Unseen Scenes (female Bobby version) (Patreon)

It’s hard to tell whether I’m more in shock or more hurt.

But by the way the air feels that it’s been ripped from my lungs, I’m thinking probably hurt.

The professor is talking but the air in the wood-panelled office sounds like we’re in dead air. Her voice is muffled against the weight of the news compressing my head and making it throb.

“I understand you and Miss. Marks are….” She pauses, mulling over an appropriate word for someone in her position when talking to a student. “Close.”

I’d laugh if my chest wasn’t so tight. I thought we were more than close, but now we’ve never been farther apart.

She slides the stapled pile of paper towards me across her desk. The sound of it scraping against the wood grain has me shifting in my seat.  She seems to take my motion as guilt even if it’s as far from truth as can be.

“You barely changed a word in yours compared to hers,” she comments, striking the paper with her finger. “If Miss. Marks hadn’t told us what you did, we would have figured it out. Do you not realise that?”

My brain snaps back to focus. “Told you?” I manage to force myself straighter in my seat, ignoring the strike of betrayal that shoots out from my heart and sizzles through the rest of my body. “She told you I copied her work?”

She leans back, folding her hands into her lap with a sour expression. “She explained how you were running out of time. Very gracious considering it’s her excellent work you stole.”

“Her excellent work?” The words lash across her with such venom that she actually flinches. “Her work?” I explode with a hollow laugh that breaks the tension.

My gaze falls on my paper. My paper with a bright red ‘F’ scrawled across. My paper I spent a month of my life completing. My paper that Bobby stole from me!

I snatch it from the desk, the edges crumpling in my grasp, and storm out the office with the professor calling after me.

-

Outside, the sun beats down overhead. Students lounge about on the green, spread across the grass with smiles and sunburns, chattering and laughing.

Their happiness spurs my rage. The bright day only fuels more heat to the anger which rages inside of me.

I storm across the campus like a thundercloud across the spring sky.

The door to my dorm slams open, the knob creating a dent in the wall. The impact makes Bobby jump.

She swings around on her rolling chair with wide eyes, her caramel-coloured locks flopping down in front of her wide, surprised eyes.

I launch the paper at her. She has to fumble to catch it.

“You stole my work?!” I stomp a step forward. “You stole my work and told them it was yours?!”

Her gaze flashes about the room, and on not finding an easy exit, she plasters a lazy smile onto her face and makes to stand. She chucks my paper onto her desk with about as much care as she apparently feels for me.

“Angel/Handsome, you can survive this,” she begins in a purr. “You know my grades. I had to do something drastic to win.”

“To win?” I shake my head and turn away, unsure if I can even be in the same room as her without nausea overwhelming me. “This could ruin my entire college education. Don’t you get that? And it’s not even true!”

“It won’t ruin anything.” She reaches out to me, but I recoil. The thought of her touch almost turns my nausea into actual vomiting. “You know you’re going to pass everything at the top. Me, on the other hand….” She screws her face up.

“That’s your excuse?”

“You love me, angel/handsome.” She eases forward warily. “I knew you’d get over it.”

I stare at her for the longest moment, and I finally see her truly for the first time since we began dating. I finally understand why everyone warned me against her. 

How could this have happened? This isn’t your fault. These are the reasonable and sensible thoughts I want to tell myself that will help calm the rage.

But my heart thumps with another thought.

You knew this would happen.

“Get out.”

She stammers in surprise. “What—”

“I said get out!” My voice almost rattles the thin, plasterboard walls.

Bobby examines me before giving a sharp sigh. “We’ll discuss then when you eventually become reasonable.”

After she saunters out, I bang the door shut, stare at it…and run to the bathroom as the reality of what has happened punches me in the gut.