...
Maybe a Dance
by Anton M.
Chapter 33: Meet Angela
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Corona rules had been relaxed by the Banting-Carr University, and so, in the morning of Monday, January 24, its biggest auditorium was buzzing with students and faculty. The room fit nearly 200 people with a capacity for 350, but Bella still felt cramped and slightly paranoid around so many people after avoiding human contact for so long. She put on her glasses and shared small-talk with the occasional passing friend or faculty, politely refusing their invitations to sit with them.
It felt weird to be back at Banting-Carr without being a student.
Edward was standing next to the podium, gesturing with his hands as he spoke to Dean Zhou Ming and Professor Beatriz Tavares. He wore black pants and a white button-up under a light blue sweater, looking approachable and handsome with not a tattoo to be seen. Bella, who hadn't seen him in a week, felt a fierce desire to steal him away and kiss him senseless, but she settled on admiring the laughter lines around his eyes as he scanned the audience for her, knowing that she might've not made it from her interview. A flicker of disappointment appeared in his eyes when he couldn't find her before he turned back to the dean and the professor, cracking his knuckles and continuing their discussion.
When Professor Kimberly Graham-Lin invited Edward to Yale to give a series of lectures on neural networks through the course of a week, Edward had politely declined. Even after Kimberly confirmed the rumours that Stirling Professor Stanković was preparing to leave Yale for Stanford, Edward had a lot on his plate, and he suggested using Zoom instead.
But Kimberly also wanted Edward to give a talk about his journey to tenure-track professorship to a group of scholarship-funded but disadvantaged undergraduates at Yale. She was a firm advocate for guiding first-generation students through the numerous invisible roadblocks at an Ivy-league school, and she thought Edward's struggles and the lessons he was forced to learn would provide valuable input to them. The covid-time undergraduates—especially high-achieving first-generation minorities with a fragile socioeconomic background—were more vulnerable to having their career negatively affected by covid. Cancelled internships or apprenticeships and reduced or cancelled number of onsite training opportunities had a bigger impact on them than on their peers who could use their parents' network to make up for their missed opportunities.
Edward could provide more than a lecture, he could help expand their network, and Kimberly was very eager to fly him out in spite of omicron. She even offered to personally pay for Bella's trip to New Haven, should she be interested, but Bella, while incredibly flattered and curious, already had two onsite interviews in Vancouver and declined the generous offer. But she was glad that Edward, should he decide to go, would have some guy time with his friends and especially Laurent.
After a bit of discussion between the couple, Edward said yes to the trip. Dean Zhou Ming was almost ridiculously easy to convince as any potential collaboration between Banting-Carr and an Ivy-league school in the US would help put their small Canadian university on the map. But there were two caveats to his trip: Stanković, whom Edward would almost certainly meet, and Angela, whom Edward wished to meet even less than his supervisor.
Bella was not scared that Edward would get back together with Angela, no matter the circumstances, but she was almost desperately curious as to how Angela would react to seeing him again. Would she ignore him? Try to win him back? Convince him that she's better off without him? Politely congratulate him and be off on her merry way?
Hopefully, Angela would not attempt to kiss him. The mere thought made hair in the back of Bella's neck rise.
But the two never met—which caused even more disappointment to Laurent than it did to Bella—and Edward's brief meeting with Stanković in the hallway, too, was unnaturally polite and anti-climatic. It was not so much proof of his transformation as a calculated choice to appear civil in public, but Edward hadn't expected anything different.
The love-drunk couple was hilariously awful at being away from each other, even for a week. They called each other every day. Edward (unintentionally) interrupted Bella's evening with Emmett and Rosie, and then another one with Laura, and yet another with Jessica and Mark, but Bella was equally as bad, interrupting Edward's dinner with the Graham-Lins, his night out with Paloma and his friends from the Statistics Department, and, of course, the multiple evenings Edward spent with his best friend Laurent.
