But I've Played A Guilty Part

[Spindarene]

“...so, I don’t know, it sounds like his sister is moving away soon and he seems kind of upset about it, which is understandable, but I didn’t really know what to say and I kind of wish that I’d said something more than I did…” Julia stopped talking once she turned around and saw the skeptical look on Mia’s face.

Julia’s first reaction was to interpret it as confirmation that she had not said the right thing to Tanvir, and she felt a stab of guilt. She turned back around to the sink and rinsed off the glass that she was washing and put it in the drainer, then turned back around to look at Mia, who was peeling carrots for dinner a couple feet away from her.

“What? Do you think I should have said something else to him?” Julia asked.

Mia almost imperceptibly rolled her eyes. Julia knew that was a sign of impatience, not meanness or sarcasm.

“No,” Mia replied. She paused, and she seemed to be choosing her words. Mia would often do this when she was about to say something that Julia didn’t want to hear, and Julia found herself internally bracing for whatever it was.

“Jules…” Mia began, “doesn’t this conversation with Tanvir seem weirdly personal to you?”

“What do you mean?” Julia asked, feigning ignorance until she could figure out what to do with the foreboding feeling that was growing inside her. She turned back to the sink to pick up a plate, and started scrubbing it.

“Honey, he’s your teacher. Doesn’t it seem weird to you that he’s telling you about all this stuff with his sister and his family and all the other personal things you guys have talked about?”

Julia shrugged, although she could feel her cheeks getting warmer. “I told you. We talk about this kind of stuff all the time.”

“And that doesn’t seem strange to you,” Mia replied in a deadpan tone.

Julia sighed as she rinsed off the plate and set it in the drainer, then turned to face Mia.

“Look, sweetie, if you’re worried about anything, I promise I’m not into him and I’m pretty sure he’s gay, anyway.”

Mia rolled her eyes again–this time in exasperation–without turning her attention away from the carrots.

“That’s not it and you know it,” she said. “I know that you love me, that’s not what I’m talking about. Even if he is gay, it’s still weird.”

“In what way?” Julia asked indignantly.

“We’ve had this conversation before, Jules,” Mia replied in a patient tone that only annoyed Julia more.

“Yeah, and I’ve told you, it’s fine,” Julia replied. “I’m still a good student and I do all my homework, and the computer system basically does all the grading since it’s mostly multiple choice quizzes, so there’s no possibility for anything weird there. We just kind of ended up becoming friends, and we only talk during his office hours, anyway. It’s really not that big of a deal.”

They were quiet for a moment, with the vegetable peeler and the running water as the only sounds that passed between them.

Finally, Mia said quietly, patiently, “Babe…you can’t be friends with your teacher. It just doesn’t work that way.”

“Why not?” Julia asked angrily.

“I’ve told you this before. He’s your teacher. He’s grading your work–”

“I told you–,” Julia cut in.

“--yes, and I believe you. I know that you would never do that, but didn’t you say that he cheated on an exam in grad school once?”

“I never should have told you that,” Julia muttered under her breath.

“Look, I’m just saying–”

“Yes, I know what you’re saying,” Julia snarled.

“Jules…” Mia started.

“No, you’re saying that somehow, for some reason, I can’t be friends with someone that I actually trust and feel connected to, something you know is hard for me to do.”

“Sweetie,” Mia said in a softer tone, “I want you to have friends. But your teacher can’t be your friend, and he should know better. The fact that he’s getting this close to you is a sign that something is off.”

Julia stared straight ahead into the water streaming out of the faucet.

“I know that you don’t want to hear this, babe, but it sounds like he’s got some serious personal issues, and I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“You don’t understand,” Julia said quietly, “I really like him, Mia, and he seems to like me a lot too. We like talking to each other. And so what if he’s got personal issues, I’ve got personal issues. We support each other, and that’s what friends do, right?”

Mia sighed audibly and set down the vegetable peeler and carrots before replying.

“Sweetie, even if he seems like your friend, he can’t be. Because he’s your teacher. There’s a power imbalance here, even if you don’t like it. There are professional boundaries in place–to protect students, I might add–and that means that even if you guys talk like this, you can’t really be friends. Friendship means that people have to be equal, they need to be on the same page. How does that work if one person has the power to determine the other person’s grades, which has a huge impact on that student’s academic future? I know you care about school, and you’ve talked about wanting to go to grad school. That’s not nothing. He isn’t supposed to be emotionally leaning on you like this, and the fact that he is means that something is off. I know that you trust him, but I don’t, and I think there are more reasons to distrust this guy than you want to look at right now.”

