Professor Carrigan passed me by and her hips swayed over to the bar, where I watched her hand the bartender a folded bill in exchange for what looked like a vodka tonic, a drink I’d seen her order before at this banquet when I was a student not-yet-eligible to receive the Headlights Award. The night hummed with possibility.
My eyes hunted the room and hungrily searched for Tom. I hadn’t seen him outside of class for two weeks. Though it felt like we’d ended the relationship amicably, I had a certain uneasiness about seeing him. At the thought of seeing him outside his office, my stomach lurched again, but not out of anticipation.
It was then that I spotted him. He stood in the corner, a drink in hand and his wife, Vanessa, draped over his arm. He smiled and was halfway through a laugh when he saw me. His mouth relaxed, his lips going limp at the corners of his mouth. My eyes darted to the floor—back to him—back to the floor—and to him once again. His hadn’t strayed since they’d found me. He said something to the woman he was chatting with and excused himself. His long stride seemed to glide across the room. I was paralyzed. My legs wouldn’t move.
“Ione,” Tom said as he closed the distance between us. My name was only just audible over the conversations around us. The smile had returned to his mouth. That smile I’d grown so familiar with. I wanted to press my finger to his lips, quiet him, forget the fight and leave this place. But somewhere in the deepest recesses of my heart, I knew it wasn’t possible—that it never had been.
My relationship with Tom had been doomed from the start. Its beginnings reeked of naivete; a tragic romance barely worthy of the paper it would take to record its history. But it seemed much more important than that to me. It was cliché—a teacher and student—but it was real, and it was the first passion I’d felt since the death of my father. That loss had sapped the life from my world and Tom’s kiss had breathed it back in, however misguided it was.
“Professor Wolsieffer,” I returned his greeting. My tone was painfully formal, and it stung me to address him that way when only weeks before I’d been in his bed, my hair falling like a golden curtain around his face.
The proper address smarted him. I saw it on his face. A microexpression of hurt followed by a tempering smile meant to hide his more visceral reaction.
Immediately, I wanted to take it back. He looked around, amusement on his face. It was infuriating. He hid his hurt while mine flew like a flag at full mast on my sleeve.
“Tom—” I started.
He raised a hand and stopped me short, like a coach advising a player on third base that it’s not safe to come home yet.
“It’s fine,” he smiled. “I hope you get everything you deserve tonight. You’ve earned it.”
I smiled back; my lips pressed tightly together against my teeth. I knew that some animals interpreted a grin as a sign of aggression, and I didn’t want that to be the case here.
Before I could respond adequately, he was gone. His back retreated across the room and I caught Vanessa’s eye. Annoyance lived there, a permanent fixture of her gaze. I went to the bar to grab a drink.
My phone buzzed in my purse as the bartender handed me my whiskey. I fished it out and saw my mother’s number. I forbade her from coming tonight on the pretense that it would only make me more nervous. The truth was that she would have sensed something was wrong. She would have sniffed out my affair with Tom in a matter of minutes like a bloodhound.
I let it go to voicemail and found my seat at a table of my peers. Birdie sat, legs crossed under her dress, in the seat next to me. It was a childlike pose. The chasm that my affair with Tom had created had begun to be mended and she smiled at me and bumped my shoulder.
“It’s your night,” she whispered conspiratorially.
I smiled back.
Awards were handed out, and the evening marched inevitably toward the Headlights Award like a pack of lemmings unaware of an approaching cliff. Students accepted them with gracious smiles while professors bestowed them, proud of their fledgling writers. The evening wound to a close slowly like a spring-loaded door shutting itself. What would happen tonight determined the opening of other doors—doors that would otherwise remain shut tightly and even locked in some cases.
And then it was time. Tom sat at a table beside the stage; his arm hung loosely around Vanessa’s chair. He was at ease in his kingdom like a lion at home on the savannah. He smiled when the announcer stepped to the podium. My stomach clenched.
“And now for the award that everyone’s been waiting on,” she said. Her name was Holly Gettner. She was one of the last recipients of the award and one of the last students to receive the Gorman Fellowship. After her year spent hard at work, and with Tom’s aid, she went on to publish a contemporary debut that became a best-seller in the last year. In a moment’s time, I would be on a collision course with the same future. I held my breath.
I counted my heartbeats. They were ravenous, starving for the moment that I’d slaved for over the course of the past several years. A piece of Holly’s hair fell forward as she bowed her head to read the contents of the envelope. I exhaled.
“Well, it looks like our winner this year is Birdie Hauer!” The words
