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“Then the best you can do is forget about the whole thing. Forget about the kiss. He’s banking on you feeling guilty over it. Don’t worry, he won’t do anything,” she reassured me. “His goal is to keep you around; getting you fired is against his interests.”
That, more than anything else, restored my feeble sense of security.
I was safe—for now.
Later that night, I sat alone in my immaculate bedroom to finish grading my students’ math homework. My bed was made, my plants were watered, my clothes were ironed and tucked neatly into my closet, and everything on my desk was in its proper place.
Neatness. Order. Organization. Stability. Those four pillars of my life held everything else up. As long as I could keep them in place, I knew everything would stay where it needed to be and keep Disgrace at bay.
There was nowhere for her to hide when everything was clean.
The muffled timbre of Effie’s voice reverberated through the walls, reminding Disgrace that I wasn’t alone. She couldn’t pounce on me with Effie nearby.
I happily scratched a crimson mark through one of my students’ attempts at a quadratic equation, then paused. Something tickled the back of my mind—had I forgotten something? Oh, right:
Ten things I wanted in my ideal man.
Now that I was in this safe space with my sister nearby, the task didn’t loom overhead. It didn’t feel like such a chore.
It felt like it might even befun.
The seed of inspiration took root in the back of my mind as I worked my way through the stack of papers, scratching out every imperfection with glee. When I had a neat pile of graded papers on the right, my eyes drifted to the leather-bound notebook on the left.
I shuffled the graded papers into my messenger bag, wiped a houndstooth-print rag over my glass desk to eliminate fingerprints, and cracked open my bullet journal.
The pages fanned before my eyes as I searched for a blank. Colorful diagrams, schedules, doodles, and graphs winked at me from the fluttering paper, filling me with a deep sense of satisfaction.
I’d been making progress, and these lists and diagrams were proof.
A blank page appeared and suddenly I didn’t know what to write or draw, let alone think. Usually, I began by drawing a bunch of boxes, connecting the dots, giving myself spaces to fill. Requirements to meet.
I tried to turn off my need to control things, but as soon as I began to let loose, Disgrace licked her lips hungrily.
A list. Ten things.
That’s all I had to do. There was no right or wrong answer.
Even though I knew that in my heart, I knew in my head that somehow I’d get it wrong. Somehow, I’d fall short of perfection.
I always did.
What had Dr. Silk said? Something about beginning with the things I liked about my ex. Or was it to start with the things I didn’t like?
Right. She said to write down the opposite of what I didn’t want.
I loaded ink into my pen, then twirled it in my fingers as I thought.
Grayson… what didn’t I like about him?
It was hard to poke holes in the flawless memory of him. I thought he was my everything—my legendary happily-ever-after.
The more I thought about him, the more the task gained weight. It was so simple: write ten things. Yet, with my anxiety wrapping her fingers around my throat, this simple task rapidly bloomed into something impossible.
I dropped my pen on the desk with a clatter and stared at the blank page.
What didn’t I want?
For some reason, that rude man with the long hair and tattoos came to mind. The way he strode across the parking lot like he owned it; like he’d obliterate everything and everyone in his way.