“Fuck it,” Julia hissed, slamming her hand on the faucet handle to turn the water off. She snatched the dish towel off of the hook in the wall and swiped at her hands furiously with it before throwing on the countertop and storming off in the direction of the front door.

“Jules…” Mia called after her in a tired voice.

“I need some air,” Julia replied furiously. Then, in a softer tone, she added, “I’ll be back before dinner’s ready. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Mia replied.

Julia could hear that Mia had resumed peeling the carrots as she closed the door behind her.





Julia’s heart pounded as she walked. She couldn’t tell if she was walking to get the anger out or if she was trying to hold onto it, because the longer she stayed angry the longer she could put off dealing with the painful feelings of embarrassment and disappointment that the conversation with Mia had brought up. The feelings that told her that there was truth to Mia’s words, which Julia didn’t want to face because that would mean acknowledging how lonely and out of place she felt. As much as she wanted to stay mad at Mia, she knew that Mia hadn’t meant to hurt her, which in a way made her feel worse.

She’d lately found herself alternately wanting to avoid conversations with Mia about her friendship with Tanvir and seeking them out, hoping that she could eventually convince Mia that there was nothing bad about this friendship, that even though it was weird that Tanvir was treating her differently from his other students, that everything was really okay. The fact that Julia was treated differently was a sign of how real their friendship was, because if they weren’t supposed to be this close and they were anyway, that just meant that their bond was strong enough to withstand it, right?

However, the conversation with Mia tonight brought something to the front of Julia’s mind that she’d been trying not to think about, which was the question of just how emotionally reciprocal the relationship between her and Tanvir really was. In spite of how close Julia felt to Tanvir, she was still somewhat reluctant to rely on him for emotional support. She didn’t want to be a burden on him, especially since she’d wondered sometimes whether he was in some way obligated to help her out whenever she came to his office hours. She’d noticed, however, that he seemed to alternate between days like today, when it seemed like he needed someone to talk to and would share his issues freely with her, and other days when he would be emotionally distant with her. To be honest, part of her liked the fact that he would come to her for emotional support, and that it seemed as though her thoughts on these issues mattered to him. However, something had been holding her back from confiding in him the same way that he had been confiding in her, and sometimes she wondered if part of that was because he might not be as interested in helping her with her personal problems as she was in helping him with his.

Then again, there had been times when he’d been very sweet and supportive of her when she did come to him for support with something that she’d been unsure of or some personal issue that was bugging her. If he didn’t care about her, he wouldn’t have done that, right?

Julia walked around her neighborhood for forty-five minutes, running these questions through her head again and again, without being able to come to a successful answer. Towards the end of her walk, she remembered a conversation that she’d had with her therapist about rumination actually being a coping technique to avoid dealing with painful feelings. She stopped next to a tree half a block away from her apartment, staring at the jagged curves in the bark. Her mind went back to what Mia had said, what her therapist had said, what seemed to basically be common knowledge to everyone else besides her, which was that her friendship with Tanvir couldn’t ever be genuine because she was his student. Was that true? Was her only semi-close friendship a farce because of the professional boundaries between them? There was a sinking feeling in Julia’s stomach as she thought of that. She didn’t want that to be true, but she couldn’t rule it out. However, she also wasn’t going to throw away this connection that she had with someone just because other people said that it might not be legitimate. Plus, while she wasn’t exactly close to graduation, she wasn’t that far away from it either. She just had to figure out how to navigate this weird in-between space until she graduated, then she and Tanvir could just hang out like normal friends, without all of the baggage of their teacher/student relationship. They’d managed to do okay this far, so maybe it would be fine.

After taking a couple of deep breaths, Julia went back inside the apartment, where Mia was setting the table. Julia immediately moved over to the silverware drawer to help her, feeling bad that she’d been out long enough that Mia had cooked everything and already set most of the table.

Looking over at Mia apologetically, Julia asked, “Do you want me to serve up the food?”

Mia gave her a small smile that let Julia know she was forgiven, and said, “Sure.”

Julia dished up the pasta that Mia had cooked, feeling a rush of gratitude for this beautiful woman that loved her enough to be with her for the last seven years. This woman who had put up with way more of Julia’s shit than she deserved and still somehow wanted to be with her anyway. Julia resolved to put the drama with Tanvir on the backburner for a while, and as they sat down to eat, Julia asked Mia about her art project that she’d been working on for the last few weeks.





