Abnormal Psych is in a smaller lecture hall. Professor Bowman is a practicing social worker, and she also runs the student help line in the mental health offices of the on-campus health center, where I stopped by during orientation to look into volunteering.
I don’t want to wait until I have a degree and a license to help people. I know better than most how empty life can feel—how despairingly hopeless—and the difference it can make just to have someone to talk to.
If there’s anything I’ve learned over the years, it’s that there’s no getting used to having your thoughts and emotions hijacked by the chemicals inside your own brain—having your life sabotaged by an invisible rogue force inside your own body.
It was thanks to my mother and Sammy, and not least of all to Dr. Schall, that I found a treatment that works for me. And it’s still a struggle some days, but while I’ve accepted that it will always be a part of me, I’ve also learned how to embrace it—how to channel it into something positive. In fact, David actually helped with that, even if he doesn’t know it.
It’s only the third class, but it’s already obvious that Professor Bowman is a great teacher, and I don’t have to feign my interest in her lecture, or fight to stay awake. Bowman is knowledgeable and engaging, and the class flies by.
But despite my interest, I find myself distracted by an inexplicable sense of unease.
I feel strangely unsettled. Like someone is watching me.
A vague shiver creeps down my spine and I’m struck with the urge to turn around.
So I do. I peek over my shoulder from my seat in the first row, and my gaze automatically lands on the culprit.
My stomach flips as I try to place the stranger.
He isn’t even watching me—he’s glaring at me. Aren’t you supposed to look away when someone catches you staring?
Glaring.
A beat passes. Two. A third, and then he looks away with irritation, as if he doesn’t feel particularly compelled to submit to this social demand, and only does so reluctantly. I return my eyes to the front of the room.
What the fuck was that?
Who the fuck was that?
If I’ve ever seen him before, I have no memory of it.
I decide to sneak another peek.
He has the grace to look away faster this time, but his eyes were most definitely on me a split second ago.
And what eyes they are. Completely foreign, and yet somehow unfathomably familiar. Deep blue, similar to mine in shade, but different in every other way. His are like the ocean. Not the translucent aquamarine of the Caribbean, but a dark ocean. A stormy, turbulent one. An ocean hiding secrets below its depths, its murky waters concealing the dangers beneath.
The kind of ocean that will drown you if you’re not careful.
But I have no intention of getting caught in a riptide, by him or any other man. I’ve been there, done that, been drowned and reborn, and I’ll stick to the safety of swimming pools, thank you very much.
But then, this guy didn’t seem to be staring at me in the usual way a boy stares at a girl, which is all the more off-putting. He wants something from me, I’ve no doubt, but I don’t think it’s what most guys want, and that frightens me.
I take advantage of his attention being elsewhere, even if he’s faking it, and take a moment to study him.
I hadn’t noticed him before today, which is strange. Not because I’ve taken note of each of the fifty or so students in the room—I haven’t—but because he’s the kind of guy a girl notices.
Even seated, his stature is unmistakable. He’s got to be at least six feet, probably a few inches over. He’s bulky in a way that makes it obvious he’s committed to his fitness, but I doubt it’s out of vanity. He seems intense—the kind of guy who works out to release hostile energy, and his sculpted muscles are simply a happy by-product. His face is all sharp lines and hard planes, his dark, prominent, masculine brow furrowed in what seems to be perpetual agitation. He positively radiates disquiet.
It raises my hackles even more.
I’m about to look away when he resettles his glare right on mine, brazenly meeting my eyes. It’s shameless, but instead of averting my gaze, I find myself returning his glare dead-on.
And why should I back down? He’s the one challenging me with his inappropriate fucking staring.
A lightning bolt of familiarity strikes in my gut like a wave of déjà vu, and it makes no sense. He must remind me of someone. David, maybe. Or my brother, who definitely has his intense moments.
And then, so subtly I almost miss it, the corner of the stranger’s mouth twitches, as if it wants to smile, but barely knows how.
