Broken Seed Read online

  I saw some of the girls look at me and then back at David with affronted expressions. Apparently, they didn’t see what he saw. Neither did I. But then, I caught a few twisted snarls of contempt from the little Barbie-wannabe clique of barely-out- of-high-school girls and felt just plain insulted.

  I am not that ugly. Come on now.

  One girl in particular narrowed her makeup-glittered eyes at me and turned to whisper to her friend, who, having been uninterested up until now, joined her in a snide sizing up of my haggard and homely appearance.

  Hmm. Guess David has a fan club. Can’t say I blame them. He is quite cute after all. And smart. And incredibly good. And he so just embarrassed me!

  I dropped my face in my hands and tried to hide. Oh. My. God.

  The room erupted into laughter at my show of embarrassment, and the boys whooped all the louder.

  “All right, all right, everyone. Settle down. I’ve got a speech to give, people,” the professor said halfheartedly to his class.

  “Well, Mr. Abramson. Good luck in your noble endeavors to woo the…fair maiden,” the professor stuttered, having actually looked at my appearance and attire for the first time today. “But as for now, perhaps you can contain yourself until after my class is over so Ms. Bishop can raise her head off of the table and attempt to listen to me instead of you.” I lifted my face up a smidge and caught a glimpse of his wink at David and turned back to his dry erase board to scribble some more notes for the class to copy down.

  I dropped my face in my arms again and wished I was invisible. When I felt rather than saw all the heads in the room had once again faced forward, I raised my head slowly. I peeked out and saw the backs of everyone’s heads. The professor was babbling on and on with his lecture, but I hadn’t heard a word of it.

  I glanced at David who was taking down notes. He felt me watching him or saw me out of the corner of his eye because he looked over at me in response. Then, he leaned toward me, a small smile creeping back across his lovely full mouth.

  “You okay?” he asked nearly silent.

  “Why?” I breathed out, still horrified.

  “Because you look really red,” he whispered.

  “No. I mean, why did you have to say that to the whole class?” I hissed, trying hard not to raise my voice above a whisper. Crap on shoes, now I was red? Mother…

  “How else can I persuade you I’m serious?” he asked, leaning in a bit more.

  “By humiliating me?” I said in a whisper, having lost some of my control.

  “No, not that,” he said, his face showing me his “oh gee, sorry” look. “By professing my love for you to the world.” He said a little too proudly and a little too loudly.

  “Ah-um,” the professor said clearing his throat, his back still to the room as he scribbled. The rebuke was clearly for us, but I couldn’t help but ignore it anyway.

  “David,” I said, shaking my head, “you don’t even know me. You think you do, but you don’t. You just work with me, that’s all. Two short miserable years. And, you happen to sit in the same class I do. How could you possibly say the L-word?” I made little quotation marks around the invisible letter L.

  “I may not know everything about you yet, but I know I want to know more. What little I do know, I like…a lot. I know you’re intelligent and have a great sense of humor. You’re sarcastic and witty, sometimes at the wrong moment, and you end up embarrassing yourself. You’re a strong woman but kindhearted more than you let on. You put up this wall around yourself when you think people are getting too close. But you feel everything. I’ve seen it in your face,” he whispered softly but earnestly.

  “Oh, really?” I asked, pressing my lips together. Damn it. He sees more than I give him credit for. I looked down, embarrassed.

  “A kid cries at work, and you look concerned. A man yells at his children, and you get angry. A woman kisses a man, and you blush. A teacher compliments you on a job well done, and you look down and shrug as if you don’t believe a single word of it. That tells me you’re kind, virtuous, humble and get embarrassed when the spotlight is on you,” David whispered to me, his voice growing warm and gentle.

  I looked up to find his eyes were wide and beseeching. I looked down and away, all the more embarrassed he had read me so well and then frustrated with myself that I had done exactly what he said I always did. I looked back up with a scowl of irritation.

