Twin Flames, Two Souls Journey Through Time – The Professor - Chapter 8

Amelia walked past Daniels office on the first day of school and his office door was shut and the room was dark.  She was somewhat relieved and exasperated at the same time, as much as she wanted to get this over and done with, she was happy to have a couple of more days of her world not unraveling.  As much as she believed that it was better to know than to not know, and that she didn’t want Daniel to be one of her regrets, it was still her secret, and she was happy to be able to keep it to herself for a couple more days. Amelia knew that if she didn’t say something soon, she would talk herself out of telling him.  The perpetual wallflower in her wanted to keep the status quo, after all what HE didn’t know wouldn’t hurt HER.  She had been hurt so much in recent times, by her ex, by her parents, her siblings, she wasn’t sure if she could stand Daniel being added to that list. 

After class on Thursday, she walked by Daniels office again, and this time he was there, she had thought about just running back to her car and letting go of her silly ideas, but for once in her life she was going to be brave.  She knocked on his door and he looked up, at that moment all the rehearsed lines went out of her head, she wasn’t even sure what words actually came out of her mouth.  She vaguely remembered giving him her business card with her cell phone number written on the back of it, when she stopped talking, he looked up at her with his soulful brown eyes and he pushed her business card back in her direction and said that it would be highly inappropriate.  “But you’re not my teacher anymore” she replied, and he stood up and smiled sweetly at her and said, “I know, but a good rule of thumb is two years.”  She picked up her business card and turned to walk away, she turned back around as she was about to walk out the door and said, “have a good day, Daniel,” and she walked out of his office and to her car, sprinted is more like it.  By the time she got to her car she could feel herself starting to hyperventilate, thankfully she always parked in the back lot, so no one would really see her freak out in her car as she tried to calm her breath.  Well, she got her answer at least he was nice about it, because he is such a kindhearted man he wouldn’t be cruel.  Or maybe he didn’t even have it in him to be cruel, though she supposed everyone could be, regardless she was thankful he let her down as softly as he possibly could.  She wiped an unshed tear from her eye and started her car and headed out to work, this was going to be a long and incredibly shitty day.  Amelia knew she would replay that moment over and over again as it was her nature, but today she was going to keep it to herself.  She had spoken enough to both Lucy and Leah about it, she would let them know what happened, I mean they knew what she had intended to do, they would think it strange if she didn’t tell them.  That would be it though, she had gotten her answer, it was time to move on, reluctant as she was, but no use dwelling on it. 

Daniel hated Thursday’s it was his longest day; he taught his morning class and then also had an evening class where he taught elementary school teachers how to teach math to their students, so that meant that he would be on campus till 9pm.  It was the first week back, so lots and lots of meetings, and on top of everything he had a migraine.  When he saw Amelia in the doorway, he was happy to see her, he hadn’t seen her in three months, so it was nice to see her face again.  He had to admit that he had thought of her often during his summer break, but he was not expecting her to ask him out.  It completely threw him off.  He had a headache, he was at work, in his office, while she was quiet about it for a change, he reflexively said no as nicely as he could.  “I have feelings for you, if that is something that interests you, here is my number if you ever want to call me,” she said it so fast and without breathing or making eye contact with him.  He wasn’t sure if he had ever seen anyone that nervous.  The way she said “why, you’re not my teacher anymore,” she sounded so confused.  As a man he understood all too well how hard it is to walk up to someone and ask them out, especially someone you know, and will more than likely run into again.  He could only smile and softly say, “I know, but two years is a good rule of thumb.”  And it is, enough time has passed by then that there should be no issues that he had at one time been her professor.  He was thinking not only of himself, but of her also.  She had gotten an “A” in his class, because of course she did.  He had even sent her an email about becoming a teacher’s assistant for the math department during the summer.  She would be great at it, and they could always use people to help.  If he started dating her that would not look good on him or on her.  She gave her usual farewell of “have a good day, Daniel,” always with that pause before saying his name.  He had said, “you too,” but he wasn’t sure if she had heard him, she did not linger, not that he blamed her.  He hoped that she would be ok, she turned her normal pink hues, but other than that she had kept her composure.  This was going to be a long fucking day!

Amelia went to sleep that night replaying the humiliating scene repeatedly in her mind.  Every time the memory flashed into her brain, a wave of embarrassment washed over her and all she wanted to do was crawl into a deep dark hole and die.  How was she ever going to be able to look at him again?  She thought about transferring to a different junior college, but the other ones were at least a forty minute drive away while Oceanview was only a five minute drive.  It made no logical sense, how often would they run into each other anyway, especially since she was only in school two days a week this semester.  She convinced herself that she would probably never see him, and she closed her eyes and slept fitfully. 

