One Perfect Professor Read online

  One of the acapella kids hit a button on the jukebox, and began to sing.

  Wise men say, only fools rush in...

  Soon, the whole group was singing their famous acapella rendition of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” and walking off stage into the gardens, and into the audience.

  Shall I stay, would it be a sin?

  Towards us. They were walking...towards us.

  My heart hammered in my chest as I noticed all twelve members of the acapella group and everyone in the garden turn in our direction.

  Cause I, can’t, help, falling in loveeee

  Adam stood up and reached into his pocket, and suddenly I put it together, and I was pretty sure I was about to have stroke.

  “Sabryna,” Adam said as he knelt down. “I know this is a bit earlier than we planned, but I can’t wait anymore...” Adam opened the red velvet box in his hand to reveal one of the most massive diamond rings I had ever seen.

  “Sabryna...will you marry me?”

  Chapter Nine

  “What?” I said under my breath, and I felt the world spin around me, a dizzying blur of sundresses and suits and twinkle lights.

  “What do you say?” Adam said. I suddenly felt dizzy, like I was ready to fall over or faint. The eyes of everyone in the garden, twelve overexcited acapella singers, and Adam, were all fixed on me and waiting for an answer. I thought through all the events of the past few weeks. The stress, the pain, the heartbreak. It had all gotten so complicated, so fast. I wanted things to go back to the way they were...back before I was so confused about who I was or what I wanted. And there was only one way to do that.

  “Sabryna?”

  I took Adam’s hand and smiled. “Yes. Yes, of course I’ll marry you.”

  Adam grinned and stood up to hug me as the garden erupted into cheers.

  Adam pulled me in for a kiss and reached out to take my hand. He slipped the diamond ring onto my finger—the huge, princess cut diamond ring, and smiled at me. The crowd burst into applause once again, and then I felt panic begin to set in.

  I did the right thing? Right? The people in the garden began to disperse back towards the food area to give us our privacy. I was engaged. Ohmygod, I was engaged.

  “How about next month?” Adam said.

  “What?”

  “Next month. Let’s get married.”

  I stood there in complete shock. “Adam...that’s a whole wedding. You can’t plan a whole wedding in a month...that’s crazy.”

  “Nah...” Adam said, pulling me towards him. “Weddings are crazy. The thing that matters is that we’re married. As soon as possible, right?” He looked at me, daring me to give him another answer.

  “I...I guess.”

  “We have the beach house for the summer. All you need is a dress, and we can do the usual catering and music and everything that my parents usually do for parties. They do it all the time. It’ll be simple. I already asked my mom, and she has all of the planning under control.”

  “She does?”

  “Yeah,” Adam said enthusiastically, and I knew he was right. “We never do anything spontaneous. You’ve been too focused on school. This is our chance.”

  Adam pulled me in for a kiss, a deep one that felt half excited and half aggressive. When he pulled away, instead of looking at me, he turned back to the party and began searching the crowd. “I’m looking for that photographer guy,” he explained. “I’m hoping I can slip him a hundred bucks and get him to take some good engagement photos.”

  He let go of my hand and rushed off into the crowd. Where minutes before I had been a princess in the center of the crowd, now I was standing in the garden completely alone—the spectacle complete.

  Chapter Ten

  The store was nestled in the small Rhode Island town where Adam grew up. The whole place had a small-town vibe, and was filled with cute old couples living in old Victorian houses painted in pastel colors. There was one enormous mansion, built off to the side of the town. And you’ll never guess who lived there.

  It was the Friday the week before the wedding, and I had been rushed to Rhode Island in Adam’s car the second my classes were over for the week. I felt like a zombie as I watched the cars speed by on the highway. I had spent the last couple of days trying to feign normalcy, but it hadn’t really worked. I sat through my classes, trying my best to focus as questions raced through my mind, and I kept pushing them down.

  I skipped all my Modernist Lit classes.

