from her in order to do that.
The first week of December was the last week of classes. It was a quiet week, for the most part. Gabriel and Julia dutifully kept their distance from one another. Every evening he prepared his lecture for the Uffizi Gallery in his spacious condominium while she worked tirelessly on her essays and her thesis in her tiny hobbit hole.
They texted one another mercilessly:
Julia smiled at the screen of her iPhone in such a way that even the iPhone blushed. Then she typed her reply:
She turned her attention back to her laptop as she continued editing her essay for Katherine. Within a few minutes, her iPhone was chirping again:
Julia giggled at his message and hit
Julia stared at her iPhone waiting for another text message. But it didn’t come until she was in the bathroom:
Julia smiled to herself and sent back a brief message, telling him how much she loved him. Then she spent the rest of her evening working.
They finally met in person at his last seminar on Wednesday, which was made all the more interesting by Christa Peterson’s conspicuous behavior.
She was quiet. She was still dressed fashionably, in an aubergine-colored cashmere sweater-dress that clung tantalizingly to her chest and derriere.
Her makeup was flawless, her hair long and impeccably groomed. But her expression was sour, and she didn’t take notes. Her arms remained crossed defensively across her ample breasts.
When Professor Emerson asked a question that she knew, she refused to raise her hand. When he looked over the rims of his glasses to see if he could coax her into participating, she scowled and looked away. Were it not for the fact that his mind was on Dante’s
Christa was conspicuous not only in her silence but in her blatant hostility toward Julia, for whom she reserved the vilest of glares.
“What crawled up her butt?” Julia whispered to Paul as soon as the class was over.
He snickered. “Maybe she finally realized Emerson will never pass her dissertation proposal so she’s contemplating a career change. There’s a strip club on Yonge Street that’s looking to hire. She might have what it takes to work there. Or not.”
Now it was Julia’s turn to snicker.
“By the way, I like your scarf. Very French.” Paul grinned at her good-naturedly. “A gift from the boyfriend?”
“No. My best friend back home.”
“Well, it looks nice on you.”
Julia smiled at him, and they both packed up their books and walked home through the delicately cascading snow, telling (slightly edited) stories about their separate Thanksgivings.
Chapter 31
By Friday, Professor Emerson was in a foul mood. He’d spent almost an entire week without Julianne, and he’d had to watch her walk away with Paul after his seminar, without so much as a glance in his direction.
He had to keep his distance when all he wanted to do was touch her and tell everyone she was his. Sleeping naked in the darkness, the demons had come and nightmares had taunted and oppressed him — nightmares normally held at bay by her very presence, a luminescence unequalled by the brightest star. A star he would soon have to live without.
He knew that he had to tell his secrets before they boarded the plane.
Thus, he rued the fact that his (possibly) last week with Julianne had been spent alone. He’d changed his ticket and made all of the reservations for Julianne to accompany him to Florence, but he did so half-heartedly and not without investing in travel cancellation insurance, for he truly believed that she would leave him. He dreaded the moment when her wide, innocent eyes would darken and she would reject him as unworthy. But he would not allow her to gift her innocence to such a demon unknowingly. He would not play Cupid to her Psyche.
For that
Consequently, it was with undisguised coolness that he greeted her Friday evening when she arrived in time for dinner. He kissed her forehead fraternally and stepped aside, indicating that she should enter.
Julia knew that something was wrong, and it wasn’t solely because she could hear the strains of Puccini’s
“Gabriel?” She reached up to touch his face. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” he lied, turning his face away. “Can I get you a drink?”
Julia resisted the urge to nag him for information and instead requested a glass of wine. She hoped he would be more forthcoming over dinner.
He wasn’t. He served their dinner in silence, and when Julia tried to make polite small talk over the roast beef, he responded monosyllabically.
She told him she’d completed all of her schoolwork for the semester and that Katherine Picton had agreed to turn her grades in before December eighth, but Gabriel only nodded in response, glaring into his soon to be empty wine glass.
Julia had never seen him drink so heavily. He was already drunk the night she rescued him at Lobby. But this night was different. He wasn’t flirtatious and happy, he was tormented. With each glass, she grew more and more worried, but every time she opened her mouth to say something, she would catch a glimpse of fleeting sadness on his face, which made her refrain. He grew progressively cooler and more detached with each drink, so much so that by the time he served one of his housekeeper’s homemade apple pies for dessert, Julia waved it aside and
