Honey(5)

Nina’s texted telling her to come to the back quad, then turn left. When Yrsa arrives her friend is already waiting for her, biting her thumbnail.

“Thanks for coming,” she says, letting Yrsa pass. The corridor smells like school. “I’m just here,” Nina says, opening the door of one of the rooms. It’s small but with a courtyard view.

“Sorry for asking you to come over. I texted Skye but she’s got something on.”

Yrsa ignores being told she’s second choice as she’s distracted by all the half-packed boxes. “You moving?”

“I, I don’t know what I’m doing.” Nina sits on the edge of her unmade bed, staring vacantly at the blue carpet.

Yrsa sits down next to her, pushing a Taylor Swift T-shirt out of the way. “Are you pregnant?”

“Yrsa, I’ve done something awful.” Nina starts to cry. The tears are quiet and quick.

“I’m sure it can’t be worse than owning this T-shirt.”

Tears hiccup from Nina at increasing rates.

Yrsa puts an arm around her, feels awkward, opts for a hand on the shoulder. “You can tell me anything, I won’t judge.”

“I…I…” Nina pulls some loo paper out of her shirt’s front pocket, tucking her hair back behind her ears. “Kurwa. Sorry. I’m a mess.” She inhales sharply and then says abruptly, “I’ve been having an affair.”

Yrsa smiles. “That’s okay, people have affairs all the time.”

“No, I’ve been seeing my supervisor.”

“Richardson?” Yrsa can’t hide her surprise.

“Yes.” And Nina is back to her crying.

“You don’t need to cry about that. Remember when I slept with my supervisor in first year?” That’s a one-night stand she likes to remember.

“No, it’s not like that was. Nothing’s okay.”

Yrsa thinks Nina’s being dramatic, but she’s her friend so she’ll be patient. She wonders if all the crying is because—as professors go—Richardson is far from the most good-looking.

“He said he’d leave his wife for me. He promised.” Nina blows into her ball of tissues.

“Oh.”

“He told me he loved me.”

“Are you, in love?” Yrsa removes her hand.

Nina nods.

“How long have you been seeing him?”

“Like a year.”

“Shit, why?”

“Why?” Nina looks at her with wild eyes.

“I mean how did it start?”

Nina has to breathe in a few times to calm her crying. “You know we work on the same topic, the Roma genocide, and he’s writing a book on it so he’s been really helping me as he knows so much. We started sharing a lot of research notes, a lot of my work about…And, you know, conversations turned into drinks, turned into dinner, turned into…”

“Fucking?”

“Yes.” Another splutter of tears. “He’s really, I thought we were really…We just see the world in such a similar way, you know, and he was always telling me that he’d never met someone like me, that I was so smart and…” Nina’s eyes fall back on the blue carpet.

“And?” Yrsa asks more softly.

“We went on a research trip to Poland, at the end of the summer. He stayed with my mum—kurwa I’m so embarrassed—but it’s when he told me he was going to leave his wife for me. I was so happy. I told my mum this is the man I’m going to marry.” And she starts to cry again.

This time Yrsa gets up to look for a glass. Rinsing it out before filling it from the sink in the corner of the room and giving it to Nina who just looks at the water.

“And then what happened when you came back?” Yrsa asks after some time.

“I heard nothing from him, for weeks. He didn’t return any of my texts, my calls. He’d only respond to emails and only about work. I…” Nina drinks the water. “Went to his house one time and he was there with his kids. I could hear his wife cooking, playing music. He said he was sorry; that he’d made a mistake; that he loved me but he couldn’t do it. And when I was at his door his wife asked who it was and he said I was an Amazon guy, he just closed the door on me, said he’d call.”

“Did he?”

“Yes, but only to say that we couldn’t see each other like that, that he had to think of his kids and it was better for me if I found a different supervisor. That it would be hard for him to be objective about my work now and he thinks I’m working on something really special.”

“I’m sure.” Yrsa is holding what she really wants to say. “But what about the joint research you guys did? That’s why you went to Poland, no?”

Nina drinks again. “Yeah, we were doing interviews together. I was researching the families, writing the questions, and he was conducting the interviews. And I’d help, I mean he speaks…but if he needed something translated. But then my PhD’s kind of changed direction and I don’t need as much of this research, but it makes up the bulk of his new book. So he, and I get it, I mean I said it was okay, it’s just this is why it’s gone so bad.” She zones out again.

Yrsa has to prompt her. “What’s happened?”