Guess That Is How I Know You

Chapter XVII

August 27, 2016

It has been 27 days since I have had any peace of mind regarding my love life. But then again, who is counting?

27 days of feeling like an impostor in my own relationship.

27 days of not knowing what to do.

27 days since I realized I still feel about the same whenever she gets near me.

27 days of trying to do my best to be someone I am not.

It is not easy trying to be someone else, but I felt a sense of obligation toward Kat's feelings. The only way I thought to keep her from getting hurt—by me at least—, was by trying my best to be this person she seemed to think I was.

After all, how was I supposed to explain to the girl I just started dating that I am confused about our relationship?

I knew what it meant to come clean. It meant hurt, and confusion, and chaos. Even if we had just started dating, she would, in the very minimum, feel used—I should have realized she was in too deep already.

Kat was everything I needed, so why the hell was it so hard for me to focus on that? Instead, all my mind could think of was the one person who should not be invading my thoughts to begin with.

But she was not making it any easier on me.

Miranda being out of the picture, meant Cecilia no longer had someone keeping her from doing whatever she wanted to do. And apparently, for the past 27 days, what she wanted to do was to connect.

Lucy said I was seeing the Cecilia she grew up with for the first time. When she told me that, it got me thinking, how many versions of themselves could a person have?

At first, I met the professional Cecilia, the one who wanted nothing to do with a student, I even remember thinking, in the very beginning, that maybe that was all I was supposed to know about the woman.

After a while though, I came to meet all this whole package of other versions of her. The heartbroken Cecilia, the cold Cecilia, the caring Cecilia, the possessive Cecilia, the shattered Cecilia, the loving Cecilia...

There was a plentitude of facades of the same person, I often got myself wondering which one was the predominant one, which one was the Cecilia Bailey. I hoped it would be the one in the frame she had on her living room.

That one I did not have a simple name for, for it was so complex, even if it was only a fraction of a second captured into a picture. So, with no better name for it, I decided jut to call it, the one from the frame.

The one from the frame was not the one I had come to know the past 27 days, but something in me felt this new version was the one that would lead me for my favorite version of Cecilia, the one I had only seen but never met, the one from the frame.

This version I had been getting to know though, this version was just as complex. It was always warm, never cold, always present, never distant, filled only with goodness, there was not one single drop of devilishness in it. I was almost sure it was havens sent.

But this version showed me something new in Cecilia. Jealousy—okay, maybe there was this one small drop of devilishness in the end.

I had seen the professor being possessive over me back when I had a thing with Nay. Yet jealousy was a new concept.

I could see for the first time that she genuinely cared about the fact I was dating someone, not because she was not getting the attention she thought to be entitled to, but rather because I was getting the attention I deserved—or did not deserve—, from someone else other than her.