Strangers

Chapter 58: Purgatory

The weight on my heart feels particularly heavy today, and even the simplest of tasks; like putting on jeans, a sweater and a jacket to go see Seth just seems like such an effort. But despite the struggle, I successfully manage and make my way across campus to his office.

“Morning,” I barge in, grinning widely and pretending like I didn’t just have a difficult conversation with my ex.

“You’re late, Miss Jones.” He jokes, gesturing for me to have a seat opposite him but instead I sit down on the edge of the desk beside his chair. He swivels around to face me, passing me a mug of coffee and I immediately take a sip.

“Oooh, you’re getting good at this now, breaking in the new machine.” I compliment and he smiles, shuffling some papers around on his desk.

“Soooo, what’s on the agenda for today? Anything interesting for me to read?” I ask, my eyes flittering around the desk.

“No, you’re technically not allowed to read other student’s work anyway so just keep it on the DL please.”

“Yes Professor.”

“I told you not to call me that, it doesn’t even make sense.” He scrunches his face up at me in frustration and I giggle, putting my coffee down and moving around to sit down in the chair.

“That was such a Lola thing to say.”

“Yeah well you’ve been hanging around here so much I’m starting to pick up on your habits.” He frowns, shaking his head at me.

“Aw diddums.”

“You seem kind of…off…today,” He says, resting his chin on his fingers looking every bit the perplexed genius.

“Really? In what way?”

“Like you’re trying to act super happy or something.” He shrugs.

“Why would I do that?”

“Maybe to hide something.”

“What would I be hiding?”

“Are you just going to respond to everything I say with a question?”

“Does it bother you?”

“Does this odd behaviour have anything to do with your ex-boyfriend?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re really bloody frustrating when you’re like this.”

“I’ve heard that before.” I smirk, knowing how capable I am of pissing Harry off like this.

“Ugh finally.” He breathes a sigh of relief at the fact I didn’t respond with a question. “So why today?” He shifts in his seat, relaxing more.

“Why today what?” I grin, trying to contain my laughter at the annoyed look on his face.

“Dammit Lola!” He bangs his hand on the table, mock-angrily.

“Sorry.” I smile innocently.

“Do you want to talk about him?”

“To you? No thank you.” My mind needs a team of experts to decipher the mess inside, in other words Gemma and Linda. Since Gemma is too close to the issue, and Linda is physically too far away from the issue…so the problem remains unsolved until I can solve it myself…which, knowing my lack of emotional clarity, means it will never happen and I’ll be stuck in this Harry limbo forever.

“Why not? Like I said the other day, third party can be the best person to talk to.”

“Not in this circumstance…it’s quite possibly the most complicated situation. If you read gossip columns you probably know about three quarters of the story.”