Bella loved those the most. Once, Edward called her at two AM (eleven PM in Vancouver), drunk to the point of semi-incoherency, telling her how much it blew his mind that Bella was his and how scared he was she'd realize she was too good for him (absolute lunacy, of course, but Bella couldn't expect him to change overnight). Then, he began to whisper things so deliciously raunchy in her ear that Bella got proof she could definitely come from his words alone.
She was never letting the man go.
Now, little more than 24 hours later, Bella watched him on the stage, looking relaxed and happy, and she couldn't describe what a wonder it was that he had this precious, dirty side reserved only for her. And when Edward, once again, cast a glance at the audience, he did, in fact, find Bella, and the way his eyes lit up as he stifled his smile, giving her a brief nod before he turned back to his conversation, he may as well have declared his eternal love for her considering the way Bella's heart went all supernova in her chest. She'd missed him.
She was still in disbelief that this precious Professor was the man she was about to marry.
The slide-show behind him read 'Assistant Professor Cullen-Swan'. He'd never told Bella that he was already using their hyphenated name, but it touched her more than she'd expected it would.
"Yum," an ash blonde student in front of Bella said. "I thought he was hot before, but that haircut should be illegal."
Grinning, Bella listened to the group of friends gossip in front of her.
"When did he get married, anyway? I didn't even know he was engaged."
"You didn't see the video?" a skinny, black-haired guy asked.
"What video?"
A chorus of 'Jesus Murphys' and 'what hole did you crawl out of?' was followed by the group watching the short Instagram video together, and the girl tapped her phone to lock it when it was over.
"Damn. Did you know he could dance like that?"
"Nobody knew," the guy answered.
"And she used to be his student?"
"Maybe we all had a shot after all," a short girl said, grinning, almost wistful.
Bella hid her smile in her scarf.
"Oh shut up. You ever have a one-on-one with the guy?"
"No, why would I?"
"I did. He doesn't have meetings with students behind closed doors. Remember when Lauren was gonna ask him out? She couldn't even get him in private. He always had other people in the room or he met with her in the cafeteria or library or something."
Listening to the black-haired guy mention how Edward always kept the door open when he had meetings with students made Bella realize that she'd been an exception to the rule even if she hadn't understood it at the time. She'd had a meeting behind closed doors a few times with Edward. They'd both worn masks. Edward had been perfectly professional and Bella hadn't had the slightest clue that he harboured feelings for her, but if memory served her right he'd definitely asked to close the door for their meetings.
Bella wished she'd been less preoccupied with her publications and thesis because she could've caught on way earlier that he might've had a thing for her.
"I mean, fair enough," a girl with a pony-tail replied. "The man's taken. The way those two dance in that video, no way they haven't been together for years."
They all hummed in agreement, and Bella felt simultaneously rude to be listening in but also intrigued to be the target of juicy college gossip.
"But when we had a group assignment and it was, like, six of us in the library," the girl continued. "I just remember everyone commenting on how hot he was and I vividly remember Bella? Was it? I just so remember how incredibly uninterested she seemed in him. She was the only one who said nothing when we were discussing him."
A guy with curly hair tapped his finger against the girl's forehead, grinning his face off. "If you were tapping that—" He pointed at the stage with his head. "As a student, and were waiting to finish your PhD before admitting it, wouldn't you also appear uninterested?"
Bella almost laughed. It was wild how her total lack of interest last spring was now interpreted as proof of her interest. If everyone else discussed how they'd tap Mr. Cullen, her noncommittal shrug must've seemed incredibly out of place for them to remember it, still, almost a year later.
"Wasn't she in his class, though, last winter? I'm pretty sure I saw her there. Isn't that, like, illegal?"
"Illegal, no," the black-haired guy answered. "Unethical, yes, if he was grading her assignments, but my uncle David did that. Mr. Cullen—well, Professor Cullen, I guess—he never graded her stuff."
"What?! You knew this all along and never told us?"
The guy shrugged. "I saw Mr. Cullen handing an assignment to him, once. It didn't seem like a big deal. My uncle said it happens every once in a while."
The girl with a pony-tail leaned closer to the guy next to her, whispering, "Remind me to get Kyle drunk more often."
The guy grinned.
