Page 14 of Another Life
“I knew Boston once before,” he reminds me, and I hate how he can still rile me up like no one else has ever been able to. The calm and in control Sabrina that I’ve cultivated through the years is a distant memory in his presence.
“You knew me once before, too,” I remind him, hoping the comment stings. “But you don’t know me anymore. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to pick up my daughters.”
“I bet you’re a tremendous mother,” he offers as I step back against the door. The thought of these versions of mecolliding in this very moment nearly causes me to sway under the pressure of it.
I stare at him, unsure of what response he wants from me, unable to give him anything.
“I made a lot of mistakes with you,Stellina.” He stares at the floor before meeting my gaze. “I wasn’t who you wanted me to be. But I am now.”
I want to roll my eyes, to hit him, to tell him to fuck off and to never contact me again. But I don’t. I offer him my apathy instead.
“In the words made famous by Professor Pugliesi, ‘I don’t care,’” I say, shoving through the door, prepared to never see him again.
Abraham could pretend that his words could rewrite the past and grant us a new beginning. He could pretend that he changed and that I was sitting around waiting for him all this time.
He doesn’t know.
I stopped waiting for him a long time ago.
Once upon a time, I fell in love with a man who wore many masks.
When it was time for him to stay, he left.
And he took his masks with him.
CHAPTER SIX
BITCH, TELL ME EVERYTHING
PAST
Ithink I was the first person out of my seat once we were dismissed. Which was a full twenty minutes earlier than scheduled. Even if he hadn’t written it out in big bold letters, I would’ve come to the conclusion that he doesn’t really care.
As the students file out of the lecture hall, I press myself against the wall beside the door, trying to make sense of what the fuck just happened.
There isnoway that’s the same man who insisted that we were the last two romantics in the city the night before. Him? A romantic?
“We’re either destined or doomed to meet again.”
I rub my hands over my face at the thought of his parting words to me last night.
Doomed, that’s for damn sure.
The last students trickle out and I almost expect him to walk out with them, so I bolt. Anything to avoid having to speak to that asshole.
All of his flirty glances and smooth words taunt me as I rush away, wanting nothing more than to never see him again.
I head toward the registrar’s office, determined to see if there are any other classes available. At this point, I’d take anything.
Only ten minutes later, I’m storming back out of the office, determined to make Professor Pugliesi keep me in his class.
It’d only taken one very exhausted woman to announce to the hordes of people waiting to be seen that there was no room for any changes in courses with the sudden interest in summer classes.
Which is apparently Professor Asshole’s fault. People were dying to sit with the man who’d been responsible for some of the most prominent films of our time.
And now he has the power to ruin my chances of graduating early.
I refuse to have my timeline derailed because he wants to be a power-hungry dickhead who likes to prey on unsuspecting women at tiny cinemas that show classic and foreign films.Fuck, I don’t even make sense anymore.