Daniel got home late, he was hungry, tired, still had a headache, and felt like shit for turning Amelia down.  He did what he needed to do, but the sadness in her voice and face were getting to him.  She looked so lost, and he hated that he was the cause of it.  He was sure in the moment that he had done the right thing, and if he was thinking rationally he knew that he had, but just once it would be nice to be able to do what he felt like doing, rather than what he should do.  Well, it was done now, and hopefully he could avoid seeing her at least for the time being.  He tried to sleep, but he just tossed and turned the entire night.

They were able to avoid each other for the most part, the first time they literally almost ran right into each other.  She was looking down and going out through the door towards the parking lot, and he was pulling it open to go in towards his office.  They looked at each other, both turned bright red, smiled embarrassingly at each other, gave a slight nod and walked away.  It was awkward, but nowhere near as bad as Amelia thought that it would be.  They would run into each other from time to time, or he would pass by her classroom and look at her and smile and nod, and she would do the same.  Sometimes she would give him a slight wave with a shy grin, which in turn made him smile.  He couldn’t seem to help himself.  Seeing her always made him smile.  The weirdest thing was that now that he didn’t see her every day, somehow his feelings for her were stronger.  That feeling of his skin being on fire became more intense whenever their paths crossed.  He would get just a hint of her perfume, and he could barely contain himself.  How could she sit in his class every single day and yet when he randomly runs into her, he has to convince himself not to reach out and grab her, and it was getting harder each time he did see her not to do so.  He still remembered the last time he ever saw her.  She was outside with her calculus professor doing an experiment, when he walked by her, he heard her say, “Daniel,” and he turned and smiled at her and just kept walking, she gave him one of her familiar coy smiles, like she had some secret, and knowing her it was something highly inappropriate.  If he had known that the world was about to shut down for the next two years, he probably would have done things differently, but as they say hindsight is 20/20.

                  As time went on Amelia would think of Daniel often, she knew who he was now, and she hated that after taking so long to find him that she still had to live without him.  She understood the importance of divine timing, but this just sucked.  She missed his face, his voice, his dumb jokes.  She had had such a difficult couple of years, so many times she wished that he was there just to hold her and tell her that everything was going to be ok.  When she found out that she had a congenital heart defect that would require open heart surgery, when much of her family basically disowned her, the selling of her childhood home, the troubles she was having at work, and the worst of it all when she lost her father and then five months later her mother.  She had known that losing her parents would be the worst pain she would ever feel, and she was right.  She missed them every day, so much so that it was as if she could not catch her breath whenever she thought of them, especially her mother.  She loved her father dearly, but she was always closer to her mother, after all she is the only human on the planet whose heartbeat she knew the sound of from the inside.  That a portion of her had always been a part of her mother, even when her mother was inside of her grandmother.  Amelia knew that Daniel would understand what that loss felt like.  She did have her sister, and her best friend, whose name is also Amelia, Mel for short.  They became friends in seventh grade when they met because they had the same name, and they had been friends ever since.  They both have a younger brother named after their father born in April 1978, their mothers shared the same birthday, May 15th, only Mel’s mom was ten years younger, and unfortunately, they both lost their fathers, three weeks apart.  Amelia and Mel were indeed bonded through many shared moments.  Amelia was thankful for both Lucy and Mel, but she desired the support of her other half, she knew that he would hold her and tell her that everything was going to be ok, and that he would make things better, or at least tolerable. 

                  Amelia had spent these last five years coming to the realization that she and Daniel had had many lives together, the only one she has been shown is the one from the Regency Era, but she knew that they had also had other lives together, one in Egypt, one in Paris, she didn’t know how she knew she just knew, and she also knew that her happiest lives were the ones with him.  It is believed that you do not come across your twin flame every life, that each time you cross paths it is for a greater purpose.  She wasn’t quite sure what greater purpose she had in this lifetime, though she kept getting signs about writing.  She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to write, she had always been able to write well, and prolifically, she even had a former partner tell her that she should write a romance novel because she possessed a very vivid imagination.  Amelia thought about all the different types of romance novels that there are out there, what would make hers any different from the thousands that already exist?  Why would that be any sort of purpose for her life? 

