Gaslighter

11

          "Did I fail?" I stupidly asked.

          He blinked, confused, and I pointed towards his laptop, where he was, presumably, reading papers. "Of course not."

          "Don't give me a good grade just because it's me."

          I couldn't help but think about that one paper I had mentioned the evening he asked me to meet up with him at the campus library. Savannah had forgotten about it ("a paper? Already?"), which could have been used against me had the paper not been real, but I'd consistently gotten good grades in courses he taught since they were the only ones that felt stimulating enough. If I put the same effort into my other courses, my GPA would skyrocket.

          "You're supposed to get good grades regardless. You're a Steele 5."

          "Is that what we're called now?"

          He smiled. "I thought it had a nice ring to it." I closed my fingers around the back of a chair, still uncertain whether I should sit at the table with him or not. It was late and I was exhausted and mentally drained from the emotional strain dinner at my parents' house had put me through, so I could only hope he was planning on going to bed soon. "Do you want to take a shower?"

          "Do I smell?"

          "That's not what I said." He was no longer looking at me. He flipped to the next page. "Don't get defensive, Penn."

          I folded my arms close to my chest. "Okay, wow. Now I'm getting defensive because I made a joke." Chase looked up long enough to shoot me an unimpressed look. I already felt us spiraling out of control once more. "I can't shower here. I don't think there are any of my clothes in here, anyway. I showered before leaving for my parents' house."

          "There's wine in the kitchen, if you'd like. It's that Pinot Grigio you kept talking about." He pressed the Enter key harder than he would if he wasn't pissed off. I tightened the hold on the back of the chair, wondering if I could break it if I channeled enough strength and intensity into it. "I know you've had quite a lot to drink tonight, so don't feel pressured. I just thought it would help me focus and remembered you like it too, so I keep some bottles around."

          The mere fact that he had remembered one of my favorite wines and kept it around because of one comment I had made years ago was a punch to the heart. I had done nothing but stupidly complain about him and have the nerve to feel hurt over him not showing up for dinner, whereas he held me in much higher regard.

          Even so, in spite of all of that, I couldn't ignore the intolerable ache in my chest.

          It rippled, echoed in the hollowness of my bones as I staggered towards the kitchen. It was still impossibly cold, as though I hadn't even closed the window moments prior, and I could barely stand up straight, let alone open a bottle of wine. I wasn't sure how I did it, but my trembling fingers wrapped around the bottle of Pinot Grigio and reached out for two clean glasses. The cork was easy to remove, the pop ringing in the silent kitchen, and the gurgling sound of the wine filling the glasses was almost relaxing.

          I'd become increasingly concerned with who prepared my drinks ever since that fiasco of a frat party on freshman year. There weren't many people I trusted around anything I drank that wasn't properly sealed before I opened it—Chase, my parents, Ingrid and Savannah, Stephen Delaroux—and even when we went out, the rare times we did, I gravitated towards any bartenders that weren't men. I stood there, watching everything they did around my drink, and most people had the decency to not make any comments about my obsessive behavior. Ingrid and Savannah remembered that night vividly, Savannah in particular, as she still feared I resented her for the way things played out that night, and was usually the first to look up ways to tell whether a drink had been spiked or not. I always had to remind her Ingrid had gone through the exact same thing before I had, which pissed off Ingrid to no extent, and made Savannah feel even worse. Guilt would then proceed to settle in, but it wasn't fair to feel guilty for things I hadn't caused, things that had been completely out of my control.