Aaron’s legs shifted, cocooning me further into his lap. Or perhaps it was me who kept bending into him. I didn’t know, but I wouldn’t complain or move away.
“And I was in love too. After one year of daydreaming about something I couldn’t have, hoping for it, I was blinded by the joy at finally being able to have him. To call him mine.”
His fingers stopped briefly, as if they hesitated their next move. Then, they resumed and continued kneading at my shoulders.
“It lasted a few months. Then, I heard the first whisper, the first ugly and poisonous rumor that blackened all that happiness. And after that one, many more followed. Whispers turned into loud gossip, which traveled along the corridors on campus. There were Facebook posts, too, and threads on Twitter as well. Never directed at me, but about me. At least in the beginning.” I brought my knees to my chest and hugged them. “The whore who slept around with her professors, they said. Of course she’s the first of her promotion. That’s how she aced Physics when more than half the students fell through. She fucked him, and she’ll fuck her way through college.”
I heard Aaron’s exhale. Felt it on the back of my neck. His fingers tensing and halting very briefly.
“It was all so hurtful.” My voice sounded different—void and bitter. And it reminded me of a Lina I didn’t want to remember. Or ever be again. “The things that were said about me quickly turned into pointed fingers and into disgusting photos that someone had Photoshopped with my face. Into … really ugly stuff.”
Aaron’s touch turned into just brushes of his skin against mine, soothing me, moving me forward, telling me, I’m here. I got you.
“It was all turned into this despicable tale, where I was the cunning, dirty woman who seduced professors for grades. All the hard work and the long nights I had studied were brought down simply because … I don’t know. To this day, I don’t know the reason or the motivation. Jealousy? A laugh? But I know that if I had been one of my male classmates and Daniel had been a female professor, perhaps I wouldn’t have gone through that. It would have been the professor. She would have been accused of being a cougar, and the student would have gotten a few high fives. Instead, I was almost harassed into dropping out. I didn’t want to attend any lectures. I didn’t want to leave the house. I was still living with my parents because I could drive to campus from their house, and I didn’t even want to talk to them. I deleted my profiles on all of the social media sites. I closed myself off from every single person in my life, even my sister and even those few who had remained my friends.” I focused on the soothing circles Aaron was drawing on my skin, grounding and rooting me to him and to the present. “It was all too much. I just felt … ashamed. Worthless. I felt like everything I had done was worth nothing. Consequently, when my grades and performance sank, my average went down the drain. And I didn’t even care.”
A beat of silence that seemed to stretch too long made me realize Aaron hadn’t spoken a word. I knew he wouldn’t judge me, but I wondered what he thought. If the way he saw me had now changed.
“What did he do?” he finally said. His voice sounded rocky, rough. “What did Daniel do about everything that was being done to you?”
“Well, things started looking a little bad for him. There was no rule that stopped him from dating a former student. But everything that was going down got to be too much for him.”
“For him?” he repeated, a new edge to his voice.
“Yeah. And so, he broke things off, told me it was too complicated and relationships shouldn’t be that hard or messy.”
Aaron’s fingers halted, not moving any longer. Simply hovering above my skin.
“He thought that we weren’t supposed to make each other trip and fall and that the moment we did, then it didn’t make sense to be together. And I … I think he was right. I guess he was.”
Aaron didn’t say anything. Not a word left his lips, but I could tell there was something wrong with him. I could feel it in the way his breath had quickened, deepened. And the way his hands remained frozen above my shoulders.
“I often wonder how I managed to graduate, but I did. At some point after the breakup, I woke up. Showed up to the exams and passed. Then, I somehow put together an application for an international master’s program and left for the US.”
Aaron’s palms resumed. Very gently, but I felt them move along my shoulders. Nothing like before, but at least he was touching me again. And I needed that, more than I cared to admit.
“I wasn’t escaping him, you know? Everybody thought I was, but I wasn’t. Daniel had bruised my heart, but I wasn’t running away from that. It was everything else. Everybody looked at me differently. Like I had changed or something had changed in the way they saw me. As if I were this broken thing now. Dropped by Daniel, harassed, made fun of. Everybody whispered, Oh, poor t
hing. How is she going to bounce back from this? They treated me as damaged goods. They still do. Every time I came back home alone, they look at me with pity. Every time I said I’m still single, they nod and smile sadly.” Shaking my head, I released all the air in my lungs. “I hate it, Aaron.” I could hear the emotion in my voice choking my words because I did hate it. “That’s why I came back as little as I did.”
But then I also hated how much I feared that a part of it was perhaps true. Why hadn’t I been able to trust anybody with my heart otherwise?
“Everything that had happened hurt me, left a scar, but it didn’t break me.” I swallowed the lump in my throat, wanting to believe my own words. “It didn’t.”
A sound, deep and husky and pained, came from behind me. Before I knew what was happening, Aaron’s arms came around my shoulders, and I was engulfed by him. Wrapped into his chest. Warm and hard and safe and … a lot less alone. A lot more complete than I had been seconds before.
Aaron buried his head in the nook of my neck from behind, and I felt the urge to comfort him. So, I did.
“I’m not broken, Aaron,” I told him in a whisper, although perhaps it was for my own reassurance. “I can’t be.”
“You are not,” he said on my skin. Tightening his hold on me. Bringing me closer. “And I know that even if something did break you—because that’s life and no one is invincible—you’d still put the pieces back together and remain the brightest thing I’d ever seen.”
My hands went around that pair of arms wrapped around my shoulders, which pulled me into his chest, as if he were scared I’d go up in smoke if he didn’t. And I hung on to him equally desperately. As if my next breath depended on it.
We remained that way for a long while. And slowly, very slowly, our bodies relaxed into each other. They melted together. I focused on Aaron’s breath, on the earnestness of the moment, on his heartbeat against my back, his strength. On all the things that he’d kept handing to me so freely, like they were nothing. Like he was supposed to give them away and I was entitled to take them from him.
Neither of us said anything as time stretched, our holds gradually loosening as we lost the battle to sleep.
My eyelids eventually fluttered shut, but right before darkness engulfed me, I thought I heard Aaron whisper, “You feel complete in my arms. You feel like my home.”