  David smiled at my resolve and leaned in a little more. I stayed still and didn’t move away, defiant to him.

  “Bishop, I don’t mean to embarrass you or scare you. That’s the last thing I’d ever want to do. But I admit, I want to know everything there is to know about you,” he said with a shy, charming smile. His eyes were so sincere they burned holes right through me, and I felt butterflies tickle the inside of my stomach.

  Oh, God.

  “Have you ever seen something you knew could be great, but you didn’t know how to make it happen?” he asked, leaning a bit more toward me. By now, his face was only about six inches away, and I could smell the mint on his breath and the cool scent of his aftershave. The slight stubble on his face told me he hadn’t shaved this morning. It made him look even more handsome than usual. It added ruggedness to his kind, dimple-cheeked face.

  “I think so,” I said, unable to break away from the intensity of his eyes so close to me.

  “From the moment I saw you, I…” He broke off and looked down. I saw him struggle for the right words. Perhaps for words that would scare me the least.

  “I won’t say it was ‘love’ at first sight.” He made his own quotation marks. “But it was something like it. You glowed to me, Melanie. Everything about you sang to my soul and drew me in like a flower to the sunshine. I am powerless to resist you,” he said, his voice persuasive.

  In that moment, I saw things in his face I had never seen before in the face of any man. He wore his heart out openly for me to see, and it was all there in his face and in his eyes. He let me see all the affection, respect, hope, and passion he held within himself for me.

  “Yeah, right,” I said, trying to brush him off again and make light of it. His intensity was hard to shy away from. He too drew me in, and I was fighting him as hard as I could.

  “I’m serious, Melanie.” He reached out and put his large warm hands on my clenched fists. I hadn’t even realized I had them clasped out in front of me on the edge of my desk. My knuckles were white from clenching. I slowly withdrew my hands from under his and concealed them safely in my lap. David leaned in more, his face no less than four inches from mine.

  “Melanie, I have never felt this way about anyone in my life. And I wasn’t lying when I said I have to be with you. I don’t mean in a perverted way,” he added quickly, seeing I was about to say something defensive. “I meant to be with you as in get to know you and make-you-a-part-of-my-life kind of way. I don’t want to sound cheesy, but I know it to be true as much as I know that without air, I would slowly suffocate and die.” His voice traced my skin like velvet and made me shiver.

  The passion of his words filled me up with warmth, and my heart began to race, skipping a beat now and then to make me feel flushed and hungry to hear more. His words didn’t make me feel slimy at all. He wasn’t looking at me with lust, and there was no deception in his eyes. He felt good, clean, and wholesome. He felt right.

  I was stopped abruptly from slipping any further under his spell of passion by the sudden feeling of being watched. I felt a shadow break across us, and I glanced up. Professor Stewart was standing with his hands on his hips, his bifocals resting on the tip of his long, crooked nose as he glared down at us. The sunlight streamed through the tops of his white and dark-gray hair, making him look like a crazed maniac on the verge of a manic outburst.

  “Oh, don’t stop for me, Mr. Abramson. That was beautiful. I think we’d all like to hear her response to that heartfelt statement,” he said dryly and clicked his tongue at us.

  In an instant, the spell was b
roken, and I was once again lost to embarrassment, humiliation, and stirrings of resentment toward David’s unrealistic emotional infatuation.

  How and why had I agreed to sit next to him again?

  The entire class had turned to watch when the professor had come to tell us once again to shut up. We had been so caught up with our own conversation we hadn’t even noticed his approach nor the fact the room had grown silent to observe what the students had evidently hoped to be a rare yet vociferous rebuke from the professor.

  “I…We…Sorry.” I stuttered incoherently, completely caught off guard and resisted the urge to run from the room and abandon David to deal with the situation he had created. Yes, he had created it. I may have been talking too, but this was all his fault. Damn it.

