Bitter (wlw) (teacherxstudent)

forty, again

Sam's pov

Getting onto a plane after an almost completely sleepless night spent both mad at your girlfriend and mad at yourself for being mad at her wasn't an experience I'd recommend.

While I recognized that making mistakes in a relationship was normal, especially if it's one's first serious one, I couldn't understand why Ellie would have encouraged my ex to even talk about me in the first place.

She knew how much it'd upset me, especially after I spent the day after unexpectedly seeing her crying and full of anxiety, so why would she do that?

And especially, why did hearing the confirmation of stuff she more or less already knew cause her to panic so badly? I thought I'd finally succeeded at winning her full trust after Valentine's day, but I apparently was wrong.

I also felt bad for almost completely ignoring her for a day or so, but I felt so angry when she told me what happened that I knew it wasn't a good idea to be with her. As much as my anger issues had gotten better in the past years, I tended to exaggerate everything and say excessively cruel things whenever I felt that kind of rage. I wouldn't have wanted to hurt her even more.

The image of her talking about me to Maya kept popping into my mind and filled me with more dread each time. It was as if a really bad dream had just come true.

I really hadn't been feeling good about the two having to spend time together at work, let alone out on a Saturday evening, but I didn't bother telling her because there wasn't much either of us could do about it.

To make things worse, I was headed right to the city in which all of the negative memories that kept resurfacing in my head happened.

Maybe some time apart would do me good, having to see each other everyday regardless if we wanted it or not would have probably created even stronger tensions. But I also was sad that our goodbye before leaving was so cold.

By the time I got to the accommodation I was provided for, a hotel near the college campus I was going to work in, it was 9am. But my body still thought it was 2pm and I had less than half hours of sleep than I'd been awake for.

I sat on my bed trying not to fall asleep and tormenting myself with thoughts about what I'd said to Ellie until it was time to put my emotional self aside, and only show my professional side.

There was no way I'd let that negatively influence the work opportunity I'd been given, and if there was a moment in which I had to use my skills in pretending I'm feeling in a totally different way than I actually am, it was then.

The building looked like most English universities did: ancient on the outside and artificially modern inside. The general atmosphere felt much less chaotic than in New York, everyone didn't seem in a hurry to go somewhere.

I'd also mentally prepared myself to probably not be taken as seriously as I wished I would by the mostly male and older than me professors I was going to have to deal with, telling myself I wouldn't get irritated at them like I normally would. If they chose me for that opportunity they must have seen something in me, after all. Teaching those classes could potentially lead to big names in my academic area to want to work with me, so I could just suffer internally for once.

I swallowed my nerves and entered the room I was indicated to go to, where I'd meet my colleagues for the week. As I turned my phone off the picture I had as a lockscreen, which would normally give me the right encouragement for anything, filled me with sadness for a few seconds. I really hoped we could go back to being so happy together.

Something I immediately noticed after teaching my first class was that everyone attending seemed to be following each word I'd say and be extremely focused, which wasn't exactly what happened in New York.