We lie there for a long time. Just looking at each other.
It feels so real.
But how can it be real if I play a role?
“I kissed the professor today,” I say in a whisper, without looking at her.
“I’m falling for you,” she answers.
My mind isn’t really processing, so we lie there, staring into the darkness, so close, and yet apart.
10
JANE
PLAYLIST: QUIET COMPANY – JACK HARRIS
The past night has been the first night ever in my life that I couldn’t fall asleep. Thoughts possessed my mind. Thoughts I never believed I would ever have. I have never broken a rule in my life before. Never. Until yesterday.
Technically, it was her breaking the rule, not you,I tell myself in my mind.But you didn’t stop her.
I stare at my alarm clock. It’s 5:05. My eyes wander back to the ceiling as I lie in my bed with my arms on my chest, as always.
There is no point in sleeping. So I get up.
Black Matter looks reproachfully at me. She hates changes of routine as much as I do.
“Sorry,” I say. “Rough day.”
She gets up with me, stretches, and gives me the angry I-am-hungry-meow.
“It’s not time yet,” I say, and get to the bathroom. I am followed, of course. There, I sit on the toilet, she opposite me. We always watch each other peeing. It’s what we do. Just in case someone, a dangerous cat-eater, appears out of nowhere and attacks us.
I read about cats protecting each other when they love each other, so I let her. I also watch her when she uses the litter box. Because it’s important to her. She only has me.
I get up, wash my hands, and stare at myself in the mirror. And while I do, the kiss flashes through my mind. Mindlessly, I caress my bottom lip with my finger.
She touched me.
And I didn’t even mind.
It felt good.
It felt so good that I let it happen.
I twitch and draw back my shoulders.
“I have to set a boundary,” I tell my mirror self. And so I will.
I get to campus early and use the time for some quiet time in my lab before my lecture with the graduate students.
The lecture is hard for me to focus on. I catch myself several times staring into nothingness, losing myself in the sensation that lingers with me since last night.
I enter the lecture room for the undergrad course with quite a bit of apprehension, my heart beating slightly faster. I have no idea how it will be after what happened.
To my surprise, she isn’t there. No overly attentive young woman staring at me, with her hand up almost all the time, asking questions and answering every single one of mine with ease. The other students' boredom makes me miss her quite a bit. But I am also concerned.
Did something happen to her? Did she go off the rails?
