Page 48 of Damaged Professor

James was my first love, and when I lost him, my whole life ended for four full years. But he wouldn’t want that for me. He would want me to be happy. And Dylan makes me happy.

I just… Need to tell him a few things first.

When I step close enough to the couch, Dylan hooks an arm around my hip and pulls me close, tilting his head back to press a kiss to my lips. It’s sweet, and I can taste the champagne on it.

“Isn’t it a little early to be drinking?” I ask him, amused.

Dylan tells me, “Consider it a celebration.”

“A celebration,” I say, unable to keep the note of amusement out of my voice.

“That’s right. And one glass isn’t going to hurt either of us. In fact, a little hair-of-the-dog might help your headache. And you can’t tell me that you planned on going into any of your lessons today?” It’s said as a question. When I shake my head, he continues, “And I don’t have to teach my classes again until tomorrow. So I don’t see what the harm is in having a little bubbly now.”

Smiling, I sit down next to him. “I need to tell you something.”

He turns to me like he already knows what I’m going to say, nodding with this sort of confident look about him. “Alright, anything you need. Just let me know.”

I pause for a moment, not entirely sure how to say it. In the end, I go with, “Two things, actually. The first is that… I took a big gap before starting college for a reason.”

That seems to catch him off guard. “What?”

“After I graduated from high school—the very day of it, actually, my boyfriend, James, and I left for Europe. We knew we wanted a gap year before starting college and we wanted to spend that year together traveling through Europe. About six months into that trip James proposed to me. And I said yes,” I tell him, though I can’t look at Dylan when I say it. I stare into the champagne instead, marveling at the bubbles in the golden liquid. “And I was happy. We were in love, we wanted to see the world.”

Dylan is, thankfully, quiet while I explain myself to him.

I continue, a little more choked up, “But there was an accident. We were in a car wreck, hit by a drunk driver, right before we were supposed to come back to America, and James—” I pause. All this time, and it’s still hard to say it out loud. Taking a deep breath, I turn to face him more fully. “He didn’t make it.”

“Abby, I am so sorry—”

I cut him off by holding up my hand to stop him. “I spent a week recovering in the hospital, my family flew out to be by my side and mourn with me. It was during that week that I realized I couldn't come home and start my life just pretending that nothing happened. I couldn’t leave James’ memory behind in Europe. I needed time. So I didn’t come home, not for four years anyway. I lived in Europe bopping around as much as I could afford to, going from job to job, and place to place. I processed my trauma through my travels until I knew I was okay, ready to come back, and start college.”

I take a long swig of my champagne, then set the glass down on the table and exchange it for my phone instead. Still without looking at him—and trying to blink the tears out of my eyes—I tell him, “For a really long time, I thought that I was never going to find someone who I could love. I thought that that was it. That I would never be happy again. But Dylan, I’m happy when I’m with you. You make me so happy, that I just… I don’t want to lose you.”

“You aren’t going to lose me, Abby. There’s nothing that could make that happen.”

“But there could be.” Frowning, I pull up my email. With my free hand, I wipe the tears from my eyes. Then I pull up the pictures and I pass the phone over to Dylan. “Here. I wasn’t going to say anything about it at first. Last night, I thought that it would be easier to just pretend that there wasn’t anything between us, to stop—all of it. But I know that I can’t do that now. Not without regretting it for the rest of my life.”

And I don’t want to do that.

I lost James already. It’s a miracle that I was given a second chance to find a love like that. I won’t lose it again, not if I can help it.

He takes the phone from me, using his thumb to scroll through the incriminating pictures of us in his office that day, as well as the screenshot of the creepy email Sara sent me. There’s silence while he does it, but somehow it isn’t heavy. And I know I don’t have to worry that he’s going to say that we need to stop seeing each other—because he said it first.

He loves me.

He loves me, and he said it.

So I sit there, twiddling with my own fingers, waiting for him to finish looking through it. When he does, he passes the phone back to me, without saying a word.

I take it, staring at the last one that he’d been looking at. We look happy together in the picture. “I can’t imagine there being such a bitter person that would want to ruin something like this for other people.”

“I can’t either,” responds Dylan. “But I’m not going to keep playing games with her.”

“What are you going to do?” I ask him.

Dylan thinks on it for a moment. He picks up his flute of champagne and gives it a little bit of a swirl. The champagne splashes against the inside of the glass. He takes a sip of it, and then he takes another sip of it. Finally, he tells me, “Don’t worry about it, I’ll handle it.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

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