Lexa holds her chin up high as she walks through the halls of Polis, the college where she has been hired throughout the summer, thanks to her impeccable resume and a good word from her older cousin, Anya. With her twenty-seven winters she is fairly young for a college professor, though she graduated earlier than most do.
Her whole life she has worked as hard as she could and has strived to get everything as perfect as possible. Overall she accomplished quite a bit and yet in some areas she has failed entirely. During the summer her relationship of four years stranded, which was a painful blow. She used to think she would grow old with Costia someday, but it wasn't meant to be.
I can't do this anymore, Lex. You... us, I can't. I'm in love with someone else.
Perhaps she should have seen the red flags, but they say that love makes people blind and blind she was. The intimacy between them had reached an all-time low over the last half of their relationship and for the first half they weren't exactly all that intimate either. She did feel as if Costia was pulling away from her, though she ignored those feelings.
Their contact had been reduced to brief kisses here and there. Each time she would try to do something romantic to spice their love life, such as planning a candlelit dinner, Costia would barely respond to it. It was always chalked up to being tired or not feeling so well. The words Costia said to her on the day she broke up with her are words she will never forget.
She clears her throat, needing to concentrate on her job rather than her past. What happened in her past is irrelevant now, even though it most certainly caused her pain. Hearing Costia tell her she was in love with someone else cut through her, although there were things that were said that may have cut her even more.
In the beginning of their relationship she had been nervous and to be honest a tad insecure. She has been raised as a girl and that is perfectly fine because she is a woman, though she was born intersex, meaning she has male genitalia. At times she wasn't too happy about that, but she learned to see the positive sides, such as never being stuck with menstruating.
As she reaches the door of a small cafeteria which is intended for the professors, she glances down at her suit, wanting to make sure there are no obvious crinkles in her blouse. Not that there really could be any given she spent the better half of her morning ironing her blouse, hoping to make a positive first impression on her colleagues. She has never been much of a skirt and dresses type, always preferring to wear pants.
Once she's done running her hands down her blouse several times, she clears her throat, plasters a smile on her face which may look a tad fake and opens the door. In the middle of the small cafeteria there are three tables which can each fit up to eight people, assuming from the eight chairs that there are around each table. All she needed was one quick glance to count them. To the right there is a vending machine and a coffee maker.
"Good afternoon," Anya says with a warm smile. "Lexa, this is everyone. Everyone, this is Lexa."
"Hello, everyone," Lexa says politely. "As you all probably have heard by now, I am Miss Woods and I am new here."
"Welcome Miss Woods," an older man with thick rimmed glasses says as he holds a hand out to shake hers. "Miss Forest has told us all about you."
"Has she now?" Lexa asks as she shakes the man's hand. She's not surprised that her cousin informed them about her and knowing Anya, she knows that no private information has been shared.
"Just a little heads up, the vending machine gets stuck sometimes," Anya says to Lexa. "If it does, all you need to do is kick it."
Lexa is not a fan of vending machines. Besides, all she truly needs is a bottle of water to get through each day, which she will take with her when she leaves her house each morning. Every once in a while she may enjoy a cup of coffee, if that coffee maker is any decent. She is ready to throw herself completely into work.
