As the Darkness Approaches the Light

Chapter 12

From that point on, Chris had been a little bit more open about having a girlfriend, but still wanted to maintain as much privacy as possible seeing as Caroline wasn't like other women he'd dated in the past. The fact that she was blind aside - she had a career and a certain level of professionalism that she had to maintain, and not that any of that was going to be tarnished by the two of them posting selfies together on Instagam, but Caroline had to decide what parts of her life she was okay with being easily accessible on the Internet by her colleagues or students, and which parts of her life she didn't want that happening with.

Caroline gave Chris the okay to, for lack of better words, "confirm" that she was blind publicly - as if the pictures of them walking around together with Caroline having her cane in front of her didn't make it obvious enough. The thing was, she didn't "look" blind, or at least, didn't match the stereotype that a majority of people seemed to have in their heads about blind people, which left the Internet perpetually confused.

In the first interview where Chris was actually asked about it, all he could do was laugh.

"The first thing that the fans or the general public or whoever tend to ask when I tell them my girlfriend is blind is 'so how does she know what you look like?!'. Well. She doesn't."

For the most part, fans were really supportive. They thought that Chris and Caroline's story was something really sweet and beautiful after having come to the realization that because Caroline couldn't see Chris, she could in no way judge him by his appearance; she loved him for him. And this was even enough for some of the "crazier" fans. Of course, there was some negativity, but they tried not to let that phase them.

Fans had known about Noah and Ricky for a little bit longer than they'd known about Chris and Caroline, and boy did the fans have a party when they realized that Chris and Ricky were dating sisters. However, no one in the outside world had known about Noah being an amputee until pictures of her and Ricky together at the festival had begun to circulate. Again, while there was some negativity, the majority of the fans were supportive and flooded Noah's inbox telling her how beautiful and inspirational she was, which made her feel so much better about being in the public eye.

When the classes for the fall semester at the university became listed, so many students wanted to take Caroline's developmental psychology class that the university had to make it exclusive to psychology majors. The seats filled up rather quickly in her introductory class as well, and Caroline had just learned to accept that sometimes, she would only be treated nicely by her students because of who she was dating. If anything though, this made her more motivated to be an awesome professor and win her students over herself.

Caroline even became more open with her associations to Motionless in White among her students as well, just to avoid speculation or questioning.

Caroline put the Power Point presentation on the screen, ready for class, then smiled.

"Okay, let's get started. First thing's first: everyone's gonna go out after class and get the new Motionless in White album, right?"

A lot of the students laughed. It was still the beginning of the semester, so Caroline making small jokes like this made them a lot more comfortable around her, and her with them.

Caroline also started to make some friends among her colleagues at work, which was nice because Noah had really been her only friend for most of her life. It was nice to have people to have lunch with during the day, or to go out for a drink or two with on a Friday night. It made Caroline feel like she'd finally had it all: her dream career, her dream man, and friends that she could rely on.