A/N: exposing my mommy issues for all the world to see, you're welcome

Bonjour Madame,

My heart raced when you strode towards me in the hallway. I was so happy to see you again, the way you gazed at me under the fluorescents lending an unexpected warmth to the space between us, a little drip of sunshine in the oppressive Northeastern winters. I wonder if you felt it too, the light bending where my eyes met your eyes. They're a creamy dark brown. Your smile is teasing and suggestive and impish. I'm disarmed by the way you confront me so brusquely, a hint of that curl in your lips, a strong jaw. You're so busy, you tell me. You don't mean to ignore me.

The implication being you thought about how I might feel about you, that you carved out space for me in your mind. I confess that I haven't felt neglected by you and am looking forward to speaking with you about the scholarship I emailed you about. I remember times where I sat with you in your office with the fresh spring breeze blowing through my curls and streaming light bronzing your pixie cut. I enjoyed combing through my essays after class and absorbing the room with you in it within the pauses. You're so pretty. I like your full lips and the creases in your eyelids and your torso and your strong jaw, how you're slender in your arms and shoulders but bottom heavy. I like your fingernails; perfectly pink and white, not too done. You told me I was an evocative writer. Somehow, when you said it, it felt like I'd never heard anyone say that to me before, blooming a hot and sharp wistful pleasure, as if I, at that moment, lived to be seen by you. That being said, the wistfulness stays, as I'm consistently surprised by the mirth in which you both criticize and praise me.

When we sit down for our appointment, I feel overwhelmed in your space. You're wearing a rich turtleneck with the sleeves rolled up to showcase smooth, tanned skin and you smell good, and I'm all small and shy and swallowed by my coat and too scared to shed it, another layer to keep me from you. It seemed it might be over presumptuous to take it off. You tell me how run down you are, an honesty that I barely have time to rationalize before you uncover the next thing, confronting me on my purpose in being here. "So, Henri..." You're smiling at me, your voice a warm personable sizzle in a way some french accents are not. "What did you say in your email? My colleague said I was in liaison with the program?"

"Yeah, she said that." I grabbed onto her statement as a reason to email you in particular, but you have no way of knowing this.

You laugh aloud, then suck in air between your teeth, like the assertion puts you on the spot. "Oh, yeesh." I don't understand what might have compelled this response in you but am quietly pleased that I see the part of you that might not be available to others, that operates in awkwardness. "I wouldn't describe myself as a liaison of any sort."

"Well, that's what she said."

Your brows shoot up. "Ah, yes." You nod, my point made. "Right," emphasis on the t. You reach into your desk and rifle through what I assume is a collection of student files. "Le programme de bourses d'etudes est situés dans Quebec..." Seemingly having no luck finding my file, you say, "Henri, Henri, Henri..." and I like how my name sounds in your mouth. When you finally find it, you locate whatever information you were looking for and get on your computer. "I've spoken with them once or twice. They want to know why they should give the scholarship to you over anyone else. Usually, that means that you'll do something with French in the future. What do you think?"

"Well, I'm not sure. I really like French, but I think I'm mostly doing this for personal enrichment."

"Well... do you know anything about Quebec?"

"Not really." 

You give me a look. "You're writing a 600-word essay on why you want to go there and you know nothing about it?"

"Yeah, that's accurate."

You seem bemused but chastising. "We're off to a great start."

Thirty minutes elapse as you try to configure a plausible and convincing application. Speaking to me is like pulling teeth, you say. We come to the topic of the humanitarian applications of a computer science degree. I just want to remain your perfect girl, unmired by flaws or sins, one being my unwillingness to compromise with my better angels, to pursue my passions instead of my fears. You interrogate me, and the discomfort shifts to frantic anxiety.

"Why did you choose your major?" You seem quizzical, even dumbfounded. "You seem so much more interested in the arts, in language, in writing. But yet..."

"Yeah. I just... art is such a saturated field... it seemed wiser to get into a science with hard skills... and I'm smart." It's not good enough for you, I can see it in your face. My body freezes over, overcome with the reality of my folly but unable to quash the emotions that threaten to overwhelm me. 

"I understand that," you state dismissively. It guts me to know that you see through the veil I obscure myself behind and are interested in pushing it aside. "Why? What do you want in life?"

You want the truth from me. Deep and hurtful, discomfiting and intimate enough that I rarely verbalize it to anyone. My voice is becoming waterlogged by panic before being crushed by pain; a familiar knot pits itself in my throat and stomach and in the space behind my eyes; you are blurry now, just a shape. Suddenly explaining it to you is untenable, I don't know what to do but break out into exasperated crying. 

"Sorry." I inhale all the way in, I hold my breath so you might not see me. My hands fly up to my eyes and I press, press deep into my sockets. I want to pull my consciousness from this moment into a next life, or perhaps launch myself into the body of the successful adult I might become in 20 years. "I want to help my family," I mumble through tears. "Sorry."

