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“Yeah… but now he’s avoiding me.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t know how to approach you after rejection. How does that make you feel?”
“I didn’t reject him.” She squeezed the bottle in her hand. “But I don’t know how I feel about him avoiding me. I mean, it avoids conflict, but…” She didn’t know how to express how she wanted to know him more. Something about the look in his eyes when he thought she would hurt him stuck with her.
“While you may not have rejected him as a person, rejecting his advances is still rejection.”
Blaire looked down.
“Blaire, you set a healthy boundary. He respected it. This is ideal. What needs to happen now is you both need to talk about things. He needs to understand you weren’t distancing yourself from him as a person. He doesn’t know your limits. It is up to you to make him aware. You are in control.”
Blaire set down her bottle.
“It’s okay to not completely understand your feelings. If we always knew exactly what we felt and why, life would certainly be simpler, but sometimes the path of discovery can be exciting—scary, but exciting, and very rewarding.”
An intercom on the professor’s desk buzzed, and a man’s voice came over the speaker. “Olivia Whitmire is on Line 3 for you.”
Professor Sinclair looked at Blaire with apologetic eyes. “I wish we had more time to discuss this, but we will get to everything eventually. I’d like to see you every Wednesday after classes, if that works for you?”
“Sure. My classes end early those days, so I can be here at one o’clock.”
“Perfect. I’ll pencil you in as a reoccurring appointment.”
Blaire stood and straightened her skirt.
“In the meantime, I’d like you to work on trying to talk with Lukas. Building your Korrena bond together is the perfect opportunity for you to exercise boundaries.”
The phone buzzed again, and the professor sighed.
“I’ll see you on Wednesday.”
12
MOVIE NIGHT
Acouple of weeks passed, and Blaire finally started adapting to her life in the academy. Lukas sometimes avoided her, which disappointed her. After she pushed him away when she could have sworn he tried to kiss her in the cafeteria, he hesitated to get too close to her. It allowed her to get to know his friends better, but she wanted to know him too. She wanted to try, like her counselor had been encouraging her to do.
She spent a lot of time with Aiden after the incident in the courtyard; he adopted a protector role in Lukas’s place while Lukas kept his distance. Aiden never left her alone, and when they didn’t have a class together—which was rare, considering most of the classes were general education courses most everyone had to take—he’d be waiting outside when she left. If he were human, she’d call it stalkerish, but here she accepted the protective friend gesture on face value. His presence comforted her and gave her an anchor in unfamiliar territory.
Everyone planned to meet at Aiden’s dorm after dinner service, where they often got together for movie night to relax and unwind.
Aiden’s room held the same layout as her dorm, with the same color scheme and linens, but instead of a single bed on each side wall, one bed sat angled along the side of the window with its foot facing a second bed along the right wall.
A shelf hung on the wall above the headboard of the bed under the window that, on closer inspection, held a framed photo of Aiden and Riley and additional photographs of Aiden and Riley with other people of various ages, likely their family, Blaire assumed.
Beside the bed, a single wooden nightstand sat with a simple lamp on top and a stereo system standing beside it. A flat-screen TV sat on a stand against the wall next to the foyer, with various video games and consoles. Charlotte would have a field day with his collection.
The bed on the right was neatly made and looked untouched, with bare walls and an empty desk sitting at the foot of the bed against the wall. It was easy to see this room lacked a second occupant.
“Dude, get off my bed,” Aiden said to another guy who lay on Aiden’s bed going through a stack of movies.
The guy rolled over on his side before sitting up and climbing off the bed. “What’s the problem? It’s not like you’re using it.”
Aiden gestured toward the young guy, “Blaire, this is Seth. Seth, you know about Blaire already. Be nice.”
“Piss off, I’m always nice.”
Aiden rolled his eyes.