"It will never stop being weird hearing you call Professor Albrecht uncle David," the blonde girl said, and the guy opened his mouth to reply but their attention was drawn by Laura, an athletic, 5'8'' girl who almost exclusively wore leggings and a buzzcut. She skipped every second step as she ran upstairs from the stage.
"Hey guys, we got way better seats in the centre. Garrett is reserving them and wants to grab coffee before the lecture starts, so chop chop." As everyone gathered their things, Laura's eyes fell on Bella and she jumped to stand next to her. "Bella! You made it. Come join us, I'll introduce you."
An awkward shuffle full of pale faces and silent cursing followed.
"Fuck," the black-haired guy said, looking like he wanted the earth to swallow him. He gripped the backseat in front of Bella, grimacing. "I'm sorry. We didn't mean to— we meant no disrespect."
"Don't worry about it," Bella replied, straightening. "You said nothing I wouldn't have, had I been in your shoes, and I should've probably let you know I was behind you anyway. No harm done."
"You sure?" The guy hesitated. "Two thirds of my units this term come from courses with your—fiancé—and I can't afford to start off on his bad side."
Bella grinned. "I can't give you exam answers for backpropagation or hyperparameter tuning but I can assure you we're fine. Don't worry about it."
The guy looked sceptical, as did the others, but they relaxed a bit when Laura introduced everyone.
"My friend Bella here has two superpowers," Laura said, winking at her. "She forgives like Mother fucking Teresa and she could've probably convinced Marcus Crassus to give up the entire Roman Empire for research. You might want to stay on her good side not for her, ahem, professor, but for her grant-writing talents. She drafted the biggest grant the UBC landed in the last decade and I'm convinced I only got funded for my sixth year because Bella rewrote half of my scholarship application."
"I hope Marcus Crassus wasn't the kindest guy in the Roman Empire because otherwise this is a bit of a backhanded compliment."
Laura laughed, and the entire group of friends felt so bad they urged Bella to join them but Bella declined. Meeting an entirely new group of friends, all together, gave her a bit of a stage fright, and she wasn't up for chatty banter during Edward's talk today.
As they left, Laura turned around. "We're still up for lunch, right?"
Bella smiled. "Definitely."
She was glad to have arrived early because the lecture hall was filling up, and she let a few people pass her before sitting back down.
"Did he already get married?" a brown-haired girl next to Bella asked, unzipping her coat and unwrapping her scarf.
So much for peace and quiet to enjoy Edward's talk.
"No," Bella replied. "He's getting married in the summer."
"Then why is he already using her name?"
"I think he's just trying to make people get used to it."
"But he's not married yet."
Bella shrugged. She quite liked it, actually, his unapologetic way of just adding her name to his.
Fortunately, the girl didn't chatter through Edward's talk. The dean introduced Professor Cullen-Swan and congratulated him on his engagement before Edward took over. The overview he gave of his previous research was warmly welcomed and while most of the questions that followed flew over Bella's head with their technical detail, she admired how relaxed he could be in front of an audience. Nobody questioned how much he deserved the position and everyone was eager to hear where he saw the field heading in ten or twenty years.
Bella was proud, and she smiled to herself when she heard students whispering about his hot new haircut.
"He's not all that, you know," the brown-haired girl said as the lecture hall began to empty.
Bella glanced at the girl. She looked put together in a new-looking camel coat and a checkered scarf, her face beautiful in a way that was more achieved with money than genes. When Bella watched videos of how to look put-together, this was the kind of money and time investment the influencers talked about. Her eyebrows were microbladed to perfection, there was not a hint of a pimple on her skin, her lipstick matched her skin-tone and she looked effortless and natural in a way that could only be achieved with a ridiculous amount of effort. She was beautiful.
"What do you mean?"
"I can't help but feel sorry for the girl who's marrying him. The man can't, you know..." she curled her index finger, making a face, looking almost gleeful, "perform in the bedroom." She lowered her voice. "I used to be engaged to him."
