Jo's tears dried up, like a microfiber towel had been swiped across her eyes. She assumed from nerves, or fear. She thumbed the moisture out from under her eyes immediately. Her head had been down when the door opened, her eyes on the papers still in her hand. She walked to the other side of the desk to give herself a moment to gather herself, gird her loins and exhale before she faced Victoria.

She could hear the rustle of fabric behind her and assumed that Victoria was sitting in the only chair besides her own in the room. Jo was trying to figure out how to play this. She wasn't sure how much you could really hear about what was going on in her office from the outside. Jo never paid much attention to who was in her colleagues offices. She assumed they were doing their jobs and didn't spend her time trying to catch them out, like the bitch who sat across from her seemed to.

Jo reminded herself that there was nothing to call out; nothing to be ashamed of, so far as Victoria knew. Her and Harry could very well have had a heated discussion about any number of things. Even the papers, the ones with the fellowship offers she still clutched in her hand. Or her son and something personal that Harry may know and be unwilling to share.

She shook her head just a little bit, hopefully subtly at that. She didn't need to invent tension, she and Harry had plenty, some fit for public consumption.

Jo turned around in her chair and straightened the papers. She hoped her face was not salt tracked. She figured she was safe there, but knew she looked not quite right. Hopefully not like a sledgehammer had been taken to her heart.

"Good evening Professor McStruppins. You're here late on a Friday evening. Getting everything ready for end of term? How's Ewan's final project coming along?" Stop talking, Jo reminded the Nervous Nelly that seemed to have taken over her mouth.

Victoria pursed her lips and left the air open. It made Jo nervous for a tick until she recognized the tactic. She did this in class when people were not bringing their A-game to discussion. People felt compelled to fill dead air. Instructors had to get used to it though, or they would fill it and let their students off the proverbial hook.

People also felt compelled by politeness, especially British people, even when it was disingenuous, they had manners. So Jo let the air get bigger, like a child chaffing in too small clothes because of a growth spurt and stared back at Victoria. She tried to smooth her expression at first, then she ticked her eyebrow in a non verbal, 'Well?'

The other professor took in a breath. "I'm often here late on Friday. I find that the quiet hours on campus are very instructive." And she glanced her head to the side. "I get a ton done and you never know what you might hear."

Jo wanted to bite her lip, she really wished she had paid more attention to the way sound carried through her office walls. The campus was old though, made of heavy woods and ancient glass and heavy metal blinds. She was sure you could hear shouting, but her bet was you couldn't make out the words. Jo was also sure that if Victoria had something real, that she could prove, she would be in another office entirely rather than trying to rattle Jo's cage.

Jo also knew that she was not a 25-year old new to the game, she didn't like it, but she knew how to play it, the cat and mouse some women liked to engage in. Double-speak over what you actually wanted to share and ponderous with implication. It's why Jo had only really invested in relationships with women she felt like didn't do that and she could trust. She had Cidra, though they waded into each other's life when the water was deep only, and she had Chelsea from Liverpool. Jo would have to check and see how summer was shaping up for her family. She wanted to see how big the girls were. Chelsea was her closest friend in heart, but not distance, and trustworthy.

In any case, Jo knew the type of intrigue Victoria seemed to be engaging in. And she also knew her and Victoria were unlikely to ever be buddies likely to share pints and stories after term. Jo hated the game, but could play it.

"I suppose it's easier to hang about when you have no family to rush home to." Take that bitch, Jo thought and immediately felt a tiny shame. She was sure that Victoria must be lonely. That was probably why she had time to spy and was bitter.

"Yes, I am free and not emotionally tangled." She tapped her hands on her thigh and looked at Jo for a hot minute.

Jo returned her stare and finally exhaled and rose her brow in a 'what the fuck' gesture. "Is there something I can do for you, Professor?" She glanced at the clock. "My daughter gets home from her dad's in a bit over an hour." Two. "And I need to get her things and my own ready for tomorrow.

