Page 98 of Serpentine Valentine
But so was I.
And I would not be with a woman who wouldn’t put me first. I’d spent a lifetime with a mother who couldn’t and wouldn’t do that, and I refused to let history repeat itself.
If Lex wanted me, she’d have to come for me.
“Keep your face always toward the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you”
––Walt Whitman
Luna
It was finally Halloween.
A year since Lex’s assault.
It was impossible not to think about her as I went about my day. It was a Friday, so thankfully, I had classes to distract me, but she wasn’t in our shared Tragedies class, and her absence bothered me.
Was she okay?
How could she be okay on a day like today? Even with all her demons punished, they’d inflicted wounds that would never heal. Still, it heartened me to think of Dylan Morgan behind bars. They’d collected a sample of his DNA and matched it to the sample they’d taken from Lex when she was issued a rape kit at the hospital the day after her assault. He was awaiting trial, but there was no doubt he’d be imprisoned for what he’d done.
My mother was another matter. She’d officially resigned as president of Acheron University before they could formally fire her, and the offerfrom Cambridge had been quickly swept off the table. The house we’d lived in on campus was now the home of the new interim president while the selection committee searched for a permanent replacement. Mom had moved back to California to take a job at a small community college in her hometown.
I only knew this through the grapevine. We hadn’t spoken since I told her to get out of my hospital room, and after she’d found out my role in her disgrace, I didn’t expect to hear from her ever again.
It hurt. No matter how awful I knew her to be, she was still my momandmy dad, my only living blood relative. She’d done terrible things for personal gain and used me like a puppet, but there had been good moments too. Bedtime stories cuddled up in her big comfy bed, hot tea shared at the kitchen table while she helped me with my homework. Christmas mornings, Easter Sundays, and Thanksgiving dinners, just the two of us.
I relished the memories because I knew I’d never have those moments again. It took some adjusting, realizing that a person who had shaped me and raised me to be a woman I was proud of could also be a villain in so many other people’s lives.
The truth was, the loneliness was hard to bear.
I’d always been popular, surrounded by my peers and boyfriends, my mother and her colleagues.
Now, after Lex, I’d lost a lot of my old friends like Flora and Courtney and their lot. I still had Pierce, but he was seeing a new girl and spent a lot of his time out of the apartment with her.
I’d also lost Lex and her sisters.
Even though we’d only been together a short time, the loss was considerable. I’d felt more at home on Charity Lane with the Gorgon sisters than I ever had anywhere else. Their close bond, theatricality, sense of fun, and romanticism called to my own heart, and it panged wheneverI thought of them.
Needless to say, in the few days since the press conference and ensuing shitstorm on campus, Lex hadn’t come to claim me.
The strange thing about heartbreak was that it wasn’t a single hammer hit to the organ. A one-time shattering. It was ongoing. A withering with time, a flux and contraction of fruitless hope paired with the bitter reality of unrealized dreams dying slow deaths.
It hurt the most.
Because I’d seen a future with Lex so clearly in my mind’s eye, more clearly than I’d ever seen my future alone.
Long nights staying up too late listening to Debussy and Bach, studying until our vision blurred before taking out our restlessness on each other’s soft bodies. Mornings in the den of her bed, cocooned from the world together, her husky voice soft as she read to me from Homer and Sappho. Applying to Cambridge together. Getting a dog one day, or maybe a cat. Having kids if that was what she wanted, and suddenly, I conjured an image of a little girl with Lex’s dark curls, and my heart quivered with longing.
I sighed as I sat on the window ledge in Pierce’s apartment kitchen. A single lamp illuminated the space, highlighting my total loneliness.
Halloween on a Friday night and I was alone in an apartment that wasn’t even mine.
Music played softly through the speakers, and combined with the book in my hand, I was trying to stay busy. But not even the words of Shakespeare, Lex’s favoriteThe Merchant of Venice, could keep me entertained.
Click.
I startled, looking through the window to see if a bird had landed on the ledge, but nothing was there.