  I had always been good at repressing things, at covering up reality until it disappeared. It seemed I had done that old trick again, and the reality didn’t hit me until Angela, Adam’s older sister, grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the store, where I was all of a sudden surrounded by a sea of white and ivory and blush.

  Oh god, I really was getting married.

  All of a sudden, I was attacked with a tight hug, and I looked down to see a tiny woman covered in necklaces and scarves studying me intently. Angela introduced her as Josie, and noted that she did all of the fitting, tailoring, and designing for Abrams family events. Josie thrust a champagne glass into my hand without first asking if I was even twenty-one. I guessed most people these days got married after they could legally drink.

  “So what’s your style, dear?” Josie asked, looking me up and down. “What do you see as your dream wedding dress?”

  “I don’t know, I guess,” I shrugged. “I haven’t really had time to think about it.” Angela gave me a dubious look. She struck me as the kind of girl who had planned her entire wedding out to the last detail before she turned twelve.

  “And of course,” Josie said, lowering her voice. “Considering it’s so last minute, we don’t have much time for alterations...which could be an issue, considering your um...size.”

  I bit my lip. I was used to hearing comments about my weight from time to time, but something about hearing that comment while shopping for a wedding dress—an experience that’s supposed to make every girl feel like a princess—really rubbed salt in the wound. It didn’t help that I was surrounded by pictures of models wearing wedding dresses that couldn’t have been much bigger than a size four.

  “I guess perhaps I’d like something classic,” I said, and Angela beamed.

  “You’re going to have to be more specific, dear,” Josie said, and handed me one of many massive catalogues on the shelf. I instinctively handed the book over to Angela. She seemed excited, and would probably know better, anyhow.

  “Why don’t you let Josie find some stuff for you to try on while I look through these?” Angela suggested, and so I followed Josie into a back room of the dress shop. I had always liked Angela, and she had always been kind to me, but it had always felt to me like we lived our lives on different wavelengths.

  I stood silently as Josie took my measurements and put me in a very simple white dress to start off with. I stood, feeling like a suffering artists model, as she stuck pins in the dress and made unintentionally hurtful comments about how frustrating it was to find a dress that fit me correctly. I sighed, and stared at myself in the mirror.

  I had called my parents after the fundraiser party to tell them about the sudden engagement, and I couldn’t quite gauge their reaction. It was pleasant excitement, but underneath there seemed to be a note of confusion, and possibly concern.

  I was excited to get married, I really was, but I was also concerned about Adam’s motives of suddenly rushing into a proposal and a wedding out of the blue like this. Was it possible someone had told him about me and Nate? I doubted it, but the more likely scenario was that it had to do with the economics fellowship. If we were already married when we graduated, then it would be a lot harder for me to leave him to go to London for the economics program.

  I winced as Josie stuck me a little too hard with one of the pins. Grin and bear it, I thought.

  A motto I was going to have a lot of use for, starting now.

  Chapter Eleven

  Everything was a blur. A
happy, exciting, confusing blur, but a blur none the less, and one I wasn’t totally sure I wanted a clearer vision of. The wedding was in two days, and it still all felt like a dream. Tonight, we were going out to dinner with Adam’s grandparents from New York, and my bridesmaids, Cristina and Eliza, would be showing up and being fitted for last minute dresses. I hoped that having my two best friends here to talk things through with would help me get some perspective on things.

  “Ready for the big dinner tonight?” Angela asked. It was only nine o’clock in the morning, and Angela’s pre-wedding cheeriness was already way too much for me to handle.

  “I think so,” I said, and smiled as I reached for a banana off of the counter. “Adam sure does make your grandparents sound intimidating, though.”

  “Well, he’s not wrong,” Angela said, rolling her eyes. “They’re snooty, they’re judgmental, but they’re also old and senile at the age they are now. And me and Adam will be there. Don’t sweat it.”