  “Go on, spit it out,” Professor Stewart said to me, his own annoyance at having been interrupted yet again, clearly making him lose his usual go easy manner.

  “Ah, professor Stewart, don’t punish the lady further for my lack of self-control, sir. I promise not to speak again this hour, nor will I lure Ms. Bishop into speaking without your expressed permission,” David said protectively.

  “Humph,” the professor snorted and turned to walk away.

  “And who are you to suggest you can keep me from speaking without his expressed permission? You don’t speak for me!” I said, truly irritated now and instantly irate at the notion he would assume to prohibit me from doing anything I would so choose to do.

  “No, that’s not what I—” David began.

  “Mr. Abramson! One more word from either of you, and I will ask you both to leave!” Mr. Stewart had stopped mid-turn at my outburst to David and was glaring at both of us, his beady little eyes flashing.

  “Yes, sir,” I managed to say. I once again dropped my head to my desk, completely humiliated.

  Why me?

  Duel Confession

  Chapter Five

  I ignored David for the rest of the class. I didn’t even look at him when it was time to leave. I grabbed my bag, which I had never even opened to get my notebook out and left the room as quickly as I could. By the grace of God, he didn’t call after me or chase me down, and I didn’t run into him again the rest of the day, even changing classes like I normally did. I think he knew I was freaked and was trying to give me breathing room to sort it out before he’d try again.

  Oh, how considerate. Now he considers my feelings. Ugh!

  “Probably doesn’t want me to think he’s some crazy, controlling stalker,” I heard myself say out loud while in the restroom. One of the girls at the sink next to me looked up, confused. I shrugged and walked out of the bathroom. I was used to people thinking I was weird. What was one more?

  I was so distracted all day I blindly stumbled my way from class to class across campus. It was a miracle I even got to the right rooms on the first attempt, but you go twice a week for a few months, and your body makes it a habit. Muscle memory, I guess. Like driving on autopilot. It’s kind of scary to realize you drove ten miles and don’t remember any of it except your favorite episode of Friends you just played over again in your mind.

  Lucky for me, I didn’t have any tests or pop quizzes today. I would have flunked. As it was, I barely knew what my professors were even talking about. In my international politics class, I nearly forgot to give Mr. Scully my extra credit essay. It wasn’t until he begrudgingly made one last announcement to the room that all the extra credit essays should be brought to him before he started the video that I even caught what he was saying. Okay, so it was mainly the fact a classmate squeezed past me with their rump in my face to turn in their extra credit, pieced together with the professor’s monotone grumble, that finally clued me in.

  I raced down the steps of the auditorium-styled room and plopped the essay in his hand, nearly slicing his wrist in the process.

  “Oh, I can’t wait to read this worthless bit of fiction. I’m tingling with anticipation,” Professor Scully said snidely. Apparently, he still considered me a waste of his time since I didn’t worship the ground he walked on and was barely squeaking by with a C.

  I turned and glared at him. I must have shocked him with my expression, whatever it looked like, because he shut his mouth and didn’t say another sly comment. He quietly placed my paper along with the others on his desk and walked away to dim the lights.

  I went back to my desk and caught a few glances of people looking away at my direct eye contact. What did my face look like? Did I really look that ticked off and ready to kick someone’s butt? Or was the frustration and agitation I was feeling inside dripping out of my pores in a radiating aura of doom?

  I felt a trickle of shame at how miserable I must look to everyone. Some Christian witness I was being. I suppose being human meant I’d always struggle with not letting my emotions dictate my moods and attitude. I mean, come on, no one was perfect. Once people insist everything is always beautiful and lovely, you know they have some deep ugliness inside just waiting to get out. And it comes out too. In some small spiteful ways, it seeps out like a dirty little oil leak. It isn’t that people can’t have a good attitude and be happy most the time or be a soft mellow jelly pacifist, but come on, everyone gets mad. Everyone gets hurt. Everyone gets sad. Why pretend to act too good to feel anything real? If you prick me, do I not bleed?

