Page 49 of Love, Academically

“No fucking way will you talk to her. She hasn’t said it, but I know this was you, Rhys.

I know you and I know how you get. I know how to deal with you, I can tell you to back off.

I know when to take things seriously and when not to.

But her? Your ‘girl’?” Dan pointed down the corridor. “You don’t get to treat her that way.”

Rhys opened his mouth to say something, anything, to defend himself. But what was there to say?

“There is absolutely no way you’re talking to her again today.” Dan sighed and passed a hand over his face. “She was good for you, Rhys. She pushed you to think about how you treat people, how to enjoy life. You were really happy, for the first time since I’ve known you.”

“Dan, I—”

“I bet you ran roughshod over her, didn’t you? Wouldn’t let her get a word in edgeways because your shit is always so much more important than anyone else’s, right?” His voice was low, disappointment leaking out of each syllable.

“That’s not true and you know it,” Rhys said, pointing a shaking finger at Dan.

“Do I? Really?” Dan snapped. “I care about you, man, but you have fucked up big time here. So big, that I can’t even deal with you right now.”

“Whatever, I need to see her.” Rhys moved to push past Dan again.

“You need to listen to me,” he said, his voice tense but so calm. How could he be so fucking calm? “You don’t get to see Lila. Not now.”

Dan just didn’t get it. He needed to see her, make things right. Shake her devastated, broken look from his mind and just hold her. Apologise and apologise and apologise again, because it would never be enough.

Dan put a firm hand on his shoulder and gave him a pointed stare.

Rhys looked back at his friend for a long moment, before his shoulders slumped and he felt his soul sinking.

Dan was right, this was not the time. He left Rhys standing in the corridor outside of his office, alone with nothing but dread and guilt.

Lila

It might not have been professional, but Lila took the next day off work.

Jasmeet had stayed over, holding her whilst she had spiralled and sobbed herself to sleep, left her a plate of heart-shaped pancakes and a freshly brewed pot of coffee (both now cold) and a note apologising for not being able to call in sick, but that she would call on her break and at lunch and be over as soon as school finished.

Jasmeet being the best person she could ever wish for made Lila feel even worse because she’d been so hard on her lately.

In her mind, she knew that Rhys’s forgetting his meeting wasn’t her fault.

But perhaps, in some small way, it was. She had monopolised his time.

They’d been together nearly every night.

Something would have to give if he was spending so much time with her, and this is what it was.

He’d missed the email, probably because he’d been screwing her in her office.

It must have been devastating for Rhys, realising that he had sat through that meeting, so important to him, with a blue moustache on his face.

He was so anxious about the Fellowship anyway, let alone making what he thought was a fool of himself at an informal chat.

Being how he was, it would play on his mind.

He would find it incredibly difficult to reconcile that he hadn’t put his best face forward.

She could almost see his point of view. Almost.

You know what, she wasn’t going to take any responsibility for his petty, childish, absolutely vile behaviour. It had been an informal chat. It certainly wasn’t the end of the world. He hadn’t even bothered to check on her after he had… well, said what he had said. Shouted, in fact.

None of this was her fault. None of it.

Lila scraped her hair back from her face and wound it up with a hair tie. Her eyes were crusty because she’d barely slept and when she had it was fitfully, what with Jasmeet snoring, the never-ending tears, and Rhys’s horrible words going round and round in her head, merging and morphing together.

Miss Cartwright, you’re unwanted.

She pressed a hand to her chest, because that was an awful, awful thing to say.

Yeah, he had said in my office, but he might as well have said in my life, because that’s what that amounted to, wasn’t it?

She’d done exactly what she had promised herself not to.

After working so desperately hard to put her life back together, to put herself back together, she’d let a fucking man take her apart again.

A distraction, that’s what she’d been to him.

Distracting him from more important things, like that godforsaken Fellowship and proving to his father that he was a success.

Yeah, she was a people pleaser, but here was Rhys, dancing to his father’s tune, jumping through his father’s hoops, just so he could do what he wanted with his life.

Well, he’d have one less distraction now.

“Enough,” she said, pressing her fingers to her puffy face.

