The Record of My Heart (Words #3.5)

The Record of My Heart

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Georgina Guthrie

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Omnific Publishing

Los Angeles

The Record of My Heart, Copyright © 2015 by Georgina Guthrie

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

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Omnific Publishing

1901 Avenue of the Stars, 2nd Floor

Los Angeles, California 90067

www.omnificpublishing.com

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First Omnific eBook edition, March 2015

First Omnific trade paperback edition, March 2015

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

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Guthrie, Georgina.

The Record of My Heart / Georgina Guthrie – 1st ed

ISBN: 978-1-623422-19-6

1. Contemporary Romance—Fiction. 2. University—Fiction. 3. Shakespeare—Fiction. 4. Love Letters—Fiction. I. Title

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Cover Design by Micha Stone and Amy Brokaw
Interior Book Design by Coreen Montagna

To those who still believe in romance.

Michelle I. Tompkins

Inspired by Words
, 2010, mixed media collage

Private collection

…thus begins the record of our hearts…
(Rabindranath Tagore,
The Gardener
)

My beautiful Aubrey,

You are, no doubt, wondering what this book I’ve thrust into your hands is all about. Let me explain, sweetheart. Do you remember the documents I saved onto your Kindle…the ones you read on the plane to England? When I gave you those files, sharing only a couple of weeks of my private reflections from the beginning of the semester,
I may have misled you into believing that I ceased journaling once we had declared our intentions to pursue a relationship. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

My dispassionate descriptions of our initial encounters swiftly progressed beyond banal documentation, eventually becoming the secret musings of a man tumbling headfirst in love with you. In short, Aubrey, you are holding a book of love, what the Bard might call “a volume of enticing lines,” which traces the stirrings of my heart in the first weeks and months of our relationship with nothing glossed over. I had the pages professionally bound, thinking this might be a nice keepsake for us to look back on in the years to come.

The fact that you are reading the preface to this book means that the evening we’ve just spent out together has gone favorably for me, and you are now my fiancée. And so, tonight, on the first evening of our engagement, do you dare look more deeply into the heart of the man who wants to spend his life making you the happiest woman in the world? If so, then please read on
.

On second thought, come to bed with me, poppet. There will be plenty of time for reading in the morning…

Forever yours,

Daniel

xoxoxo…

The Joys of Trying to Cover Your Ass
When You’re Falling in Love with a Student
and Don’t Know It

First day of semester: Monday, February 2

(Here I remind you to brace yourself, poppet. I considered omitting this set of entries, but that would be cowardly…it’s probably just as cowardly to editorialize all of the asinine comments I made early in the semester, but I simply can’t let them stand without some sort of explanation. Forgive me.)

If my experiences last year taught me nothing else, they certainly underscored the importance of carefully documenting my exchanges with female students, especially those exchanges that make me feel uneasy. I’m remembering a piece of advice my grandfather used to share:
If something unsettles you, there’s probably good cause. Those hairs were put on the back of your neck for a reason.

So here I sit, on the first day of the semester, already feeling unsettled. I met Martin’s class today. Aside from arriving late for the lecture (thanks to another argument with my father), the class was fairly unremarkable—just your average fourth-year Shakespeare course. Having said that, there is a student in the class with whom I feel strangely compelled to proceed with caution.

Her name is Aubrey Price, and when she looked at me at the end of the lecture, those telltale hairs on my neck sent me a strong message—something along the lines of “clear and present danger.” I had glanced her way briefly, wanting to acknowledge her class participation, but there was a strange glint in her eye as she looked back at me—challenging me? Appraising me? It was a wholly unnerving feeling.

I reviewed the student files Martin gave me. Miss Price has an impressive GPA; in class she appeared bright and outspoken. There’s evidence of a history with Martin. I’ll have to ask him more about her. I can’t put my finger on the reason why, but I feel as if I’ll need to keep my wits about me with this one.

(Notice here, sweetheart, how I’ve completely omitted any mention of how beautiful I thought your eyes were when you gazed across the room at me, your lovely graceful neck and luminous skin so striking, setting you apart from your peers. Of course, there’s also the fact that I had to wipe the drool from my mouth when you stood up and I caught a glimpse of your fantastic ass and long legs in those insanely tight jeans. You saw me shuffling those papers around at the front of the room. The hairs at the back of my neck weren’t the only things standing at attention. Believe me, if I could’ve left right away without making a spectacle of myself, I would have.)

Crossed paths with the Price girl this morning outside the tutorial room. Turns out she works for my father at Victoria! I must be careful to avoid using this common relationship as a breeding ground for “friendship.” Our exchange left me feeling ill at ease, yet again. She was blushing and awkward—tongue-tied, even. Either she’s a social misfit (which seems unlikely), or she felt uncomfortable talking to me for some reason. I’m trying not to jump to conclusions. I made a speedy exit so I wouldn’t get drawn into a more personal conversation.

Unfortunately, I bumped into her at the coffee shop in Hart House no more than half an hour later and had another exchange with her. While I tried not to push the envelope with familiarity, I’m not sure how successful I was. (Note: room was full of patrons.) Again, she successfully identified a passage—“For some must watch while some must sleep; thus runs the world away” which isn’t exactly a quotation that lives on in infamy. (She’s no academic slouch, that’s for sure. Or she simply has a bizarre photographic memory where
Hamlet
is concerned.)

Then, I saw her again this afternoon at Vic. I was returning from a late lunch with my father, both of us annoyed after yet another argument. The sight of Miss Price approaching from the Lower House residences made me feel even more agitated.

(Agitated? That’s one way of putting it. How else could I put into words the overwhelming desire to pull you into my arms and kiss you on the second day of our acquaintance? And damn you for blushing so beautifully over your coffee cup, identifying that Hamlet quotation so easily and biting your lip while doing it! Let’s not even get into the fact that you were wearing your black yoga pants that day. Were you trying to kill me?)

I continue to have this vague, unsettled feeling. Why do I keep running into her? It’s as if she’s spying on me…like she’s been assigned to watch me, maybe even to “test” me. Even as I write this, I realize the complete absurdity of the notion, but who knows the lengths a university administration would pursue in order to verify the reputation of a TA with a checkered past?

(I read this now, and I want to die of mortification. How could I have even speculated that you were some sort of a spy? What a knob.)

Another awkward encounter with Miss Price. I kept her after Martin’s lecture to request that she not mention our in-class relationship to my father. I don’t want to get pulled into some strange three-way entanglement. That’s what I told her, anyway. She seemed aggravated—maybe even angry—but I couldn’t bring myself to feel remorseful. Her annoyance is a good thing. I was too familiar yesterday, so it didn’t hurt to rein things in a bit. Worth noting: the door was wide open.

(You know what was motivating me on this day was the fear that my father would discover I knew you from Martin’s class—right on the heels of him suggesting I meet the intelligent, attractive girl who worked in his office. I’m sorry I was nasty to you. Pushing you away that day seemed preferable to giving my father an acute angina attack.)