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When I flee the coffee shop, I don’t know what to feel or think. I’m still a bit raw from the admissions he just dragged out of me, and I’m a little worried about what he might manage to draw out if I saw him again.
The truth is, before I met Silvan and he turned my whole world topsy-turvy, I was starting to develop a bit of a crush on Professor DeMarco. I literally fantasized about an opportunity to have a moment alone with him, but with the nervous feeling he gave me, I also wasn’t sure I’d survive it.
I feel like I barely made it out alive today. I don’t manage to entirely calm myself down until I make it back to my dorm, but I’m distracted enough thinking about Professor DeMarco’s apparent desire for my company that I forget to be paranoid about the possibility of Silvan lurking in my hallway.
He’s not there anyway.
Once I return to my empty dorm and secure the lock, I feel a flutter of hope that maybe this is it.
Maybe it’s over.
I can’t explain why he would give up on me so abruptly when he just sent a car for me this morning, but I’ve been abandoned at the drop of a hat before, so I don’t feel terribly shocked.
Just relieved.
Sure, maybe in a deep, dark corner of the most broken part of my psyche is a tiny flare of disappointment. To be chased so relentlessly and then dropped like nothing would be jarring and confusing, but what prisoner questions their luck when the shackles come undone?
I wait all night for him to reappear in my life, but there’s no text. No car.
Mom comes to pick me up and take me to her house, where we have dinner, and I get my car back.
I watch the headlights in my rearview and still feel a sense of paranoia as I make my way back to the dorm, but there’s no sign of him. When I turn out all my lights and climb into bed, I don’t even have that same feeling I’ve had before of his presence lingering in the air around me.
I feel free.
I don’t know why, but I don’t care.
It was an odd chapter in my life, that’s all.
Now I can turn the page and see what comes next.
When I close my eyes, a sense of anticipation I haven’t felt since the very start of the school year fills me. Maybe I even feel a little lighter because of what I told Professor DeMarco at the coffee shop. I don’t know.
All I know is I feel a little bit like who I was supposed to be before people started breaking me, and it feels damn good.
Chapter Sixteen
Sophie
I walk to school on Wednesday, and then I walk home.
There’s no sign of Silvan, no sign of Hugh.
If I feel slightly abandoned, I tell myself that’s insane and shove it down.
I’m free.
That’s a good thing.
No more looming presence or feeling of my space not being entirely mine.
It’s as if Silvan has disappeared.
As if he’s a monster I dreamed up, banished by the light of day.
I’m happy about it.
Happy.
