Finally, the door opened. I looked up, and there he was. David was dressed in his khaki slacks and a blue button-down shirt. He had his nose in a stack of papers until he detected my presence in the room.
“Drew.” He said it in a tone of confusion when he saw me. His face displayed the same emotion.
“Hey.” I smiled and got up from the couch, walked toward him. He closed the door behind him.
“What are you doing here?” He went to the desk and set the stack of papers down.
“I wanted to surprise you. I haven’t seen you in a week. I missed you.”
I expected some kind of response of reciprocity, but instead, I got nothing. He looked at me dead in the eyes, then lowered his head and rubbed his hand against his forehead. I heard him sigh.
“What’s wrong?” I took a step closer, now feeling confused myself.
“Drew.” He pulled his hand away from his face. His voice was low. “What the hell are you thinking?”
My body tensed up.
“What do you mean?”
“You came here in the middle of one of my workshops? You sneaked back into my office and waited for me?”
“Yes.”
“And while you’re dressed like that?” He gestured toward my dress, and without thinking, my arms crossed over my abdomen. He continued: “You know, I told my father about you. Over Thanksgiving. And I guess maybe he was right, telling me I’ve been an idiot. What am I doing, dating one of my students, risking all of this?”
A vague understanding dawned on me then. This was why David had been acting distant toward me since Thanksgiving. His father had disapproved of David’s romantic pursuits, had caused David to begin questioning his relationship with me.
“What if someone saw you?” David’s voice was now many increments louder, but what scared me more was the sharpness of each word. I took a step back. “What if someone had come back here before I was done on stage? What if Dr. Hammond had been here tonight and came back here with me after the workshop?”
“I’m sorry—”
Even louder: “You sure as hell should be sorry. Damnit, Drew.” And in a forceful motion, he shoved the stack of papers off the desk, sending them flying across the room.
I felt my hand flick up to my mouth. I stood there, the core of my body quivering, fat tears forming at the rims of my eyes. A voice in my head said, If I speak, will he hit me? and I didn’t know the answer.
After a second, he spoke again, now in hushed voice.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Drew.” He pressed his hands to his temples. “I just can’t believe you would do that to me. I thought you understood. We have to keep things on the downlow. For now. We have to be careful. My reputation is important, Drew. My reputation is everything. I’m going into politics, for God’s sake. That’s the whole point of volunteering to do these fucking workshops—my reputation. You understand that, don’t you?”
I didn’t respond. The truth was, it sounded like an exaggeration to me, but there was no way I was going to voice that opinion. Even if I had been brave enough to say something, I wasn’t sure I was capable of speech in that moment. And I still didn’t know the answer to the question that had materialized in my mind moments earlier.
David stepped toward me, and I stood there like a terror-stricken animal, not knowing what to do. Then, he put his hands on my shoulders, softly. When I still didn’t respond, he used one hand to stroke my face and then tilt my chin up so that we made eye contact.
“Hey,” was all he said.
“I’m sorry.” My voice was congested and barely audible.
“Just—don’t do this again, Drew. I don’t want my father to be right. I want to be with you, but we have to be careful. You understand, don’t you?”
I nodded my head, feeling his hand press against my chin as I did so.
“You know what? I can lock the door. We can hang out in here for a bit. Then we’ll leave separately. Okay?”
I nodded my head again.
He locked the door, messily gathered up the scattered pages on the floor, and returned them to the desk. I still hadn’t moved, as though my feet had been glued to that spot on the carpet. He put his hand around my waist and guided me to the couch. We sat down.
“How was your Thanksgiving?”
His question sounded as though it had been spoken in a foreign language, it seemed so strange to me right then. It took me a couple minutes to process the shift that was taking place. Now it was time to reconnect, liked I’d been hoping to do for days. Now it was time to be together. Only it wasn’t going how I’d pictured it would, not in any way.
“Good,” I finally said something in between sniffling. “How was yours?”
“Mine was good. You know, I forgot how incredibly beautiful you are.”
He brushed a hand along my arm.
“This dress is gorgeous on you. If people saw you wearing that and waiting for me in here . . . Well, you can’t blame me for thinking they’d get the wrong idea.”
“I’m sorry, David. I missed you.”
“I know.”
“I wanted to see you and catch up, hear how your week’s been.” My brain was finally able to find the words it wanted and piece them together.
“We’ll have time to talk about it later,” he said. “Maybe this weekend. We can’t stay in the office very long.”
“Oh. Okay.”
He took my chin in his hand once again and directed my face so that we were looking into each other’s eyes. I was glad when he did it this time. I was able to focus on the shape of his eyes, his brows, his lips. I was able to relive that feeling I had always experienced before when I saw his perfect features.
His hands still on my face, he kissed me. The kiss was slow and hot. For a split second I wondered if I was feeling residual heat from his anger—then I shoved the thought away. My body loosened up. His hands relocated to my hips, his fingers gripping into me, hot like his lips, almost painful. My hands found the back of his neck. He eased me further down on the couch, positioning himself on top of me. I was riveted by him, just like I had been from the start. For the next fifteen minutes, we kissed there on the couch, his lips on mine, his hands on me, and I was electrified, I was invigorated, I was okay again.
Chapter 10
The last day of Fall Term. Finally, it was here.
I had submitted all of my final assignments that were due. I had gotten through all of my final exams. There was only one thing left for me to do, and it had been scheduled for Friday, the very last day of the term, at the latest time slot possible.
It was for the clinical component of the term. Those abysmal, painstaking clinicals that never seemed to end. And that was actually very true; the clinicals would never really end. I would have them throughout my next two terms of school. And after that, my work as a nurse would begin. Clinicals for life.
We were done with clinical observations and projects for the term, but there was one last obstacle every student had to get though in order to meet our educational requirements. Every nursing student was to meet with their clinical supervisor for a performance review. And if the supervisor felt you had not demonstrated adequate skills and knowledge, you would be required to repeat this clinical section. In other words, you would not graduate in the spring. You would be one clinical section behind, completing your final section over Summer Term.