It took every cell in Bella's body not to react as she realized that this girl, this rich-looking girl could only be Angela. Edward had spent a week in Yale in fear that they'd meet, and yet here she was, at a lecture hall in Banting-Carr, telling (a person she could only assume was) a random stranger that Edward had problems in the bedroom.
Bella forced herself to take slow, deep breaths, just like Edward taught her.
Sure enough, when Bella looked at the psychology conference tag Angela was twiddling with, it read, 'Angela van der Werff, Yale University.'
Van der Werff, no doubt granddaughter of Jeroen van der Werff, the founder and CEO of a multi-billion dollar beauty conglomerate Maëlys & Lilou. Bella had not seen Jeroen van der Werff's photo much, but the round jawline, small lips and clear blue eyes were a spitting image of her grandfather. Bella would've been amazed if the similarity was a coincidence.
Her head swam. Edward had once told her that he was financially incompatible with Angela, but the top point zero zero one percent of the US was not what Bella could've ever guessed.
"I don't know," Bella replied only a few seconds later, as if she hadn't been shaken by an epiphany. She kept her voice quiet. "Most days I can just skip exercising because the man just can't keep his cock out of me. Insatiable, that man. It's quite amazing."
Angela paused, taken aback, squinting at her, and Bella adjusted her glasses and offered her most winning smile. It was a petty answer, but the girl was announcing Edward's antidepressant-affected problems to virtual strangers, so Bella couldn't help but feel protective of him.
"You must be Angela."
"You're lying," Angela replied, quietly. The lecture hall had almost emptied, save for Laura and Garrett waiting for Bella by one of the doors and Edward removing his laptop from the HDMI cable and gathering his things.
"I don't think Edward's into exhibitionism enough to prove I'm not but I can always ask him, if that's what you're into."
Angela gaped.
"I'm joking, obviously," Bella said. "It's sweet of you to worry, but we don't have problems in the bedroom. Or the kitchen. Or the living room. Or against the wall." Her smile widened. "I'm not very picky, you see."
Laura would've been proud of her and Edward, probably, ashamed, but it was hard to stop being petty after hearing so much about Angela's gaslighting and knowing about her stealthing. Bella forced herself to stop after seeing the twisted expression on Angela's face.
"I'm sorry," Bella said, half-heartedly. "I'm afraid you don't bring out the best in me."
"He's never going to commit," Angela whispered, looking a little shell-shocked.
'Maybe not to you,' Bella wanted to answer, but she took a deep breath and let it out. She was better than this. "I'm not worried," was all she said before the man in question kissed her ear, startling her. The scent of fresh laundry and coffee and Edward filled Bella with warmth. She looked up at him, his lean body, wide shoulders and the laptop bag slung over his shoulder.
The force with which she wanted to kiss him breathless took her aback.
"Missed you, baby," he whispered. "I know you promised Laura lunch but do you think I can steal you for—" he stopped talking as his eyes, absent-mindedly lingering on the person next to her, registered who it was, and Bella hadn't intended to stand up but Edward's grip on her hand almost forced her to.
Angela, too, stood up. Tucking hair behind her ear, she looked quite sweet and shy, and Bella suddenly felt like she'd been unfair to her. She saw a glimpse of the girl Edward had been with, initially, and maybe it was unfair of Bella to lash out in response to all the insecurities Angela had reinforced in Edward. Maybe it was water under the bridge.
Bella imagined what it would've been like to plan for a future with a man like Edward and then watch someone else have it, and it made her understand Angela a little better. Not her gaslighting, but at least the emotions that caused her current comments.
"Hi," Angela said.
Edward, with resigned exasperation in his eyes, tightened his hold around Bella and forced himself to take a deep breath.
"Angela," Edward said, almost an annoyed exhale. "I see you met my future wife."
A flash of something crossed her eyes, surprise or pain. "You never told me you could dance."
Edward raised his eyebrows at the unexpected comment.
"It never came up."
"You're taking her name," Angela continued, as if Edward hadn't said anything, and this time she definitely sounded sad. There was a history of a conversation between them that Bella lacked context for.
"Yes," Edward retorted. "Why are you here?"
"She's the reason you broke up with me."