"Ah, yes, I'm sure there is lots to do to help out all the young ones in your life. I didn't know Professor Giles had visitation during the week." Her eyebrows were thinly drawn, so when they moved on her forehead it was distracting.

Why would you? Jo thought. They weren't friends. "It's new, she is getting bigger and a little less attached to my hip, so Colin assumed the schedule the court suggested when we divorced."

"Yes, that must have been difficult to marry and so quickly divorce a colleague." Her fake sympathy face was as false looking as a child's set for a play.

"It wasn't easy, but we weren't married so long that separating was too difficult, and we're definitely better apart." Jo nodded and shrugged nonchalantly.

"Ah, it just seems like you should have learned your lesson then." Victoria sighed. "I suppose it was still just a little too easy for you, like most things seems to be."

Jo pulled her head back. "Excuse me, I don't think I follow your meaning?"

"Well, it just seems to me you would have learned not to shit where you eat when you married someone  you worked with and then had to promptly divorce them." She harrumphed and Jo felt her lip curl. "Because you're young and pretty, I think people make things easy for you. With your flighty, art girl-aesthetic and mien, they let you get away with too much. I expect your parents did too. Probably why you do things you shouldn't, never got proper discipline." She tsked.

Jo's stomach rolled and she wanted to rise to the bait. This bitch knew nothing about her life, her parents, her children or relationships. No hook was going through her lip though, no matter how pissed she felt. She squashed it down, and rose a bored brow. "What exactly do you think I should have been disciplined for? Colin isn't in our department, and there is no fraternization rules there."

"True. Oh, it's still just," she lifted her chin. "Very unwise."

Jo nodded. "Well, love is often unwise I would guess. And though you seem to think it was easy. I assure you I took some painful lumps and once again raising a child without a partner is not without it's huge difficulties. Even the exchanges are a pain. The scheduling alone...." Jo trailed and waved a hand like it was heavy.

"Oh yes, but you didn't seem to take the lesson." Victoria simmered but tried to look bored.

"Oh, I've learnt some things."

"But what about Harry?"  Victoria smiled wickedly.

Fuckkkkk. Jo schooled her face as best she could, then let it show a bit of confusion.  "Harry?" Jo asked. "What about him?"

Victoria raised her eyebrows and made a face like oh we're going to lie. "Oh, Jo you know the young man who was just in your office that you were yelling with? The one you are having an affair with?"

Jo let her disbelief show, it was mostly at being called out, but she could use it in this context too. "What in the world would give you that idea?" It was so much more than an affair, as their recent fight made abundantly clear.

"Well, I've suspected for some time now. Really, you two have seemed atrociously familiar since the beginning—"

Jo interrupted, "Well, he is my son's childhood best mate, as I've told you." Jo blew out a bored breath.

"Do you yell at all of your son's mates?" Victoria arched a brow.

"That? Well no, not since he was very little and he and Joseph Turner destroyed a canvas. But I'm Harry's advisor, and he told me that he was considering turning down several very amazing opportunities for a relationship." She scoffed. "So, it's probably not my place. But as a mentor, I couldn't help but strongly advise him that that was a terrible idea."

Victoria laughed like a goose, "The relationship with you?"

"I don't think his rare babysitting gigs or my place as his senior advisor is keeping him here, no." Jo was walking a fine line. She couldn't commit to an outright lie, so she kept twisting the truth,  like a errant curl around her finger.

"Fine, if you want to do it this way." Victoria sighed. "I'm well aware that something is going on between you and Mr. Styles. I don't need proof, call it intuition. And if I had proof—""

"Listen, Professor McStruppin, I'm aware you don't like me, but-"

"You're right, I don't like you."

That shut Jo right up. Most people didn't outright say that. Her cheeks should be flaming from that slap.

"What?" Jo boogled. "What have I ever done to you?"

