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Dani 1
A few days before Christmas…
Once again, I was headed into the holiday season without a boyfriend. This pathetic, solitary state was nothing new for me, but I’d gotten so close this year. I had an actual boyfriend, Mike Crenshaw, my strategic communications professor.
We were in love.
We were soulmates.
We were our forever afters.
That was until his wife returned from her teaching sabbatical in Italy. A minor detail this communications guru neglected to communicate to me when we started on our exceedingly hot and sexy journey together.
I’d thought all our clandestine hookups were due to his being my professor, and teacher-student affairs were frowned upon. I could handle that kind of sneaking around. It added to the heat of our budding romance, especially when we did it in his office, on his desk, in the middle of the day, right before he had a meeting with another professor. In truth, our covert affair was merely to shield him from being caught by his traveling wife, who, I might add, would also be teaching at Hutton Hill U.
Could the situation get more pathetic?
I didn’t think so.
“I can’t believe he didn’t tell you,” Sarah said as she sat cross-legged on my bed in our colorful two-bedroom apartment just off campus. “I mean, he’s the head of the communications department.”
“Thenewhead of the communications department. Nobody knew he was married. He’s only been at school since the beginning of this semester. His profile doesn’t state his marital status, and none of his social media says anything about his personal life. The man is Fort Knox when it comes to anything not related to his career. He kept all that information to himself. He made it clear how he doesn’t like to talk about anything private on social media, so there was nothing about his being married. Not anywhere. And believe me, I looked.”
I’d been crying for two days straight, feeling totally and completely sorry for myself and hating men in general, especially older men. Mike was in his late-thirties, or at least that’s what I figured him for, but even his actual birthday was hidden.
Regrettably, it hadn’t been the first time I’d been dumped this year. There’d been a few other times, and all of them had been tied to other women. I was beginning to think I was a misinformation magnet. I could be easily fooled by charm and a hot male body, rather than truth and an average male body.
Who needed all those rippling muscles, narrow hips, and flat stomachs anyway? They weren’t the stuff relationships were made of. Hard bodies were merely window dressing for hard lies.
“Okay, so he was a player, and players run by their own rules,” Sarah declared, trying to soothe my breaking heart. “He’s scum. The lowest of lows. It wasn’t your fault. You had no way of knowing.”
I pulled a tissue out of one of the many open boxes next to me. I liked being prepared. “Oh yes, I did. I should’ve known better after my horrid year. I should’ve seen the warning signs. He told me I was his soul mate. My last two boyfriends used those exact words. That we were old souls and had been in a relationship several times before in our previous lives. That part was new, so I fell for it. He said we were destined for each other. Another tell I ignored. I ignored everything. It was all lies,” I told her, then sobbed a little more as I hugged one of my many pillows.
At least I’d managed to sit up in bed. It was the first time in twenty-four hours that I was in a partially vertical position, and Sarah had helped me get there. She was a true friend and a great roomy. We’d lived together for the last three years. From the first moments we’d each decided to live off campus before our senior year, we knew we’d be sharing an apartment. We’d always gotten along and had helped each other through all sorts of drama that not only included our various disastrous hookups with men, but when we’d get a bad grade on a test or a paper we’d worked our asses off to get right. Plus, there’d been general college bullshit that we each had to wade through, and knowing we had each other’s backs meant everything… as it did right now when my heart, once again, was getting stomped on like a country music dance floor.
“You’re better off without him. He’s a total shit,” she said, looking defiant. “I never liked him. His smile always seemed fake to me. Besides, it was crooked. I make it a point not to trust anyone with a crooked smile.”
“And you know people with crooked smiles?”
“No. Mike was the first, but he proves my point.”
Another thing I liked about Sarah… her over-the-top logic and self-guiding dogma which she stuck to, for the most part.
“Why didn’t you… you tell… me?” I asked between gut-wrenching sobs.
Oh yeah, I was going through those boxes of tissues now. The trash can next to my bed overflowed with tear-stained tissues.
“Like you would’ve listened? Let’s face it. When it comes to matters of the heart, we’re both easily swayed by attention and flattery.”
She had a point, and even though she was in a committed relationship with Gary Gardener now, she’d had her own share of miserable breakups.
She and Gary made an adorable couple. Gary had to be at least six feet tall, had a sixpack most men could only dream of, and a face that women were attracted to like moths to a light. Sarah, at twenty-three, was a full three years younger than me, and much more street savvy and worldly. For one thing, she’d started college at seventeen due to her having skipped an entire year of high school. She was way smarter than I deserved to be around. Of course, you’d never know it. She never, ever talked down to anyone, and despite knowing words I’d never heard of before, she rarely used them.
She’d grown up in a big city and had no intention of ever returning to that fast-paced, fast-food tempo. Central PA would be her new home, no matter what. And when Sarah made up her mind on a subject, no amount of glitz or glitter could persuade her otherwise.
This self-assured dynamo wore her gray-blond hair short and sassy and streaked it with either lavender, pink, deep red, orange or even apple green, depending on her mood. She couldn’t be more than five feet tall, had a petite but shapely body, and a personality that could change even your darkest moods into sunshine.
We were both in the master’s program for public relations, but she was acing it, while I struggled to keep up my GPA.
