“Professor Joseph!”
I don’t hear the shout the first time. It’s a bit hard, over the music and the drunk graduate students standing huddled around sticky, worn tables and the clink of glasses, beer frothing and foaming over the rims.
“Professor Joseph!”
I hear it the second time, though. I glance over my shoulder when I shrug on my coat and spot not one, not two, but three of my grad students, who, judging by the rosy hue on all their cheeks and shining eyes, have had a few too many of the three-dollar beers.
“Do you have to leave?” Salome, the one in the middle, whines. On a good day, she can make a convincing argument to counter just about anything, but today, her words tumble together into one long, almost intelligible string.
“Right now? Yes. I need to get home.” I give her a flat smile.
I don’t mind the conversation—but I’m trying to spare her. I know what I’d feel like if I woke up the morning after a nightat the Grad Club, realizing I’d drunkenly spoken to one of my professors for too long.
But not everyone’s brains are as mean as mine.
“No,” she pouts, tipping her head back before levelling me with wide, unfocused puppy dog eyes. “Leave the program! We’re going to miss you.”
“Adjunct Professor.” I lift my palm, moving it up and down in space like I’m holding the merit of position—all my worth there—before raising my other, sending it skyrocketing past. “Assistant Professor. I think you know which is better.”
But my palm holding up my current role has all this other baggage they can’t see.
It’s weighed down by these impossibly heavy things, anchoring it to the floor and making just about anything in the entire world better than staying here for a moment longer.
A boy with golden-brown hair and grey eyes who used to love me.
A girl who loved him back and wanted a life with him so desperately she’d have followed him to the ends of the earth.
One hand holds a life marred by Bohdan Novotnak.
The other holds a fresh start.
“Boo!” Salome shouts, gesturing downwards with her thumb before knocking her beer over and sending the entire group of them jumping back so their boots don’t get splashed.
Holding my hand up, I wrinkle my nose with a small smile and take the opportunity to duck out while they try to mop up the deluge.
All the music and all the shouts fade, nothing more than the muffled thump of dull bass once the door closes behind me.
The University of Washington campus is about to be beautiful, objectively speaking—we’re right on the precipice of spring, which means the cherry trees are about to blossom.
Twisted branches with their peeling bark are about to be hidden behind clouds of white and pale pink.
This was never where I wanted to be—I’d always planned on moving back home to Toronto after I graduated from Michigan State.
But I ended up here all the same, and it felt a bit like something out of a movie—how beautiful the campus was, blossoms pluming along the trees, with ancient brick buildings peeking out from behind them. Bohdan’s hand in mind, eyes on me and nodding quietly, sunlight hitting the planes of his face, studying me in that funny sort of stoic way only he ever did while I showed him around.
I thought it was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen back then.
I can’t really stand the sight of it now. I keep my eyes down, firmly on the toes of my worn leather boots. Each step is one step closer to leaving this place, this godforsaken city where it gets harder and harder to breathe each day because Bohdan took all the oxygen with him when he left.
Alone. Left behind. Disposable.
Each word echoes alongside the sound of my heels hitting the stone.
I stop abruptly, wincing when I reach into my pocket for my headphones.
“Shut up,” I whisper, but it’s not quite loud enough and the melody continues, with colourful new notes.
Abandoned. Awful. Not enough and too much all at the same time.