"Oh." I'm still not looking at you. The tiny room shrinks ever smaller so that I could reach out and feel the grimace your lips have probably made. Your response is measured, leaving me hanging at the edge of your sentence: "I see." What indictment will you dole out?

"I'm sorry I'm crying," I say, not sure how true even that is. Could I lie to you more than I already have? I think you might be able to tell when I'm not honest because you respond to my fib in a way that makes me feel that apologizing perhaps isn't the point of this moment. I add, "My mom is sick," I continue, "I need to help."

"Hmmm," you exhale. When I finally blink my tears away, your brows are knitted together with concern, pretty chocolate brown eyes worried, enough that I feel the urge to press my thumbs in the creases in your forehead and smooth them out. I don't like feeling responsible for your concern. I don't like feeling like a blemish in your day, something to tell your husband about before turning off the light and rolling over. I notice the modest ring on your finger and wonder if maybe there has been some mistake between us which we cannot discuss, lest it becomes increasingly clear that I've done something unavoidable to meet you in your office with the door shut and my chest pounding and my vision blurred by tears. Maybe this will present in a different way if I dared broach what is rising inside me. "This is not an easy thing, Henri."

I nod. I look at my jeans.

You say, "I understand."

My eyes dart up to meet yours, to verify if you really do understand. You've taken on a stoicism, a rigidity. "That's admirable," you murmur. "You should be proud. That takes strength and discernment and kindness."

I nod again, tightly, my palm going up to my nose to wipe away the thin salty drip of tears from my upper lip. "I know what it's like to take care of a family member. But you need to know it's not your job."

"Ugh..." Another wave of tightly coiled tears unwinds suddenly, throwing me back into despondence. I could be this fragile China girl in your office forever if you don't let me breathe, if you don't let me think; I rock forward in my seat. "No," I mutter, crying and dismissing your statement out of hand. But even to my own ears, it doesn't follow. No, it isn't my job? No, I already know that it isn't? Or no, I have an experience that rends itself so far from understanding that no one could possibly see me - least of all you?

"I do know you need a break," you reply, ignoring my protestation, "from thinking everything is yours." Through the watery and claustrophobic rhythm of my heart, my sniffles, I hear you stand up and round the desk. Your forearms constrict and tense in a brace against the corkwood surface; you lean back on it a foot or two away from me. I could stand up and be very close to you, be so close that maybe the heat ebbing off my damp cheeks you might feel radiate, to realize what I am showing you privately, to be taken aback by my boldness, to look in my eyes and see the fierceness in which I want you. My heart frantically spurts and falters, each second that passes a new brand tallied into my skin for me to look at when I'm naked and alone. 

I'm not expecting you to touch me, but you do. Your hand barely grazes my shoulder, and then you are inching closer when I welcome this, when I let my shoulders drop. I'm desperate to collapse into the soft fabric of your skirt and weep and be swept up by you. Your hand is abrupt and confusing and intimate and I wonder if I'm dreaming. Pinch me, pinch me. Is this all I'll ever get from you? Is this the final shuddering and clenching of a fist drawn so tight around hope it may as well be stone, a paperweight on your desk?

"You should apply," you continue. Your touch smooths me over like the sanguine wash of bourbon. I can feel each finger curl one by one into the dip in my shoulder blade, and then gently, pinching the softness in the crook of my neck. "When I feel homesick, I visit Quebec. It's beautiful in the summer. You'll love it."

If I don't see you now, I'll be imagining it ever happened. Tearstained, flustered, reddened, my head lifts to witness you above me, a frozen second where you are my tanned beautiful deified sculpture, reaching for me in apotheotic reconciliation and comfort and desire, and you are seeing how you've undone me and made me dirty and proletarian underneath you. In your eyes is a tenderness removed by superiority. You've flattened me, you've flattened me, you've flattened me.

And then the moment passes. It's startling as swallowing shards of ice; your hand is gone as quickly as it had glanced my back. Almost as if ashamed, your eyes flicker away from me. The black arms of your turtleneck are pulled down over your bare skin in a spell of body language that is so defended that it drags you back to humanity. (Is it cold in here? you may as well have asked.) You've rounded the desk again. In the absence of your gaze, there is a preponderance of knowledge unquestioned. Again, you are the scholar. But I wonder if I'm the smarter one, staring silently at you and wiping teary snot on the back of my hands while you pretend to rediscover my file, the monitor's glow reflected by your unseeing gaze. You rest your chin upon your left knuckles, your brow knits and unknits.

The world reemerges. My head aches from crying and my throat is a vice around the air that I inhale in your presence. The sky hangs cold and bleakly gray as an intrusion upon whatever I could deign to think to say to you.

Finally: "Sorry."

You don't look at me. "Rien."

At the time, I wondered, would you have had that moment change?

If you had, would you still have wanted me there with you?

Perhaps it's better that I don't know.

À mardi,

Henri