"Nothing, you didn't have to. But you are reckless and too sure of your talent and ability, and you had no right to come onto faculty and crowd me out—"

"I didn't!-"

"I'm aware, you didn't mean to. But you are just like me, when I started here. And just as bloody stupid too. Pissing it all away for a man. In your case a boy." Victoria's jaw ticked.

"Honestly, Victoria, you have completely lost me." Jo was sure her face was blank as an empty slide.

"You wouldn't." Her expression turned wistful. "I was once the rising star, all the students wanted to work with me, it didn't hurt I was young and female. Hard to imagine now. But I wasn't quite as dumb as you. I chose a faculty member at least. And since then, he's just gotten promoted and I've been denied every opportunity. Bloody Richard."

"Richard Lanes? The head of the department?" Jo was really shocked now.

"Oh yes, quite the torrid little love affair we had. Claimed to be head over heels for me, until his feet led him to every opportunity that should have been mine. There were whispers about me you see." She leveled a stare at Jo. "About my judgement and rumors, that he started I'm sure, that I slept with someone. Never a named person, of course, because he would have to name himself. But the fill in the blank was better, people's minds could follow their fancy to big scandals. Like I was sleeping with a student." She arched a brow.

Jo narrowed her eyes in confusion and kept her umbrage off her face.

Victoria sighed heavily. "It ruined my reputation.My career, and I didn't even wind up with a husband, ever, or children, not that I even wanted them, and certainly not the career I desperately wanted. That I deserved." She day forward then, pointed her knuckle at Jo. "And you're so daft, I've been trying to warn you off the same idiotic path, and you just skipped your way to ruin. So promising, but ruined by some pretty boy. What a cliche."

Jo just sat there with a gaping jaw. What was there to say to that? Should she counter? All she could wonder was why Victoria was telling her all this.

"I can see you're shocked. Is it that any man would want to sleep with me or that you've been so obvious?"

Jo didn't think they had been so obvious, and she hadn't heard any whispers. Victoria said she was trying to warn her, Jo assumed she meant that as some kind of help, but Victoria had admitted she didn't like her. The feeling was more than mutual. More than that, Jo sure as shit didn't trust her.

"I'm just shocked you've decided to tell somebody you've admitted you don't like something so
personal." Jo turned the trick back on Victoria and left the air empty as a tomb.

Victoria sort of lifted her mouth on one side. It approached a smile, but Jo continued to wait her out. She wasn't going to admit to a thing.

"Well, the damage has been done. Hasn't it? I'm not department head and when a prettier younger thing came along they gave you what I deserved. And you somehow got the student everyone is sure will be a star in the art world, however tiny that may be. It also doesn't really matter, I just figured you'd ride his coat taies out of here. And you got smarter after my last warning so, the whispers never really formed," she waited a tick, "thanks to me. I just wonder what's the 'to do'? He sleeping with somebody else? Did he say he was embarrassed to tell his mother? Your son found out?" She chuckles out loud then. "That's a fun one! I'm sure your child will be so delighted you thought more of fucking his best mate than him." And she chuckled evilly.

It was horrible to hear all her fears spoken. It was one thing when Jo whispered them to inside her own head, she was as cruel as any woman was to herself, but to hear them in a mocking voice, mean for its sake outside of her head, her heart twisted like a beet in a blender.

She smoothed out her face and shook her head. "Like I said, Harry is trying to avoid leaving on fellowship for some love affair. I told him that was foolish and he started waxing poetic about forever. He got very upset when I told him that doesn't exist, not really. And that he was much too young to settle down, and especially to settle." All true, if you squinted. "And he got very upset, and raised his voice, and I just, well I know how I would feel if it was Ethan... so I got upset. But it wasn't productive, so I tried to stop the conversation." She shrugged and really hoped her face was clear of tears. Because all of that was true, but it was a fresh paper cut she was now rubbing lemon juice into willingly.

"Ok, fine, let's be like that, and keep pretending the relationship he wants to mortgage his future over isn't with you. I applaud you if you don't think you're worth him giving up fellowships and his potential for. You couldn't be more right."

