Guess That Is How I Know You

Chapter XXV

January 20, 2017

December was anything but easy, most of it was spent in sleepless nights and never-ending days. I was convinced time had as its personal mission to go slower just to add on to my angst.

The only bittersweet comfort I had was whenever I got to study for the assistant position Evelyn had pushed me into applying to. But every subject I revised served only to remind me of Cecilia's lessons.

Sometimes it almost felt as if she were behind me with her lips brushing against my ear as her voice invaded my mind.

It did not take me long to realize I was torturing myself applying for that position, yet I never felt like I wanted anything more in my life. I knew if I did not get to win her back, that position just might end up being the only way to keep her in my life.

Once I heard an old musician say love was made of passion, but if ever people stopped being rational about it, there was no saying who that love might end up hurting. I did not get it at the time, but how could I when I had never felt like that before?

This past month I finally realized what the musician meant by that. I was losing myself in my angst, not to mention I had a feeling deep in my gut she would hate the idea of having me as her assistant.

My mother decided to throw some sort of Christmas party on the eve before Christmas, and much like I expected it only served to remind me of Cecilia, half the people there were friends with the professor.

I took Amy as my plus one just so I would not feel half as out of place, but it did not take her long to abandon me for the much chipper company of Felix Fisher. If I was not in such a bitter mood I might have just laughed.

I envied the younger male professor for being able to get over his infatuation with the infamous Professor Bailey so quickly—but then again, that was all it ever was, infatuation.

After that fiasco of a night, I decided it was best to spend New Year's Eve in solitude. Which was just as bad a decision.

All night long, all I could do was wonder whether the professor would be kissing someone when the year turned. Had she gotten over me? Was I as easy to forget as she was at lingering on my mind?

And then it was a new year, and yet I seemed to be my same troubled self.

At least I did not have half as much time to overthink my love life once the year turned because the first two weeks of the year would determine if I would get the assistant position.

The day of the written test was the most nervous I had felt in my life—it's sufficient to say that up until that moment I had never struggled to get what I wanted academically speaking—, but it was also the day I met Brianna.

I am usually extremely competitive—I have a feeling Miranda would fully agree with that assessment—, so to think someone I was going against with on a selection process would turn up to be someone I actually enjoyed having around was odd. But I liked her enough to try and make conversation flow.

Apart from talking to Miranda, who seemed almost godsent after my sort of breakup, and talking once to Amy during Christmas, I had been by myself for a little over a month.

When Brianna tried to make conversation on the few minutes before the written test I was taken by surprise, for a split moment I had to remind myself how to be social.

I had seen her around enough times. She was a little taller than most of the other female students, which suited her just fine once I learned she used to model for magazines during her teens. I am ashamed to say though that I had mostly noticed her presence on campus for something much more trivial, her skin color.