"Speak of the devil." I rise from my chair as my office door swings open. Jamie leans against the doorframe in that off-hand way he's always had.
"The devil? That's a bit melodramatic, isn't it?"
He's aged since I last saw him. The crooked smile I recognize, but not the deep furrow it creates beside his mouth. His jawline, square as ever, looks freshly shaven. None of the carefully curated dark stubble he used to maintain when I last laid eyes on him. And he's cut his dark brown hair shorter as well.
His face has lost the last vestiges of boyishness. We're the same age down to the month—both recently passed our 30th birthdays—but he won't need to correct anyone for forgetting to address him as "professor." No one would mistake the man before me for some fresh-faced undergrad.
I don't know why these changes leave me shaken, but my whole frame trembles as we stand there taking each other in. He's not a stranger, but he's no longer the familiar Jamie I conjure in my head at night to keep me company. My imaginary Jamie remained constant all these years, while the real one went off and lived his life.
I wasn't certain it was him from across the quad earlier, and the reason is obvious now. The biggest change of all stares me in the face. "Since when did you wear glasses?"
The thick black frames would look ugly on most faces, but they somehow work with Jamie's sculpted cheekbones. He lowers them down the bridge of his nose to let me see his eyes unobscured.
Are those lenses real? Probably not. All part of a costume to look more professorial, along with the creased khaki trousers and Oxford shirt.
His eyes flit briefly from my face down to my feet and back again, and I'm uncomfortably aware that I still have the top two buttons of my blouse undone. The amount of skin I'm showing is decidedly un-professorial. He can probably see my bra. If he notices, he gives no indication. He merely slides his glasses back in place. "O beware the green-eyed monster," he says softly.
"My eyes are hazel." I narrow them.
"Yes, I remember your eyes. Have you forgotten your Shakespeare? The green-eyed monster symbolizes jealousy."
I scoff, raising one hand to cover my mouth, and meanwhile taking the opportunity to close one of my buttons. He can go play English professor with his flock of first-years. I'm not falling for this act. "And does Shakespeare have a metaphor for liars and total frauds?"
"Does he? That must be some other play." He wiggles his glasses by the corner of the frames, with his dark eyes creasing behind them. "Admit it, Dr. Glass. You're jealous I got my vision checked by some other doctor of optometry."
His smile is contagious. I don't want to give him the satisfaction, but I can't help it. The corners of my mouth give me away. Jamie takes it as an invitation. He steps forward into the room with a backward glance in the direction of the door. "Would you like it closed or open?"
A loaded question if ever I heard one. "Open," I say firmly, and I take a half-step backward to keep my distance.
He shrugs and lets his eyes travel around my glorified closet of an office, taking in the chipped beige paint and spare furnishings. A mini-fridge and a tall metal bookshelf stand opposite the door. Tabitha's desk and my own run parallel along the two side walls. Her side of the office is adorned with pictures of her fiancé Jae and her dog. Mine is currently decorated with my NIH Rising Star award and a bag of peas sitting in a puddle of condensation on the corner of my desk. Jamie smiles at it like he's spotted an old friend.
My heart is fluttering too fast, and it tightens uncomfortably at the softening of his features. He used to look at me like that. He would fetch my bag of peas from the freezer in my old brownstone apartment and press them to my sternum. Then he'd gather me in his lap and squeeze me tight around the shoulders. Tighter, tighter. I would urge him. Deep pressure. And he would hold me, firm and constant, until the tension inside had ebbed.
I blink away the memory and clear my throat. "Why are you here, Jamie?"
"I wanted to see you."
I shake my head. Not good enough. "Why? Why now?"
"It's your office hours," he answers in that bland British way, as if his answer couldn't be more natural. He points to a picture of Tabitha and Jae on her side of the space. "Your friend with the purple hair told me where to find you, after you scurried away."
I cross my arms in front of my chest as he ambles toward me. "No, I mean why are you here, Jamie? Why are you at Wallingford?"
"I wanted to seeee youuu." He draws out his words this time, mirroring the extra emphasis I'd put on mine.
OK captain obvious. Is he mocking me?