Edward rubbed his face and took a deep, slow breath. He let it out even slower, and when they locked eyes, Bella wished she could've taken the burden of this conversation off of him. He looked so drained, suddenly.
"She's the reason I'm happy," Edward replied, not missing a beat. "I have many flaws but I'm not a cheater. You know this. I know you know this."
Angela opened and closed her mouth before she nodded, admitting quietly, "I know."
Bella felt bad for her. It was a weirdly tense situation, meeting an ex, but Bella was starting to feel like they might get out of it unscathed, and she'd just breathed a sigh of relief when Edward pressed her against his chest but flinched.
Bella noticed, but so did Angela.
"You have got to be kidding me," Angela whispered, pushing Bella out of the way before she pressed her index finger against Edward's chest. He recoiled, inhaling sharply. Bella, although shorter and smaller than Angela, attempted to pull her away from him, but when she didn't have the strength, Laura rushed to help hold her back. They stood on either side of Angela, holding her arms, but she was so focused on Edward it was almost as if she didn't notice.
"A year?" Angela whispered, full of disbelief. "It took you less than a fucking year to get one for her?"
"Angela..." Edward warned.
Her eyes were glinting. "Show me," she demanded, her voice full of pain. "I want to see it."
"No."
"Show me," Angela whisper-yelled, with tears in her throat. "I deserve to see it."
"Angela," Edward warned. "Don't do this to yourself."
"I deserve to see it."
"You do not," he replied, quietly. "You're only torturing yourself. There is nothing that would change anything between us. If Bella and I broke up today, your chances of getting back together with me would be exactly as they were yesterday. Why are you here?"
Angela stared at him with wild eyes before she realized Bella and Laura were still holding her, and she visibly deflated before she seemed to have exerted all her energy. Bella and Laura let go of her.
Angela fiddled with her scarf, shifting on the spot, taking a careful step towards Edward. Her eyes were on his chest.
"Would it have been different had I... you know, been more..."
Bella knew the words she couldn't say, and Angela looked so sad Bella felt an urge to console her. They weren't words that should've come from her, but she wanted Angela to know that she shouldn't be blamed for her preferences—but making others think they were the cause of them was a step too far.
"There's nothing wrong with being asexual," Bella said, her voice a near-whisper, seeing in the sharpness of Angela's gaze that she'd guessed correctly. "I just wish you hadn't—"
Angela slapped her.
"Maybe I should've spread my legs like a common whore—"
Edward had murder in his eyes but it was Laura who slapped the ever-loving shit out of Angela. "Slut-shaming my friends," she said. "How original. Aren't women who enjoy sex just the devil."
"You don't know who I am," Angela said, her voice trembling with rage even if she looked more shocked than hurt. "I'll sue you for assault."
"Oh no." Laura smirked. "What will I do. It's not like Garrett just got your instigating this entire thing on a video, or that my aunt is the best lawyer in the US," Laura replied, lifting her chin. "I'm so scared."
"Thank you, Laura," Edward said, softly, and the informality of him calling her Laura rather than Miss Rivest tore Bella out of the situation. The entire thing felt ridiculous.
Bella felt the hot sting of Angela's slap but Edward's gentle hands on her jaw, his tender gaze, and the whispered 'you okay?' made Bella feel like a soothing cold balm covered her cheek. He tucked Bella under his arm, protectively, and Angela followed the action with sharp eyes.
Meanwhile, Edward looked like he'd been run over by a steamroller that had aged him by a decade.
"Go back to your conference, Angela," Edward said, quietly. His voice was tired. "And then back to Yale. Get some help."
Angela, still holding her reddening cheek, looked at the couple. The situation seemed to catch up with her, too, because she sent a nervous glance at Laura and Garrett before looking back at Edward and Bella.
"I actually..." Angela cleared her throat, and the previous raw energy in her voice was replaced by resignation. "I wanted to congratulate you. You look—" She hesitated as if the word hurt her. "Happy."
"Thank you," Edward said, his voice cold and formal. "I am. I hope you find that, too."
