Page 21 of Obedience

‘You know what I mean,’ Dylan replied. Her tone was different, bold and unrelenting. She moistened her lips with her tongue, took another small step closer and lowered her voice. ‘Meet me. Anywhere. I’ll book a room. I’ll… Please, Greta, meet me. I’m going insa—’

‘Excuse me, ladies!’ A loud male voice boomed from the entrance of the vast room, bouncing off every wall and surface. ‘I’m shutting this room down now. Lights off, I’m afraid.’

‘Yes, thank you,’ Greta replied politely, though her voice treasonously fluctuated in pitch. She cleared her throat and met Dylan’s gaze before coldly saying, ‘We’re done here.’

Dylan blew out a sharp breath of air, as though she had been punched. Stepping to the side, she watched Greta’s every move as she picked up her bag, threw her jacket over her arm and sauntered past. As she drew level, Dylan inhaled deeply, her eyes sliding shut for a beat. Greta slowed for the briefest moment, her stomach roiling and tightening though she kept on walking.

‘Miss!’ The man’s voice barked.

Dylan whipped around to face him. ‘Right! Jesus!’ she snapped. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry,’ she followed up, palms facing him in apology as he gestured angrily to the door, his pot belly wobbling with the momentum.

Greta snapped her gaze away from Dylan, and walked through the exit.

***

Cutting through the last of the campus crowds, Dylan stepped out into the damp early evening and headed toward home. It had rained heavily all day, the weather very much matching Dylan’s mood. The Oxford Road pavement had been soaked into a dark mirror, catching the amber glare of the bus headlights, billboards and the neon lights in shop windows and takeaways. It wasn't proper rain now, just that fine, cold Manchester drizzle that hangs in the spring air and manages to soak you through to the skin without you noticing.

A few moments, that’s all the encounter had been. When Dylan had seen Greta would be lecturing she knew there was no way she would simply leave without approaching her but the outcome had been exactly what she’d hoped it wouldn’t; the rules had swallowed them up again. She had spent weeks looking up and down every corridor, hoping and praying to run into Greta by chance, instead of seeking her out and making the whole thing worse—if that were possible. Then, it happened and it was as much of a blur as it was a head fuck.

Wiping a stray bead of moisture from her eyebrow, Dylan raised her chin and tried to take in a full chest of air. Her ribs were tight, the movement stunted by the heavy pressure of her feelings for Greta that had nowhere to go. Greta had been everything she wanted, and needed, to see. She wanted to go to her, hold her, move her mouth over every inch of her but they simply stood, both of them, chests heaving like caged animals. Keeping her head down against the cool wind, Dylan’s mind looped the image of Greta over and over like a broken tape.

She zipped up her jacket and stepped off the curb, her damp Converse slipping on a discarded Metro newspaper. As she stumbled, her phone vibrated violently in her pocket. ‘Fuck!’ she hissed under her breath. Taking a step back onto the busy pavement, she pulled out her phone and thumbed open WhatsApp, her stomach roiling at the sender's name.

Greta:

‘I can’t stand what you are doing, Dylan. Please stop.’

Dylan’s heart detached from its place and landed in her gut. Desperation drove the speed of her reply.

Dylan:

‘Greta, please. One hour. A coffee shop. Somewhere public. One hour and I will never contact you again. I swear.’

The last part of the text was potentially a lie—no, it was a definite lie—but her need to see Greta was now a simmering desperation on the cusp of boiling over.

Greta:

‘One hour. I will come to your house.’

Dylan:

‘Not my house. Somewhere else. Your place?’

Greta:

‘Absolutely not.’

Dylan:

‘I’ll meet you at the House of Books and Friends. I’ll head there now. Is that good for you?’

Greta:

‘Yes.’

***

After sliding into a chair at the last empty table in the busy book shop-come-coffee shop, Greta moved aside a forgotten Americano and the remnants of a Danish pastry on a small white plate to make space for her glass of water, and the anxiety oozing from her chest. The place was busy and loud with the wet hiss of the coffee machine and the steady ambient drone of people talking over one another. She glanced around furtively, scanning every face for familiar features but everyone was a stranger. To her left, a student was hammering away at a laptop keyboard, completely engrossed. At the table opposite, two young people argued over an open textbook, tapping the pages with cheap biros and laughing at the other’s point of view. An irrational fear that they may be students or patients made her pay particular attention to their faces but she didn’t recognise them. It was cramped, noisy, and the air was thickly perfumed with coffee and damp coats. Being sealed off from the miserable weather outside was a relief, though the heat and noise was dangerously close to becoming claustrophobic.