The Professor's Girl | 18+ | COMPLETE |

+ chapter 1 +

It had been four days, and I was done crying over him. Four days of lying in bed, barely getting up to feed the cat, let alone cook food and shower. Four days of staring at the far wall where I had stupidly hung the one framed photograph we had together, the picture he had not really wanted to take because he hated pictures and he hated PDA. What had resulted was an awkward "couple-y" photo where I was smiling too wide to make up for the fact that he was not smiling at all, with his arm around my shoulders squishing me half-heartedly to his side.

When I actually thought about it, the last two years had been complete bullshit. Wasted. Why hadn't I left him six months in? Why hadn't I left him when I first even suspected he was sleeping around?

But nope. I had been so determined to make it work ("All good relationships take sacrifice, dear," as my mother used to say) that I had ignored every huge red flag. My own angry internal voice echoed the cruel last words Jay Maitland had said to me between drags on a cigarette in the Petco parking lot, as I stood there with tears streaming down my face holding a bag of cat food.

"You're just weak, Liz! God, you let me walk all over you. Of course I had to see how far I could push it! You've known about Heather for weeks, come on, don't act surprised."

Weak. It brought on a fresh stream of tears. I guess I wasn't done crying.

"Yes you are!" Sarah yelled from the other room. Beautiful, crazy, party-girl Sarah Bak. She had been my saving grace over the past few days. Coming over in the evenings to make sure I was eating something other than chicken-flavored ramen noodles. I felt awful, knowing she was worried about me. I felt awful in general.

Sarah was the master of handling breakups. I had seen her go through three, and that girl was the quintessential "movie-style breakup" girl. She would get herself a big glass of wine, chug it on her way to the club, and vomit everything up at the end of the night as if she was literally purging out her ex. When I had seen her cry, it was angry tears. She would sit there and say, "He'll realize what he's missing. He'll fucking regret it. Watch him come crawling back in a month, Liz, just watch!"

I really, really wished I could do that. I wished I could see my own value. How sad is that? God.

"Come on girl, up, get out of that bed before you atrophy to it."

I opened my swollen eyes at Sarah, who stood with her arms crossed over me. She had let herself in, as usual, so I hadn't actually seen her yet since she had been so preoccupied cleaning up my disastrous kitchen. Her long black hair was in a high ponytail, she had false lashes on, and was wearing a short off-the-shoulder red dress.

I sniffled. I had been wearing the same 5-year-old Victoria's Secret leggings and Jay's old t-shirt for days. "What are you all dressed up for?"

"Because we're going out," she said, flinging back my blankets and then going to my closet, rifling through the hangers. "You've been in this apartment way too long. This isn't healthy, Liz. Why are you even sad? You know that guy was such an asshole. He was always an asshole. Two years and he wouldn't even meet your parents? Come on."

I sat up, realizing I really needed a shower. I also really needed to clean my room: there were five half-empty mugs of tea on my bedside table alone. I shuffled to the bathroom and turned the water on as hot as it would go. Just below scalding, perfect. When I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I was honestly a little horrified. There were dark bags under my eyes, I looked like I had lost 5 pounds, and my brown hair was a complete rat's nest.

"Get it together, Lizbeth," I said, frowning at my sad mirror-self. "Sarah is right. Just get the hell over him already."

Body wash and hot water really do wonders. By the time I had blow-dried and straightened my hair, Sarah had already chosen my outfit for the night: a little black dress with a strappy, harness-inspired cutout around the neck and above the very low-cut neckline. I had been so excited when I got that dress and Jay had hated it. He had said it made me look slutty. So it had gone into the back of my closet, unworn. It actually still had the tags on it.