When the university announced that classes were being held in person the upcoming semester, Julia felt both excited and nervous. The vaccines had been widely available for a couple months, and the data was so far showing that they were very effective at protecting people from becoming seriously ill with covid, and that death rates were going down. She was looking forward to having her classes in person again (video classes were very far from ideal), and she honestly just missed being around people and was looking forward to having things go back to normal.

She was also both excited and afraid of seeing Tanvir in person again. Back when she’d taken her first class with him, the boundaries between them as teacher and student were much more clear. Now, she had no idea what to say to him, or how to interact with him in a classroom setting. And she’d already signed up to take another class with him.

Julia spent the rest of the summer alternating between wondering what things would be like when she saw him again and trying her best not to think about it.

When the semester started, her first class with Tanvir was awkward, but not as bad as she’d been anticipating. They said hello in the hallway before class started, and made small talk about how their summers had been. He definitely seemed a little awkward with her, and Julia felt pretty embarrassed herself. She sat quietly in class as he began the lecture without speaking much, and left as soon as the class was over, politely saying goodbye to him as she left.

The first few classes of the semester went much the same way, although slowly, Julia started chatting with Tanvir after class again, and while he always maintained an air of professional distance when talking to her around other students, he began speaking to her more warmly and seemed more engaged in his discussions with her.

One day, after the second week of class, Tanvir handed her a brochure about a two-week research trip to an island in the Bering Sea.

“Here,” he’d said, “I thought this might interest you. It might be a good way to start data collection for your honor’s thesis, and it’ll give you an opportunity to connect with other researchers. Trust me, that’s going to be important once you start applying to graduate school. What do you think?”

“It looks interesting,” Julia replied, flipping through the brochure. “But how much does it c–oh, wow, it’s all expenses paid, that’s cool.” Her brow furrowed slightly as she said it. An expensive research program with a full ride was bound to be competitive. “Uh, what’s the application process like? Are there, like, only a certain number of spots, or…?”

Tanvir smiled at her, sensing the root of her nervousness. “You’ll be fine, Jules, trust me. If you want, though, I can help you with the application during office hours. It’s a lot less competitive than applying to a PhD program, so this will be good practice. So you’re interested?”

She smiled back at him.

“Sure.”

The next day, Julia showed up to Tanvir’s office hours, and he helped her through the application process for the research program. The application was a little long, but it wasn’t bad. As she finished the application, she worked up the nerve to ask him if he was going to be on the research trip too. His answer was noncommittal, but it sounded like he was leaning toward going. She hesitated for a moment, then told him that she’d feel better about going if he was going to be there too. “At least I’ll have someone that I know there, and you can call me out if I fuck up my data,” she joked. He smiled at her and said that he had a few loose ends that he’d need to tie up, but that he’d probably go. She left his office hours soon after that.

A week before the trip, Tanvir told her that he was going on the trip. They made plans to meet up on the ship, and exchanged phone numbers so that they could text each other to help with coordination. Julia wondered privately if it was technically against the rules for them to be exchanging phone numbers, but she decided to not worry about it too much.

A few days before the trip, they exchanged a couple of texts about when and where the ship was setting sail, what kinds of stuff to bring on the trip, and what kinds of preparation work needed to be done before Julia could start data collection on the island.

Two days before the trip, Julia reached out to Tanvir to confirm the details that he’d sent her, but he didn’t respond. A day before the trip, he still hadn’t responded. She figured that he was probably busy, but she sent him another, slightly more urgent text, and still got no reply.

She was starting to be concerned that something bad had happened to him, but as she was leaving school that day she saw him in the hallway, talking to another teacher. She caught his eye and started walking over to talk to him, but he turned away from her, said goodbye to the other teacher, and walked off in the opposite direction. She thought that was a bit weird and her feelings were mildly hurt, but as she walked out of the building she tried to shake it off. Maybe he was just really busy. They’d have plenty of time to talk to each other on the ship.

The next day, she went to where the ship was docked. It was massive, and crawling with lots of people that she didn’t know. She felt a looming sense of trepidation, but she tried to shake it off as the normal nervousness of embarking on a new adventure. After saying goodbye to Mia, Julia boarded the ship.

After checking in, she went to her quarters and did her best to get settled in. She still hadn’t heard anything from Tanvir.

She finally pulled out her phone, trying to ignore the fact that the majority of the recent texts in their conversation had been sent by her, and sent one more text message to him:

Hey! I’m on the ship. Where are you?