Jo had to bite her cheek over that. Fuck you, she thought.

"I'm just here to tell you, you should break it off, or keep being quiet, because only part of me would rejoice if the same thing happened to you as to me." She didn't look like that part of her was small or quiet. "Oh, and I don't think this is habit, but if you go after my Ewan next, I will start the rumors myself, or have him go with a complaint, they're more likely to listen to a student, specially a male one, anyhow." At that she gave a conspiratorial eye roll. It was the most connection she had tried to have with Jo.

Jo still didn't react though, it would be an admittal of sorts, and she was not going to confess a thing. "Well, thank you for the advice, Professor." Jo stressed the word. Even if Victoria felt like she had lost some mojo along the way, she still had that. And there were other universities. That was where Jo puzzled the most. Victoria had no ties. Why did she stay? At a place she felt under appreciated and miserable and reminded of her folly daily. "I'm sorry you feel like you were misused. I've always respected you." True, just disliked, and that was emphasized after this odd dressing down.

"Quite! We shall see if I can one day return the sentiment." She stood up and exhaled, "Honesty is a big deal to me, you see." Victoria cocked her head at Jo before opening the door and walking out.

Jo sat forward and placed her head in her hands. "What in the bloody hell?" She wanted to have a proper melt down over the two emotionally-laden conversations of the evening, but she needed to get home for Zoe. No time for wailing or pacing.

Through the next week, as she revised her final exams, she thought about Victoria and her strange warning and acrimonious camaraderie. Jo mostly thought about Harry pushing and pushing for more. His hopes for the future that he wanted to make plans. She thought about a summer undefined because al of her fancies included him.

When she thought about Harry, her lungs hurt. Mostly from his absence, stupid things, like how he'd leave wet towels on her duvet sometimes, or his tea cup that never made it to the sink. Or bigger holes Jo lay awake thinking of, the empty depression in her mattress and against her skin. How his smell was fading.

He hadn't contacted her. she hoped that he was too busy prepping for his finals and choosing what painting he would submit as his final project. He had a lot. Jo often found herself in her own studio, but where he seemed to find endless inspiration in her, both in their harmony and agony, she spent her nights without him staring at blank canvas and going through his portfolio mentally. Jo couldn't paint when things were floating like helium balloons round her head. Too many possibilities, things that might go pop.

Harry's talent popped off canvas.

He had to pick something that showcased the way he could transform a landscape into realistic flesh. His women fairly danced out of his works, and the biomes they inhabited had so much detail she'd believe they were beautiful pictures in a travel magazine. He had a ton to choose from.

Which was where she was at.

Harry had come to her the last time with more choices, more options to consider. It was the last thing she hoped for. Jo could admit that she hadn't considered all of the paths he laid at her feet. Some of them weren't really on her radar, others just seemed unnecessary.

She didn't want more what if's.

She needed him to acquiesce, as she had to the video, to give him a feeling of control. Jo thought if he came to her with submission to their circumstances, rather than the fits of folly he was running after, she could entertain one of them.

The surrogate was the one that played with her mind. It gave them time. It made his hopes possible, and she hated it, the thought of somebody else full and round with their baby. But she made a doctor's appointment, one afternoon, online, without thinking. So maybe she was submitting too. It took some of the anxiety off her shoulders. It wasn't in her hands so much. And she had evidence she was trying.

She had no evidence from him. She was trying to be ok with that.

As for Victoria, well, Jo found the entire situation odd. She figured she would feel relief, that balloon seemed to have floated away without revealing itself a bomb. Harry had been right that Victoria had no proof, but she might not use it even if her she did, she may not present it to anybody but Jo. It was like she wanted Jo to be in league with her, against the good old boys, and in lieu of bad choices.