He keeps shifting closer. Close enough that I can smell his scent. I recognize his aftershave—a bittersweet mix of sandalwood and sage.
The brain's olfactory bulb is located adjacent to the amygdala and hippocampus. Our memories and emotions are hopelessly entwined with certain smells. One whiff, and I'm reliving another moment I'd long buried. Back in the early days when our relationship was still new, and I had to fight a battle with my brain all day long to stay focused at work. I made a rule that we weren't allowed to communicate with each other between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 6:00 pm. No exceptions. A firm boundary. But Jamie never met a boundary he didn't try to cross. He stopped by my lab unannounced one day at lunchtime. Somehow he sweet-talked his way past the security checkpoint in the lobby. "I'm abducting you," he told me blithely. "Come along. Even double doctors have to eat."
I couldn't resist, of course. I let him drag me from my desk, but we never made it out to lunch. We passed a supply closet in the corridor, and he pulled me inside without warning. I remember the vertigo from the sudden change of position, followed by the pitch black darkness when the closet door clicked closed. I can still feel the whoosh of heat from head to toe as I realized I was trapped. Trapped in a closet, drowning in the scent of sandalwood and sage, with my shoulder blades pressed against the inside of the closet door...
I shake myself, pulling my mind back to the present. My pale skin has betrayed me with a tell-tale flush of red. Jamie sees it, I can tell. The smile leaves his lips. His eyes darken and his brow dips as he takes another step in my direction. Too close. I backpedal, but my current office is barely deeper than that old supply closet. My back hits the rickety metal shelf behind me. It wobbles precariously, and Jamie's hand shoots around me to stabilize it before its contents can topple on my head.
His hand remains there, fingertips resting on the shelf by my left hip. "Let's try this again," he says in a low voice. "Hello, Cora. Nice to see you."
"Am I supposed to say it's nice to see you too?"
He's close enough to kiss me. He only needs to press forward and his body would crush me up against the bookshelf.
I should tell him to back off. But I don't.
The truth is, I've imagined this moment a thousand times. I've dreamed up all sorts of scenarios. More often than not, they begin with Jamie at my door, telling me he's back. He's sorry. He never should have left. He's tortured by regret... etc etc. Sometimes I make him grovel, but I eventually relent. I take him back after he's proven he stands before me a changed man.
That's a fantasy, I know. People grow older in real life, but they never change. Not him, and not me either. If he leaned in to kiss me, I would let him. As I always did. And he would break my heart all over again.
No, there are no second chances in real life. Only the same old mistakes we're forever destined to repeat.
"You changed your hair." Jamie touches it where it falls against my shoulder. "I almost didn't recognize you."
"Maybe that's why I changed it." I flick my head to remove the lock of hair from Jamie's grasp.
This has gone far enough. I hold up a hand, palm out, to stop him from coming any closer. "Listen. I don't know what you're up to here, but I'm going for tenure now. I can't be involved in anything untoward."
He nods gravely. "Don't worry. Your secrets are safe with me."
His ridiculous black-framed eyeglasses slip down the bridge of his nose, and my curiosity gets the better of me. I can't help it. I have to know. I lift the frames from Jamie's face and turn them around, peering through the lenses. I'm already preparing a clever line about his Clark Kent impersonation, but I'm brought up short. "These are real? Prescription?"
"I can be shockingly short-sighted."
"Near-sighted," I correct. I hand them back, but he doesn't put them on. He slides them into the breast pocket of his shirt.
"That's all right," he says. "I don't need them from this distance."
It was a mistake, removing them. An act of intimacy. Now there's one less barrier between us, and I'm the one who took it down. I pull my shoulders back and lift my chin, giving him the most authoritative look I can muster from three inches away. "Why are you here, Jamie?"
He cocks his head to the side. "It's not that big a campus. It would be rude not to pop in and say hello."
His hand no longer lingers on the bookshelf at my side. He cups my elbow and traces gently up my arm. His touch sends a shiver racing through me.
If I close my eyes, he'll kiss me. My lips tingle at the prospect. Three years have passed since these lips were touched, imaginary kisses notwithstanding. It would be so easy to give him the green light...
