with only the memories of when you were mine

As her students filed out of her morning class, Genevieve returned to her desk and slumped down in her seat. Propping her head up in her palm, she stared at the mess of recipes sitting in front of her. After a moment, she moved to organize them into a proper pile, but sighed and gave up as she realized that she still needed to pick one to teach her afternoon class.

For once, she had not chosen one days in advance. The last few nights had been too difficult to plan much of anything beforehand. A lack of sleep caused her to go through the days like a zombie, and when she got home, all she wanted to do was go to bed—where she tossed and turned for hours, and had strange dreams that woke her often during the night.

Last night, she had gone to bed as soon as she left her store, but she still had not caught up on sleep. She blamed the virtual reality experience. After it ended, it felt like a game, but she kept having dreams about that other life, and the feelings she’d felt, and the family she’d had…

The only family she’d ever had hadn’t even been real. The only man who’d ever loved her truly hadn’t been real, either. It was disconcerting. She couldn’t stop thinking about him, about that fake life that had been everything she wanted out of her real one.

“Coffee,” Genevieve decided aloud to herself. “I need coffee.”

Grabbing her purse, Genevieve exited her classroom and made her way to the nearest teacher’s lounge, where there was bound to be a coffee maker and maybe even a few snacks she could buy from the vending machine.

There was another teacher seated with his back to her, so she figured it was best not to say hello in case he was working on something. The coffee pot was empty. She reached for the can of grounds, but it was empty, too.

“Oh, damn it,” she said. She looked around for another can, but didn’t see one.

“Excuse me?” She turned around to look at the other teacher. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but do you know if there’s another coffee container anywhere? This one is empty and I’m running on fumes.”


@hyperhurricane

When he looked up from his book, Genevieve tilted her head to the side somewhat, and her eyes narrowed with appraisal. He looked familiar, but in a way that was more substantial than merely seeing him in the faculty lounge or passing each other in the halls of the academy.

And his voice—his voice. It struck her upon hearing it that she knew that voice, but she knew it so well that something about it sounded different. Wrong, even. There was something off about it, but she could not discern what that something was.

“The cupboard?” Genevieve looked away from him then and opened the cupboard to the left of her. Inside it were extra coffee filters. The cupboard to the right, however, had the desired coffee can. “Aha! Thank you.”

She began measuring out the grounds when he spoke again. Haven’t we met before? She turned again, and after a moment of scrutinizing him, a wide smile pulled across her face and she began to laugh.

“You’re real! Goodness, I thought you were just a character in the game,” she said. And then, realizing what was different about his voice, added, “You don’t have an English accent.”

“I’m not from London either,” she said. “I’ve never been there—or to Japan.” She hadn’t been anywhere, but felt too conscious of her previous isolation to mention this. There were only two places she knew well: her former prison and now this island.

She decided right then that there were things she would never share with him.

While the coffee heated up and began to cook, she turned and leaned fully against the counter so that she could cross her arms over her chest and smile at him. She nodded at his talk of inconsistencies—there were plenty of those, too.

“I liked my inconsistencies in the game,” she said. “They made life more interesting. But I do own a chocolate store—Harper’s Chocolates, downtown. And my name is Genevieve. Looks like you’re still a university professor, huh? Is your name still Tucker?”

"What do you teach?" Genevieve asked. It was more than polite interest that motivated her; she was genuinely interested. In the virtual world, she had known him better than she knew anyone else, and the desire to know him in this world persisted.

When he asked if he could drop by the store, her smile grew.

"How would that be presumptuous? I would love for you to come by. The store is a little different than what you might remember, but I think you'll like it."

The one we had, he said. Goodness, they had shared it. In the game, she had shared everything with him, even her livelihood—and in the real world she did it all on her own.

"Could I fix you another cup of tea? I would love to sit and chat with you, if that's all right."

“Oh, that sounds lovely,” she said. “I teach a class in chocolate making. My whole life is chocolate.” She laughed a little bit, and it was a slightly self-deprecating sound. Having only been alive for a few years, she knew very little—but she did know how to make good chocolate, and she clung to that. “What kind of history did you teach?”

As soon as he agreed to the notion of another cup, Genevieve prepared that, too. His tea and her coffee finished within a short amount of time, and she brought both cups over. She set his in front of him—“Careful, it’s hot,” she said—then sat down beside him.

“Not keeping me from anything at all,” she said. “I don’t have my afternoon class for about two hours. Usually I’d swing by the shop to make sure it’s running smoothly, but you’ve caught me on a day where I don’t feel too worried about it.”

She had wanted to chat—but now that she sat beside him, she wasn’t sure what to say. A polite, if slightly bashful, smile spread across her face, and she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. There was so much she had wanted to say, and yet now she felt it evaporating. Now, she was just happy to sit with him.

Strange.

“I’m a bit bad at getting to know other people, I think,” she said. “I never quite learned how one does that. So—tell me something? Anything. A story, or something silly that happened, or something you’re angry about. I’ll be pleased with anything.”