  I sighed and began my way to the coffeemaker to get another cup of much-needed French roast, when I heard the doorbell ring. Before Angela could even make a polite greeting and introduction, Cristina and Eliza rushed in and practically suffocated me with their hugs and high-pitched squealing.

  “Sabryna! Sabryna! MARRIED Sabryna!” Eliza kept squealing. “I don’t believe it!” I had hardly had time to see either of my friends since the engagement, so we hadn’t really had much time to talk about the news or freak out about it. Cristina fell back behind Eliza and seemed oddly subdued.

  “Hey,” Eliza said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Can we take a walk? We haven’t really been able to talk about this yet.”

  “Sure,” I said, and opened the screen door, where Eliza and I began to walk in slow circles around Adam’s huge and overly landscaped backyard.

  “Sabryna, look, I don’t want to put a damper on things two days before your wedding, but I don’t really know when else I’m going to do this.”

  “I think Angela has the excitement factor covered,” I joked, as we looked inside to see her still excitedly looking over menus with Cristina.

  “Sabryna, I just...” Eliza sighed. “I’m concerned about the engagement. I know you’ve had doubts about marrying Adam before, and I know the proposal was sudden and public and I don’t know if you felt pressured into it, and...”

  “I want this, Eliza,” I told her, smiling as solidly as I could muster. “I’ve always wanted this, you know that.”

  “Well, okay, if you’re sure,” Eliza said, and then pulled me in for a hug. “I’m very happy for you then.”

  “I’ll be happy once this dinner is over,” I said.

  “What dinner?”

  “We’re going out to this really fancy restaurant in town with Adam’s grandparents. They’re kind of the head of the family. Leaving a good impression is crucial for the wedding going over well.”

  “Ah,” Eliza said. “I see. I guess even when you marry rich you have your fair share of problems.”

  I laughed. “I suppose so.”

  “Do you think Cristina is acting weird?” Eliza asked.

  I shrugged. “How would I know? I only talked to her for like three seconds in the kitchen.”

  “Good point,” Eliza said. “I don’t know, I’m probably just being paranoid. But she’s been very weird about this whole wedding thing.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said. I was far too concerned about making a good impression at this dinner to care if Cristina was acting a little bit strange.

  ***

  At seven o’clock on the dot, we were ushered into Adam’s mother’s massive SUV, all dressed up and ready to meet the Abrams grandparents. I was wearing a dress that was far too tight, and heels that were already starting to make my feet blister.

  “Everybody ready?” Mr. Abrams called, and I felt my stomach turn as I took a seat in the back next to Adam. The restaurant was one of those fancy, small plates ordeals where you were given a snack that was more a piece of art than actual food—I suppose the one small mercy would be that I wouldn’t have to pay for it.

  “Just relax,” Adam said, as more of an instruction than a comfort.

  I had to catch my breath when we walked into the restaurant. The whole room was designed like a space in a modern art museum. The deep black tables were arranged in different geometric shapes across the room, which was interspersed with a rainbow of different abstract sculptures. The overall effect was breathtaking.

  The host led us to a table in the back, where Adam’s grandparents were already sitting—they were an elderly black couple who dressed in that way older people sometimes do for formal events, looking like they were dressed more for a funeral than a pre-wedding dinner.

  “Grandma, Grandpa,” Adam said, leading me over. “This is Sabryna, my fiancé.”

  Both of them stared at me flatly, as if they were impatient to get this whole affair over with so they could go home and go to bed.

  We sat silently as the wine list and menu were passed around. I felt like I should say something, but I had no idea what. The entire table was filled with an eerie silence.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered to Adam. He just gave me a look.

  “It’s always like this,” Angela whispered back. “Mom and Dad have never gotten on with Dad’s parents. We don’t say anything...this dinner is just...perfunctory. It had to be done.”

  I took a nervous sip out of my water glass. She really wasn’t kidding. In the first fifteen minutes of the evening, the only words that had passed across the table were a couple of comments about the halibut dish. Adam’s grandparents had no intention of getting to know me at all, it seemed, and it looked like I wasn’t supposed to get to know them either. I was puzzled by the menu, and just ordered what Angela was getting—something with steak and pearl onions arranged like dewdrops on a rose.

