Some Day One Day (Maylor AU)

Chapter 92

Brian scoffed. "Are you serious?"

"Well, you clearly don't want to be with me, Brian, so why don't you go be with someone you actually do want to be with?" Chrissie answered harshly, turning around to face her husband with a defeated sigh. The pivot of her heel was cold, sharp, something that the professor could feel all the way across the room that suddenly seemed bigger than it did before. "It's not like you staying here is going to make you a hero or something."

He swallowed the lump that formed in his throat, choking out a strained, "I thought you wanted—"

"It doesn't matter what I want anymore, Brian!" the headmistress shouted, startling the baby girl in her arms whose red, puffy eyes became swollen with a fresh set of tears. "There's no way we can go back to the way things used to be. It's just not going to happen!"

The blush in the professor's cheeks burned the hottest it had all morning. "Then what is going to happen?" he asked, his voice tense.

"I don't know," Chrissie muttered, shaking her head and bouncing on the balls of her feet to try and soothe the upset infant crying into her shoulder. Her attention shied away from Brian's like the plague, for if she allowed herself to witness the fear that lay behind those hazel eyes, she'd realize that she too was afraid and would start crying herself. "All I know is that I can't keep doing this with you, and I'm sure you feel the same way about me. It's not fair to either of us."

A sense of déjà vu washed over Brian, the way their conversation had played out sounding eerily similar to the one he had with Roger the night before, as well as the one they had the night she decided to leave him and take Liz with her.

It disheartened the professor to think about how far the two of them had come from a year ago, when they couldn't get enough of one another; when they looked forward to seeing each other either in passing or in secret; when they thought their bliss would last forever. Now that belief seemed foolish. Who could ever have predicted that this was where they would be, in love with other people but incapable of admitting that in fears that it would jeopardize their reputation, their image?

"I could really use a cigarette right now," Brian mumbled under his breath, hanging his head and slipping his hands into his pockets.

"Me too," Chrissie admitted, glancing down at her daughter who had started to calm down but still had a ways to go. Her gaze then shifted over to her husband, who'd resorted to kicking the floor as a distraction from the impending awkward silence. Suddenly, an idea popped into her head and she murmured, "Hang on a minute."

She handed off Liz to the professor, who ripped his hands out of his pockets to grab hold of her before her mother slipped past him through the doorway. Brian spun around and watched Chrissie disappear into their bedroom. He couldn't see her after that, but he could hear her shuffling through their drawers. Moments later, she emerged from the room with a small box in her hands and an uncharacteristically mischievous expression slathered across her face.

"What's that?" he asked warily, his eyebrow raised in suspicion.

She smirked. "You'll see. Just put her down and then meet me in your car."

Before Brian could interrogate her further, Chrissie escaped downstairs without another word—the pattering of her feet down the steps and through the foyer quickly replaced with the swift slam of the front door. The professor jumped at the sound, pulling a gasp out of the baby girl in his arms. Thankfully, she didn't break down into tears. There was just something about being in—who she knew to be—her father's arms that provided her with a sense of security, a sense of safety, comfort. There was something about holding her too that instilled in Brian the same feeling, and although looking deep into her eyes reminded him of the possibility that she might not be his, he knew that he would always be her father—regardless of what happened after tonight.

With his magic touch, Brian was able to rock Liz to sleep, laying her gently down in her crib and tiptoeing out of the room so as to not wake her. He even took steps that were as light feathers down the stairs and closed the front door behind him with care, making it so that the only sound produced by his exit were the soft creak of the stairs beneath his feet and the muted click of the lock as the door settled in place. The professor sighed in relief and spun around to see that the windows of his car had fogged up, his wife in the passenger seat with her head tilted back and her eyes closed; her arm resting on the car door with a burning cigarette pinched between her fingers.

At first, Brian didn't put two and two together, equating the steamy windows to the difference in temperature outside his vehicle and inside, but as soon as he opened the driver's side door and released the pungent cloud of smoke into the atmosphere, he realized just exactly what was in the box that Chrissie had retrieved.