It felt like air rushed back into the auditorium when the giant wooden doors slammed shut behind Angela, and the sound echoed in the empty room. Laura, who was unused to actually seeing Bella with her professor, winked at her friend as she gathered her bag. Bella stifled her smile.
"Could you give me five minutes with Bella before she joins you for lunch?" Edward asked.
"Definitely," Laura replied. "We'll wait outside."
"Mr. Frawley, I know I have no authority with regards to what you record in a public setting, but I'd appreciate it if that video didn't get tagged to my professional Instagram account."
"Laura was bluffing," Garrett said, holding out his phone to Edward. "You can check. I didn't record anything."
Grateful beyond words, Edward gave him a nod. "I trust you. Thank you."
Garrett put his phone back in his pocket.
"Oh, and Miss Rivest?"
Laura looked back.
"I don't think we paid enough for your phone."
Laura laughed, shaking her head as the two disappeared behind the giant doors.
Edward crushed Bella against his chest even if he grimaced from the pressure against his fresh tattoo, and Bella felt aflutter with affection when he squeezed her and kissed the top of her head. She was brimming with news to tell him and questions to ask but her head was swimming with his scent.
He held her neck when he pulled back, inspecting her bright red cheek, running a gentle thumb over the side of her face. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I swear if she'd been a... he, or I'd been a woman, I would've made her acquainted with my fist. I can't apologize enough. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Bella replied, taking his hand and kissing his knuckles. "Don't worry about it. Laura was just complaining to me the other day that not enough drama has come out of me dating a professor."
Still doting on her red cheek, Edward laughed in spite of himself. "But are you okay?"
"It's a bit stingy and hot, but it'll pass. I'll buy something cold from the cafeteria."
"Please do." Edward trailed a slow line from her neck to her ass with his fingertips before he settled his palm against her waist. His warm breath tickled her ear when he spoke. "Can I still kiss you? I'll be gentle."
Bella slid her fingers in his hair, tilted her chin up and practically inhaled his kiss, nipping and tugging and humming against his lips when he pressed her tighter against him. She missed his arms kneading her muscles, his freshly shaven skin rubbing against hers, his nose touching hers. "Missed you," he whispered in his deliciously low, reverberating voice. "Missed you, missed you, missed you." He touched his forehead against hers, squeezing her tighter in his arms, his eyes twinkling with mirth and love. "I'll put you in my pocket the next time I have a work trip."
Bathing in his love-drunk gaze, Bella grinned against his lips. "I'm not opposed to that suggestion."
Edward groaned, nudging her mouth open with his lips as he kissed her again before they both began to realize they were in full view of all three doors of the auditorium. They stopped kissing but he didn't pull away. "Can I pick you up from the library at around five? I'd like to take you to a coffee shop."
"It's a date." Bella pecked his lips, understanding that he must've wanted to discuss something if he suggested not going home directly. Naughtier activities became too tempting at home, especially when they'd been apart for a week. "I also have some news for you."
Edward's eyes lit up, soft and loving and oh-so-warm. He cupped her face.
"You got a job," he whispered, barely restraining his joy.
Bella stifled her smile. "I'm not saying anything before the evening."
"Goddamn." Edward kissed her. "You got a job."
"You'll be so disappointed if you're wrong," Bella replied, failing to hide the twinkle in her eyes.
Grinning, he searched her face. "I can tell."
"Patience, Professor Cullen," Bella said, mirroring his smile. "You have a class in eleven minutes. I'll tell you in the evening."
"Evening," he repeated, kissing her, a whisper and a promise against her lips.
"Oh and give me your wallet."
Edward, raising his eyebrows, took his wallet out of his pocket and watched Bella flip through his cards before she took one and returned the wallet back to him.
"My library card expired," she explained, putting Edward's ID next to her face. "Uncanny similarity, don't you think? I must only be addressed as Professor Cullen today."
Edward laughed.
"Evening," he whispered, pressing a kiss on her lips before they existed the auditorium.
...
A/N: I cannot express how grateful I am that you share your thoughts with me! Thank you all.
Very few chapters left, now.