Nothing from Rhys. Not that she wanted to talk to him, but just some acknowledgment, some sign of any guilt about the way he had treated her, would have been nice. But he wasn’t nice, was he? He was blind to anyone and everyone else. Selfish and blind.

That was that. End of.

She washed her face with cold water, bringing down some of the puffiness around her eyes, and headed downstairs.

Completely unsure as to what to do with herself, Lila put her stained blankets in the washing machine.

She liked her blankets. They were not stupid.

Well, maybe they were just a little bit, but she liked them and that was all that mattered.

It was four o’clock before she sat down to figure out some sort of plan.

The anger was still there, simmering like her tomato soup, but it was the disbelief that clawed at her the most. She couldn’t believe that Rhys had not once, but twice, undermined her, meddled in her life without so much as a ‘if you don’t mind’ or ‘thought I’d run this past you’.

He’d put her job at risk. The job that she enjoyed, a stepping stone to where she wanted to be. She would have talked to Sue, would have got it straightened out. She didn’t need a White Knight stepping in and wielding his massive… ego around.

That brought her on to Jason. How dare Rhys go behind her back to demand that Jason gives her back the entirety of the loan that they took out jointly.

Truthfully? She had felt a little bullied into it, but a signature on the bottom of the page was a signature on the bottom of the page.

She was a big girl. She knew what she was getting herself into.

Although she would be lying if she said that having the full amount of the loan wouldn’t be a wonderful addition to her bank account.

She could pay for the course upfront rather than have a payment plan, and she’d have a nice little savings pot as well.

Regardless, Rhys had broken his promise to be gentle with her, to not behave like an absolute douchebag. He’d broken her trust.

He’d broken them.

Logging on to her work laptop, she ignored the fact that Rhys was showing as ‘online’ on Teams and had been since six that morning. Nope. Not her issue.

She clicked on Sue, took a deep breath and videocalled her.

“Lila,” Sue said, answering quickly. Her face was still pinched.

“Good afternoon, Sue,” Lila said. “Firstly, thank you for letting me take a mental health day today.”

“That’s fine. You wouldn’t have asked if you didn’t need it.” Sue’s face softened a little.

“I just want to apologise,” she sighed. “I didn’t ask Rhys to talk to you and I certainly didn’t ask that he threaten your job. I’m sorry.”

God, why didn’t her words work? She loved words, why couldn’t she find any?

“Lila, you don’t need to apologise, Rhys already has,” Sue said, leaning forward towards the computer screen. “What he said made me think and actually, I would like to apologise to you.”

Ah, so this must be an alien that had been put into Sue’s body, because Sue, apologising?

“I felt you were far too valuable to let you go for a few hours a week. After a surprisingly productive conversation with Rhys this morning, first thing I may add, it made me realise that I was holding you back rather than helping you progress, like a good manager should.”

Well. That was a surprise.

“Sue, I—”

“I really am sorry, Lila. I’m going through…” Sue hesitated. “My husband and I are separating, and I’ve obviously taken things out on you.” The words were rushed and clipped, evidently not something Sue wanted to share.

“Sue, I’m ever so sorry to hear that.” Gosh, what an awful thing for her to be going through.

“It is what it is,” Sue said, forcing a tight smile to her face. “Lila, I want you to take Monday and Tuesday off as well, have a nice long weekend, pamper yourself. You’ve got more than enough lieu hours, but I won’t be putting them through and it won’t go on your sick record.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say ‘goodbye Sue, I’ll see you Wednesday’.”

“Okay,” Lila nodded with her first real smile for a few days, albeit small. “Bye Sue. See you on Wednesday.”

Sue ended the call, leaving Lila staring at her laptop. Huh. That was a turn-up for the books. Whatever Rhys had said certainly hit the spot. But that did not excuse him. Not even in the slightest.

Lila pulled her phone out.

It didn’t take long before Jason texted back.

Lila’s finger hovered over the little green call button on Rhys’s contact.

If it were anyone else who had done this, she would have called to thank them.

But no, this was Rhys. Rhys who had interfered with her life, had been vile to her and, yeah (she was big enough to admit it) broken her poor heart.

Putting it right was the absolute least he could do.

So she was not going to call to thank him. She wasn’t going to contact him at all.