, but the thought of Veronica having such a relationship was repellant. I didn't want to consider, regardless of my lack of any true bond to her, any claim to her, that there was someone else who was exploring her body the way that I wanted to. I intended for that lack of claim to only be temporary, and when she did come to me I wanted to touch flesh and indulge in hidden curves that had been waiting, aching for the attention.

  Even if I couldn't, though, I would be more than happy to put in the time and effort to remove any thoughts of another man before me before crafting my own searing memories in her mind.

  I put my back to the sound of the party and made my way to the parking deck. The voice that began to stream out of the speakers when I turned on the car prattled on without seeming to reach my mind. I didn't remember what it had been saying when I got out of the car earlier that morning after arriving at the campus and I didn't have any idea where it was headed now. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get into listening to audio books. I knew of colleagues that listened to them voraciously, turning them on every time they were in their car and even when they were in their offices working or at home flittering through the mundane tasks of the day. They raved about surrounding themselves with the books, as if they would somehow absorb them through their skin. I couldn't do it. I had only just gotten accustomed to reading off a screen and feeling as though I was fully connecting with the book in front of me. Even then, I could only rely on devices for the contemporary pieces I read. If I was returning to the classics or the largely forgotten works from generations ago that were like my old friends, my most loyal family, I needed the weight of them in my hands. The feeling of the binding in my palms and the smell of the pages as I sank further and further into the narrative was a part of the experience.

  I didn't want another voice in my mind shaping the way that the words fell. Those voices gave the words emotion and weight and I selfishly wanted that for myself. I wanted to see each word as it strung together with others to craft sentences and paragraphs. To be able to decide for myself the purpose and impact of that single word. It was often the tiniest, most overlooked of words that I found to be the most powerful.

  My house loomed dark at the end of the driveway when I approached it. I reminded myself for what felt like the millionth time that I needed to remember to turn on the porch lights before I left in the morning, or at least ask that the housekeeper do it sometime in the afternoon if I was going to be on campus late. That way I didn't have to creep toward the darkened shell and encounter the jarring blast of the motion-activated lights positioned along the hedge. I had lived in the home my entire life and had been the one to have those lights installed, and yet they still startled me every time they burst on when the rest of the house and grounds were darkened. Having other lights on lessened the effect. It wasn't a reaction that I felt good about, but it was one that I hadn't been able to shake myself of. I told myself that that just meant that the lights were doing what they had been intended to do.

  I stopped my car and climbed out. The driver whose services I
rarely used for more than moving my vehicles around the property stepped out of the small cottage to the opposite side of the drive from my house. He took the keys from me without a word.

  "Thank you, Aaron," I said.

  He gave a single nod as he drove toward the back of the house where he would bring the car to the carriage house that had been converted into a garage to house my father's extensive collection. Most of those vehicles had since been replaced with my own, but I kept a few of his, tucked in the corners.

  As reminders.

  Out of spite.

  I walked into the house and stood for a few moments in the foyer as the silence settled around me. When my grandfather lived in the mansion it was never this still. There were moments of quiet, but the cavernous rooms and darkly paneled hallways were always alive. The house was always teeming with a very formal staff who had been put in place to handle virtually every task of the household and much of my grandparents' lives. When my father inherited it, he trimmed down the staff somewhat, but still maintained a highly trained force that took care of most of the tasks of life, including much of the responsibilities of raising me. My mother died when I was very young, leaving me an only child with a father I might see for half an hour over supper at night and possibly for an outing or two each month. The rest of the time I was with the staff who had cared for me from the day that I was born. Though it was something I admitted only to myself, I felt a stronger longing for the nanny and cook than I did for my own mother.

  Those women had loved me, nurturing me like their own when I was little, but as I got older, their services weren't needed any longer and I was left largely on my own. That loneliness was something I carried deep within me, shaping me in a way that I could still feel. It was that loneliness that had led me so passionately into the arms of my wife, drawing her to the altar and into this mansion so quickly after I met her I felt like it wasn't until we were sharing these rooms that I really got to know her. That was the greatest journey of my youth.