Her professors had told her how people listened to her when she spoke.  She always sat in the front row, so she didn’t have to see the other people in the class, always feeling so out of place around students more than half her age.  Her psychology professor Clayton, who had become a mentor, had told her how whenever she spoke the rest of the class listened to what she had to say, especially the young women in the class.  Her English professor James said the same thing, that students both male and female would get upset when he didn’t pair them with her when they were broken out into groups.  Amelia had never been told that what she said mattered, all her life she was told that what she thought, what she felt, was meaningless.  She had never been taken seriously by anyone; she was just a silly stupid girl whose opinion did not matter.  She was at odds her entire life with her family and her religion, because she could simply not sit back and accept the drivel that they were spewing out at her.  That a man is the head, and that a woman’s sole purpose in life was to serve a man.  She was meant to be quiet, pretty, and spit out babies.  She had never married, she didn’t have children, she always had a gut feeling that she could not have kids, and with her heart condition it was probably a good idea that she never had.  She could also never keep quiet, something her father, brothers, and the elders in her congregation found deeply troubling.  She couldn’t just be this silent woman, who had no opinions of her own, and simply acquiesced to whatever the man was thinking, as if her little girl brain couldn’t handle thinking for herself.  So, when her professors told her that her opinion mattered, and that other people actually do listen and want to hear what she has to say, she did not know how she was supposed to feel.  How could people who were basically strangers to her see her so clearly?  She understood why her religion discouraged going to college, because in college you are taught to think for yourself, and college is where she learned that she had value in the world, and where she met Daniel.  When she thought back on all the circumstances that led up to their meeting, she understood how divinely orchestrated it was.  The fact that she only went back to school because Matt had had his sixth child; that her counselor told her to take the wrong math class; that she needed to take a class that was only created that very semester, a class that no longer exists.  The universe does indeed work in mysterious ways. 

                  She had an idea of what to write, she was currently out of work, having quit her job several months earlier.  She kept applying for jobs but had not yet found a position.  With the deaths of her parents the year prior, and the CEO Geoff being an incredible prick to her, she decided she either quit her job or quit her life.  Geoff had been so vile to her, telling her only three weeks after her father died that she either cheer up or get the fuck out.  Now he didn’t use those exact words, but that was the definite meaning behind what he said. Then only a month later telling her that the company was no longer going to accommodate her going to school, she either works 8am – 6pm daily or she can go down to part time, and they will find someone else to work in the afternoons.  This is the same asshole who when she thought that she would need to have open heart surgery sooner rather than later because of her birth defect, his only response was a sarcastic, “oh great!”  As if her being sick was such an inconvenience for HIM.  She had to work at least thirty hours per week to qualify for benefits, but she surmised that this was his goal all along to get her off their insurance so that their rates would go down.  The owner, her boss Sean, had said as much, jokingly stating that she was going to make their rates go up.  She was glad that everyone thought her condition was so fucking funny, because it wasn’t to her.  Sean also knew about how her family had treated her, exactly what she had been through those past few years.  She had always had an avuncular relationship with Sean, they had been close, so his coldness was unsettling to her.  He had initially told her when she wanted to go back to school that he would take her whenever he could get her, apparently that sentiment had changed.  She had been through a lot, things that changed her fundamentally as a person.  Sean had lost family members and his parents, but Amelia had not had to face the same sense of loss in her life.  To this point, she had lost a boss and a dear coworker which affected her, but not in the same way her parents’ death had affected her.  Sean had said that he wanted the old Amelia back, and she responded coldly with, “that person no longer exists, so stop wishing for her to return, she died with her parents!”  She tried to move on, but the sadness that engulfed her made her feel like she was drowning in a sea of her own tears.  She was no longer anyone’s daughter; she was an orphan.  She had lost so much and having Geoff chastise her for not smiling was not only insulting and sexist but incredibly cruel.  What would he know about losing parents, he was adopted, I don’t know if he could ever fully understand that type of loss.  He had children though; would he want his daughters’ future bosses treating them like that?  One thing Amelia believed in was karma, and she knew that one day Geoff would feel the wrath of his cruelty.  She hadn’t wanted to make a hasty decision about quitting her job, while she was in the midst of her deepest grief, so she waited ten months till she could literally no longer stand the thought of working even one more day.  It had been almost nine months since she had quit, she decided that while she was out of work, she might as well make good use of her time, and she decided to work on her idea, and to see where it led to.  It was hard for her to believe that she had anything to say that would be worth listening to, but perhaps it was time to have the same faith in herself that she had in other people.