Page 97 of One More Time
She wondered where he was, what he was doing. In weak, quiet moments, she looked up his tour schedule and his likely time zone. She did pointless math to determine if he was asleep, or eating breakfast, or on stage somewhere. She missed his face. His tattoos. His laugh. It was an ache, a deeply hollow sensation like something inside her had been carved away.
It had only been two weeks since Vegas, but those fourteen days had dragged. Lucy kept telling herself that the feelings of loss and grief would pass eventually. It would just take time. Meanwhile, she had to go on with her life.
She had gone through all the mail that had accumulated while she was away. She’d answered all the emails sent to her. She put the trash in front of the house for pickup. Went to yoga class and the grocery store. And it had all felt so dim, a sad gray imitation of her life before.
Lucy didn’t allow herself to wallow in it, though. She had requests for external review to write. A committee meeting to prepare for. Things to be approved and signed. Class materials to finalize. She was busy. And bored. She was back on campus. And lonely.
An empty nest had sounded so liberating. The house all to herself. Chloe wouldn’t drop by with friends unannounced while Lucy was wandering around the house in her bra and panties. Chandler wouldn’t ‘accidentally’ eat the entire contents of her fridge. Her time was her own. She was free. It felt like a suit that was too small, too close and confining. But eventually she’d get her bearings and it would all be fine. It would befine.
Lucy walked to her office. Up the small hill from her home and down again into her beloved little university town. The humidity of the summer morning pressed in on her from all sides, so she stopped to grab an iced coffee from Starbucks. She sipped it as she meandered through the tree-lined quad at the heart of campus.
It was the long way to work. She could have taken her car. It would have been more comfortable, but also faster. Walking helped fill the hours.And it’s good exercise, she reminded herself for the three-hundredth time.Good. Exercise.
Lucy walked up the cracked stone steps to her office building, a stately brick structure built in 1882. She pulled open the enormous wooden door and waited for the charm of Crestwell Hall to envelop her in its warm embrace. All she could see, though, were the yellowing marble tiles and the paint chipping from the baseboards.
The wooden steps up to her third-floor office were worn with age. Their smooth undulations had always been a comfort, a physical reminder of the many thousands of feet that had tread the path to education and enlightenment over hundreds of years. This day, though, with her sweaty thighs rubbing together as she ascended, they only seemed troublesome and dangerous. She told herself that the feeling was also temporary, a consequence of having been lately in Las Vegas. That was it. That was all.Everything in Las Vegas is so new and fresh and glossed to a high sheen. It’s only the juxtaposition. That’s all.
Lucy unlocked her office door and took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of books and wood polish. She didn’t have a window. Which was a shame. When she made full tenure, she’d request a different office. She couldn’t immediately think of one that would be open. All the other tenured professors had claimed them already over the years. But one of them would probably die at some point. Eventually she’d get a window.
She sat in her specially ordered ergonomic chair behind the enormous wooden desk that was slightly too big for the space and flipped open her laptop. She slung her canvas work bag emblazoned with a UFO and ‘Get in, Loser,’ abirthday present from Chloe. She flicked on the desk lamp and tried to find the right words to self-motivate.
Lucy reminded herself that she was good at her job. It had value. It made sense. Once she got back into the rhythm it would be good again. She was throwing herself back into her goal and it was a good thing. Maybe, eventually, she’d figure out how to not be terrible at relationships. In the meantime, there was work to be done. There were things to accomplish.
Lucy sipped her iced coffee and checked the email that she’d already gone over while she ate breakfast at her kitchen table.
‘Knock, knock,’ said a female voice along with a gentle tap at the doorframe.
A messy topknot of blonde curls peeked through the partially open office door.
‘Olivia!’ Lucy trilled. ‘Good to see you.’
‘Hi, Dr. McManis,’ the young woman said as she entered the room.
‘How many times do I have to tell you to call me Lucy?’ she joked.
‘How many times do I have to tell you that therearen’tenough times to get me to do that?’ Olivia quipped back.
Lucy chuckled. ‘Fine. Have a seat. How’s your summer been?’
Olivia slipped the backpack off her shoulders and placed it at her feet as she sat down in the chair on the opposite side of the desk. ‘It’s been good,’ she said. ‘Really good.’
‘Get through that comm symposium, okay?’
‘Yeah, it was interesting. A nice break from summer classes.’
‘Good.’ Lucy beamed.
Olivia was one of Lucy’s special students. A twenty-year-old young woman who was majoring in American Cultural Studies and had shown an interest in pursuing academia from the first class she’d taken from Lucy her freshman year. Lucy was her academic advisor, but also (Lucy hoped) something of a friend. Which is why she felt comfortable asking, ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah,’ Olivia replied weakly, looking at the coffee mug of pens on Lucy’s desk.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah,’ she repeated. ‘It’s just … I wanted to talk to you about something.’
Olivia finally looked up and Lucy could see that she was nervous, maybe even a bit anxious.
‘Sure, what’s up?’