  As we waited for the food to arrive, I noticed the conversation was split into thirds—The Abrams parents talked, the grandparents talked, and Adam, Angela, and I talked amongst ourselves. The dinner table seemed utterly pointless. There was no connection here at all. I thought back to the Thanksgiving dinners I had back home, potlucks filled with love and hugs and stories and inside jokes. We knew each other, and we loved each other. Whatever this was, it was completely alien to me.

  “Are you alright, Sabryna?” Angela asked. “You look like you’re spacing out.”

  “I’m good,” I said, but I wasn’t so sure. All of a sudden, I could see all of the dinners, ones exactly like this one, stretching out in front of me for the rest of my life. It was making me feel nauseous. I was craving my home, my family, even my dorm room back at school—I just wanted a comforting place where I felt loved and accepted and wanted...was that too much to ask from my new family?

  Since the plates of food were so tiny, it felt like we were done within minutes...much to my relief.

  “Mom, Dad, it was good to see you,” Mr. Abrams said, looking at his parents uncomfortably, as if they were about to scold him any minute.

  “Of course,” Adam’s grandmother said, yawning already. “We’ll see you all at the wedding.”

  “Nice to meet you!” I added before they could walk away. Adam’s grandfather looked at me blankly, as if to acknowledge that he heard me. My face sank.

  “Don’t bother,” Angela said, as we walked to the parking lot. I sank into the backseat of the SUV and sighed as another wave of anxiety and nausea started to take over. It wasn’t the fact that these people were new to me, and that I was new to them, making things uncomfortable. The Abrams family was just not a family that did...well, family. With the exception of Angela, they saw me as a useful accessory to Adam, and that was it. But could I live my whole life that way?

  ***

  When I got home, I found Eliza and Cristina sitting on the sofa painting each other’s nails while an action movie played silently in the background. They looked bored out of their minds.

  “Come on Sabryna,
” Eliza said. “Hang out with us for a bit. We’ll have a tiny, really lame bachelorette party for a couple of hours.”

  I stretched out and yawned as I kicked my heels off. “Thanks, but nah,” I said. “I kind of just feel like heading to bed early, if you don’t mind.” I smiled at my friends. “But we’ll do something fun later...brunch maybe?”

  “I’d kill for a mimosa right now,” Cristina said, painting a toe neon blue. I pulled myself up the stairs, pulled on my sweatpants, and crashed into a deep sleep at only eight p.m.

  ***

  But then of course, I had to pee.

  I turned over and looked at the digital clock on the nightstand. It was only midnight. The events of the previous evening, sadly, began to wash over me again as I made my way to the bathroom. When I came out, I felt suddenly awake again...like my thoughts were too chaotic to ever allow me to get to sleep again. I yawned and wandered down the stairs, hoping the Abrams family wouldn’t mind if I raided their fridge for a midnight—

  “What?!?”

  I froze, watching Adam and Cristina pull apart from each other on the sofa in slow motion, the colors and lights blurring in front of my eyes as I tried to process the scene in front of me—Cristina kissing Adam...and Adam kissing her back, his hands tangled in her hair as he was moving his lips to her neck.

  “I don’t...” I stood there frozen. I watched them meet eyes, communicating silently, as if they were trying to decide what to tell me.

  That line of communication had clearly been open for some time.

  “Sabryna...” Cristina said. “Listen, it was—“

  “Baby, look,” Adam started. “It doesn’t mean anything, it was just, you know...”

  I scoffed. “I don’t want to hear it,” I said. “I really, really, don’t.”

  Adam and Cristina stared at me blankly, all three of us looking like deer caught in headlights.

  “Don’t go to bed,” Adam said. “Let me just...”

  “Oh, I’m not going to bed,” I said. “I’m going home. And I’m not coming back.”