My thoughts feel thick and slow. It takes a force of will to keep my eyes wide open, my sights focused on the facts.
Fact: This man forfeited any right to look at me this way.
Fact: An hour ago, he was surrounded by a gaggle of first-year students calling him "professor."
Fact: I keep asking him why, and he keeps dodging the question.
But I have some inkling of the answer.
I knew it felt unfinished—the last fight we ever had. The same fight we always had. He complained about his work, and I told him to do something about it if he hated it so much. Stop whining. Go back to school. Change careers. This advice never failed to set him off.
"You're ashamed of me," he accused.
"No, you're the one who's ashamed," I answered. "You'd have so much more respect for yourself if you'd just—"
But Jamie wouldn't listen. He cut me off, with real emotion showing on his face for once. "Admit it. Admit, just once, that you're a snob. That when you introduce me to your friends, you wish I were someone else. Some doctor or lawyer or... university professor."
I only wanted him to feel the way I do about my work. Challenged and overwhelmed at times, but ultimately fulfilled. But I didn't say that. I'd run out of patience with him that day. "You're right," I snapped instead. "You win. I wish you were someone else. Professor Bowen has a nice ring to it."
He'd flinched as if I struck him. He got out of bed without a word and began throwing on his clothes.
"Wait," I'd tried. "Wait, Jamie I—"
But he never gave me a chance to clarify. The fight-or-flight kicked in. In this case, he had a flight to catch to London the next morning for some work obligation. He left without kissing me goodbye. "I'll see you when I get back," he'd said over his shoulder as I watched him walk out my bedroom door.
Those were the last words I ever heard from him. He ended things, as usual, with a lie.
He's no Professor Bowen, but now I'm Professor Glass, and I'm sure it must be painful to his fragile male ego. I've become the thing he'll never be. And he's come back to punish me for it.
I pull my arm free and shift sideways out of his grasp. "I'm serious, Jamie. Tell me what you're doing here. Right now."
His eyes flash, but he backs off a pace. "I thought you might be pleased," he says in his blandest of bland tones. "You were always going on about how I should make something of myself."
"So you've gone full-on con artist?"
He fishes out his glasses and returns them to his face. "Is it so impossible that I might be here honestly?"
My temper starts to slip. "You can't just waltz onto the quad and declare yourself a professor!"
"When did I say anything about—"
"I heard those first-years talking to you!"
His face falls for a moment, genuinely chagrined, and I can't deny a flash of triumph. He didn't think I would see through him so easily. Master of disguise, my ass. I see the red flags waving a mile away, and I've grown strong enough—and wise enough—to avoid them.
I step around him to my desk and pull my phone out from where I stowed it. I dial a number but don't press send. "You have one hour to remove yourself from campus before I report you for trespassing to university police."
"You'll do no such thing." His voice is soft but backed by steel.
"You're lucky I haven't already!"
He turns away for a moment, fishing in his pants pocket. I don't know what I expect to see, but certainly not the lanyard that he thrusts in my direction, with a small rectangle of plastic dangling from the end.
A Wallingford campus ID.
"I've just as much right to be here as you do."
I shake my head. I can't believe he's taken it this far. A fake ID? I take it from his hands and squint at it beneath my office's pale fluorescent light. Something about it looks off. Somehow different from my own. It takes me a second to register...
The lettering of his name is printed in red, where mine is green.
Which means...
His voice is so low, I can barely hear him over the sound of my own pulse throbbing in my ears. "Those were my esteemed dorm mates you overheard earlier. They've taken to calling me 'professor' as a joke. A bit of adolescent ribbing at my expense, you see? Because I'm old. At least a decade older than the lot of them."
Red lettering for faculty...
Green for...
I stare at him, then back at the ID.
Jamie Bowen
Class of 2027
Pound Hall 342
"I finally took your advice," he tells me as the realization dawns. "Stop bellyaching. Go back to school. Make something respectable of yourself. Wasn't that how it went? Well, here I am at last, with my very own university ID. I'm a 30-year-old first-year undergraduate."
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