Guess That Is How I Know You

Chapter XXVI

February 1, 2017

"Are you sure you don't want me to change this? You had the highest score. The choice was yours to make not hers. All you have to do is tell me you want to be her assistant and I can assign you to her."

That was how my semester started. Eve was convinced Cecilia had gone against the rules and assigned me to someone other than herself. It was a plausible thing to think, considering everything.

"For the sixth time today, I swear to you it was my choice. I'm starting to feel you're the one trying to get rid of me." I had to admit Evelyn resistance to accept what I was saying was amusing.

"Hey, congrats, heard you had the highest score of the past four years or so." I heard from behind me.

I did not have to turn around to know the young professor Fisher was being as chipper as the last time I had seen him.

"Gotta say, I actually thought you would have gone with Bailey though." We were in the professor's lounge because Eve had made me follow her there so that she could give me a few things I would be needing in order to babysit her for the year, such as keys to both her office and classroom.

"I'm starting to feel like I should have." I joked looking in Fisher's direction as I felt my arms being swamped with Evelyn's basics as she liked to say.

The light tone of the room did not last though. Even Fisher knew something was off between Cecilia and I—I wondered if Amy had opened that big mouth of hers.

"See you around. Oh, and tell Amy I said hi... I mean... if you see her." Same old childlike Fisher stuttered as he walked towards the door.

"Morning." I could hear it in her voice, having me there made Cecilia feel uncomfortable. I half smiled her way before thanking Eve for the overload of stuff I would then have to carry all day long.

As I left the professor's lounge, I could faintly hear Evelyn comment how surprised she was to see Cecilia there. I had not realized until then how unconventional it was for her to be there.

She was always late and never bothered to step foot in that place but guess new year, new habits—had she bothered to show up early because she knew I would be there?

Before I could get too much in my head, I felt someone side hugging me. From the corner of my eye, reflecting on the glass door, I saw Cecilia roll her eyes­—I wonder whether she saw me looking at her through the reflection.

"They said Professor Bailey was here and told me I could come over and talk to her. Wish me luck." Brianna clearly unaware of the attention she was receiving from the far end of the room confided as she showed me her trembling hands—guess that would be a nice way to describe a first encounter with Cecilia Bailey.

"Good luck. Trust me, you will need it." I whispered in her ear before going past her, "Catch me up after first period, I have a feeling I could give you some pointers."

By the time I turned around to see Cecilia's reaction to my comment, her face was mostly red, and I had a feeling it was not my charm getting a blush out of her.

It did not take long for my phone to light up as Cecilia's name popped up along a text reading "could you not?"

The nerves that woman had.

Instead of acknowledging what she said, I texted back a "see you in MC, boss." I knew then that she had totally forgotten I still had a whole other semester as her assistant at the mediation center.

Unlike Cecilia's, Evelyn taught the afternoon classes, so after my last period of the day all I wanted to do was shower before I could get back to campus to introduce myself to her students.

I do not know what I had expected of my first day as a PA, but I surely did not expect Eve to talk so highly of me to her students. Before her first class was over, I had already fifteen or so students ask me for my email or phone number—good thing she had advised me to get a new number to give the students, God only knows how many of them might end up sending me midnight texts pleading for help on the eve before her tests.

"You sure have a way of boosting someone's ego. Half your students think I'm the human version of Google when it comes to Family Law now." I mockingly complained once Evelyn's last class was over.

"Cecilia told me I should appreciate getting her all-time best former student as my assistant. She spoke so highly of you I'm actually starting to think you are just that good in bed and that was the only appropriate way she found of confiding that." I could hear the laugh lacing her words.

"Eve, I appreciate you in more ways than I care to explain, and because of that I will ask nicely. Can we please just avoid talking about her at all?" I do not think she was expecting me to react like that.

The pain was still too fresh, and I was honestly just starting to come to terms it would never cease feeling like that.

"Talking of her hurts. Seeing her hurts. Thinking of her hurts. Not thinking of her sometimes feels like it hurts just as much. I honestly don't know how to cope. It is one thing to be dumped when everything is going to shit. But that was not the case, I was just starting to accept it would never end, she was it."

That was the first time I had said how I felt out loud since the day I met Miranda in the coffee shop. "She still means that for me. To be fair, I think what hurts most of all is knowing I am not it for her."

By the time I was done ranting we were already far from the law building and near Evelyn's parking spot. I could see the sky turning a mixture of pink and orange, I could almost smell the colors dancing among the clouds. That comforting feeling was the only thing keeping my tears at bay.

"I'm sorry, honey. I've reached an age that makes me see every love story of a twenty-something person like you as not such that big of a deal, but I know it's not a fair representation of how you felt for her." That motherly tone again, it had been a while, "Or how she feels for you for the matter."

I did not have enough time to react to what had just been thrown on my face before she parked her way out of there.

I was still standing beside Evelyn's spot long after she had driven away when I fully grasped what she had just told me, and all I could think was, what the hell did Evelyn Mace know?

Maybe, just maybe, the doctor was right all along, and stupid Cecilia ended things out of a misplaced fear that I would feel the same she had once felt towards my mother—the more I think about that, the more grossed off I get.

Woman, if one day, by some crazy sequence of events, you ever end up reading the shit I write in this journal, I hope you realize just how freaking complicated you are—like I would ever let her get a finger close to this.

Remi

Remember when I said you were so afraid of following your own heart, you ended up breaking three? Guess you have figured out by now, whose the third one belonged to.