Her mind spun when she looked at their department head now, when he strode down the hallways. She and Richard got along and he had never given her a feeling he was a conniving arse, but Victoria had painted a convincing picture as such. Her boss wasn't to be trusted, and Jo was glad she had never felt she was close to him. He was just the man she reported to, and Victoria didn't seem to want to give him anything on anybody. Her sour grapes benefitted Jo. Jo still felt sorry she had to drink that vinegar, but she hadn't poured it, nor would she drink it to commiserate.

Oddly, the part of the conversation that kept playing over and over in Jo's mind was when Victoria agreed with Jo's own opinion that Harry should pass up no opportunity for her. That she wasn't worth it. It was while she was thinking on it she made an gynecology appointment. Harry shouldn't give up anything for her, but maybe they were worth the sacrifice.

She had sacrificed. There was more distance between her and Ethan than there ever had been. That was partially geographical and chronological, but Jo knew that she would be hounding him a lot more if she didn't have something to hide. She would definitely have taken a trip down to his uni to meet whoever it was that was keeping him distracted. She knew it was natural for him to build an independent life, but her absentia was about Harry in some ways.

That chapped her lips, like the cold of winter. Winter and spring was when she'd let the distance grow, let distraction pull her away, and let him roam. And that season was fully over, summer loomed. Jo wanted that season to pass. Even if she was alone, well without Harry, she need not miss her son. And she had Zoe, years left to watch her grow.

And choices, she had choices.

Jo decided she needed to do a few things. She'd done one with the appointment, she also called her son to find out his summer plans and left a voicemail wishing him home, and she texted Harry. It was only her suggestions about what painting he should submit for his first, but it was a gesture.

He didn't take it for a week.

Jo still woke up and reached over for Harry. When her fingers found cold sheets and fading smells, she rubbed her chest to warm it back up. The chill faded slowly, the longer days and warmer temps and the way her students bounded out of their finals buoyed her optimistism.

Her mood like the weather though. One afternoon, she'd had to chase down exam books when a tempest came up.

She'd driven home immediately to outrun the storm and was glad when Colin texted her that he had picked up Zoe early and she was safe and snug with a tea cup and sweet in his house for a few days. The pictures made her giggle. Zoe was in a silly face phase for pictures. He was getting the hang of weekend dadding.

Jo was home safe too. The storm was loud, and her shutters shook. When the lights went out, she picked up her wine bottle, stuck the cork in, pushed it between the couch cushions and used her cell phone flashlight to go around lighting candles.

Those were mostly brought over by Harry, and the bay and grapefruit one she lit last mesmerized her. She didn't light the cinnamon one, his favorite, the smell would make her body heat, and there was no one to extinguish it. Her hand and vibrator were lackluster now. She avoided the temptation, and moved on to other smells. Jo'd found a jumper, deep in a pile, that wasn't his, and was trying to read a book. It was extremely dark, but nine o'clock on Friday seemed too early for bed. Especially since she hadn't washed his pillow and would stick her nose in it every night to find a remnant. Jo wanted to stave off dreams for a few more hours. The ones he had somehow successfully planted in her head, of his eyes and her nose on a tiny face, and the ones she always had when she tried to sleep in the bed she thought of as theirs.

She made it to ten at night and the storm was in a lull when she decided bed was necessary. The altar she was sitting in the middle of made her giggle when she stood up. She almost took a picture to send to Harry. She'd forgotten for a second.

Looked like the dreams were coming tonight. Jo had just laid down when she heard a banging on her door.

She had no idea who was at her door in this storm, she desperately hoped Ethan wasn't turning up after finals because of her call. That was a long way to come in this weather.

Colin wasn't stupid enough to take Zoe out on this at this hour.

She tried not to hope for the other possibility.

But that horizon was wet and wild on her doorstep, and his eyes were so bright, she could see them in the candlelight through the small window pane on her back door.

"Harry! What the fuck are you thinking, out in this shit?"

"It's you Jo! She's all you!" He fairly shouted over the dying wind and wrapped his huge hands around her neck and brought them together, connected at mouth, and chest, hip and knee.

It was him too, though she had no idea what he meant. Only that the lights came back on when he closed their circuit.