  And swear. And smack you or prick you back?

  We’re supposed to be real. Real Christians mean real people. Why be fake? Who are we trying to impress anyway? It isn’t like we can fool God into believing the facades we try so hard to display. It may work on some people but not on God. He always knows what’s going on inside us. He sees the ugliness and the beauty within that we hide from others. So be real. Just be sure not to use being real as an excuse to be crass, rude, or treat others poorly. That wouldn’t make you an honest person, just self- centered, and that’s a whole other problem.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the loud monotone voice of the professor, and a moment later, the massive screen came down, and the video began. I tried many times throughout the hour and a half to pay attention, but my mind was stuck in a never-ending loop of irritation, confusion, sadness, and longing.

  My fight with Elisabeth this morning played over again in my mind. Then David professing his love to the room of interested onlookers. Back to Elisabeth trying to protect me, acting solely out of love and a sense of responsibility for me. Then, Jill and the gang came crashing into my mind and the threat they would want to get me back and finish what they started.

  Ah! Stop thinking about it!

  Oh, but David is such a good man. I had thought briefly the other day I might be able to try to date him, but now… I don’t know. He was so passionate, maybe too passionate. And though he had tried to be chivalrous by asking Professor Stewart to leave me alone, it had offended me. It probably shouldn’t have offended me as much as it had. Why did I always overreact?

  The thought of David made me squirm in my own skin with desire to be near him again. Not because of some desperate lust or perverted intention on either of our parts, but it was more like gravity. A good gravity. The kind that can keep you connected to the ground and from floating off into space haphazardly. He was as irresistible to me as he had expressed I was to him. I felt a prickle of anxiety and fear at the thought of how David affected me now that I was being honest with myself.

  I could feel the potential to fall for him, hard and completely, lingering out before me like a promise. If I let my guard down, I knew I would be done for and start to really like him. I knew it to be true. He had said, he knew he had to try to be with me or die in the attempt. Perhaps he had the same kind of knowing.

  His words came back in a warm surge that raced through my body and set my heart pounding, my blood rushed like drums beating in my ears. My belly seemed to flip over once, twice, three times, and I had to lay my head down on my arms for a moment or risk hyperventilating.

  “God, David. You drive me crazy. What am I going to do about yo
u?” I breathed silently.

  I sat up abruptly and grabbed my notepad out of my bag and searched almost frantically for a pen, lost somewhere at the bot- tom. I had an overwhelming need to write out my thoughts. To get them out so I could look at them and try to assess them with some perspective and objectivity. My emotions were shifting so fast around David it was hard to find clarity within my own head.

  I wrote the title of my improvised journal entry at the top of the page and let it all come pouring out. It felt so good to admit this, even if it was just to myself. I wrote and wrote. Finally, after nearly an hour, I had slowed down enough to try and compress my feelings and thoughts into one coherent poem of my deeply clandestine confession.

  It Is All in His Eyes

  I know a man whose eyes are more taunting and moving than the strongest wind or biggest wave.

  When he looks at me, he pierces the core of my being.

  It’s as if his eyes can see right through me.

  They are like a slow-moving rush of water that pours into my eyes and creeps into my soul, consuming every crevice of my being.

  Something in his eyes captures me.

  I have never had such a hard time pulling my eyes away from a gaze.

  I don’t want to be the one to break our eye contact first and appear to be the weaker, but if I don’t, he will never let me go.

  It isn’t that I am weak and can’t hold the gaze, but what I see in his eyes causes my very soul to quiver.

  The compassion, mystery, invitation, enticement, and passion, that burn like a brushfire within his eyes, are the reasons for my trembling.

  When he looks into my eyes, it is as if he can read every thought I have, every emotion, and every fear.

  There is power in his eyes; they are confident and self-assured.

  They tell me he knows what he wants.

  They tell me he knows he wants me.

  They tell me he would do anything to be with me.