And then Felicia’s response had seemed out of proportion as well. It wasn’t as if his relationship with Dennis would necessarily affect her. She knew Dennis too, they were friendly. But if Will’s friendship with Dennis had come to an abrupt end, why did that have to change her own association with Dennis? It didn’t—she was just blowing things up for no reason. Maybe she was upset not because her connection with Dennis was impaired but because her own impression of Will had been challenged. Not that her impression had always been a favorable one.
He shook his head and tried to concentrate on what Professor Knudsen was talking about.
He was aware of his lack of focus, and hoped that this particular lecture would be one he could afford to miss most of. But that pointed to a larger problem: Even without agreeing to Dennis’s ridiculous demands, his own academic work was being affected. Dennis, and now Felicia, were threatening his career simply by being part of his life and having expectations that he couldn’t necessarily live up to. If this sort of thing—disagreements with friends and lovers—could draw his mind away from one of his favorite lecturers, then it was dangerous. He couldn’t afford to let his concentration lapse. His priority had to be getting the highest grades he possibly could and doing his best work in these remaining few weeks. As hard as it was now, when finals hit it would be harder still. He needed to be mentally and psychologically available for himself at that point, ready to take on whatever academic challenges were thrown at him.
His decision made, he tried to tune in Professor Knudsen.
He found Felicia after his last class of the day, in her room. Estresor Fil was in there with her, studying, but when she saw the look on Will’s face—Will wondered just how bad he must look—she quickly gathered her things and excused herself. Felicia regarded Will with a blank expression. Pointedly, she did not get up to hug or kiss him. Will sat down in the chair that Estresor Fil had just vacated.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” Will began.
“I’m glad to hear that.” Felicia’s voice was as flat as her face, as if she had pushed all emotion to the side.
“Yeah, well, it’s not always easy for me,” he said. She didn’t smile at the joke, and he decided not to try that again. “But what I keep coming up against, Felicia, is this. The school year is almost over. I had a rough first year, and some snags in my second too. If I want to get the best possible posting after the Academy, I have to really shine this year. That’s why I couldn’t devote the time to helping Dennis—because I need to devote it to helping myself. I have to push myself as hard as I possibly can.”
“Career isn’t everything, Will,” she said. “Friendships are every bit as important.”
“Friendships may be important,” he admitted. “But not ‘every bit as.’ Nothing is, not to me. The way I see it, there’s no reason to go into Starfleet unless I’m willing to give it my all. It needs a hundred percent of me.”
“That seems pretty narrow-minded,” Felicia responded. “What’s wrong with giving it seventy? Eighty? You need some of you left over for you.”
“I don’t agree. I mean, sure, that’s good enough for some people. But not for me. I’ve been trying to do this for as long as I can remember. Getting into Starfleet, moving up the ranks, becoming a senior officer—those have been my goals since I was a kid. Now they’re within range—I can almost close my hands around those gold pips. I can’t afford to lose my momentum. I can’t let anything get in the way of that goal. Not now.”
“And by ‘anything,’ you mean ... ?”
“You know,” he said, still unwilling to say out loud what had really brought him to Felicia’s room. “Dennis and his crazy schemes. Helping him cheat. That’s a sure way to get kicked out, to guarantee that I’ll never have a Starfleet career at all.”
“But tutoring isn’t against the rules.”
“We’ve been over that,” Will reminded her. “The degree of tutoring he needs is more than I can handle and still keep my own grades up. I can’t really spare any time for him, much less the amount he’s looking for.”
“So what you’re saying is that your career takes precedence over your friends,” she translated.
He paused, understanding that he was about to go over a waterfall without so much as a barrel to ride in. “That’s right. It has to.”
“All your friends?”
Will swallowed but answered quickly. “That’s right.”
“I had a feeling,” she said. “At lunch, when you just let me walk away.”
“I really am not sure how I’m supposed to stop everyone from walking away,” Will said. “Flying tackles? Is that better?”
“Usually a simple word or two will do it,” Felicia told him. “But you have to want to say them.”
“What words? You know I’m not good at this, Felicia. You want me to tell you that I love you? I do. Or I think I do, and if there’s a difference I don’t know what it is. But that’s not really what this is about, is it?”
“Not really,” she said, keeping her steady gaze fixed on him. “Not whether you can say it, anyway. More whether you can mean it.”
“I do mean it,” he tried to assure her. “As much as I have ever loved anyone, I love you.”
“Are you sure about that, Will?”
“But obviously,” he went on, ignoring her question, “that’s not enough. For either of us. You want more than I can give. And I feel like I’m already too committed—like just being in a relationship with you is costing me too much. I can’t concentrate on my work, I can’t separate my personal life, my emotional life, from the things that I need to do to reach my goals.”
Now he realized that her eyes had gone liquid. She sniffed once. “I had hoped that you were different, Will,” she said. “I saw—I still see—a great person inside you, a wonderful, loving man who is driven and ambitious but also kind and generous and giving. It’s those qualities, in combination, that make you the man I want to be with—the man I’ve wanted to be with since I met you, even though I had to wait so damn long for you to figure it out. And these past few months, when you’ve actually been that man, have been amazing. I’ve felt things, being with you, that I could barely have imagined in my wildest fantasies.”
A tear escaped her eye and trailed down her left cheek. She ignored it and kept talking. “Your problem, Will, is that you haven’t yet figured out how to be the whole person you really are. You think you can only be one part of you at a time, and that’s not true. So even though you really arethe man I love, you can’t seem to give yourself permission to bethat man.” She turned her head away, finally releasing him from the withering assault of her nearly unbearable scrutiny. “Funny how I’ve always known you better than you know yourself. That’s backwards, William. You don’t have to let it be that way.”
“But maybe I do,” he countered. “If that’s the way I am. You may be right, but I can only be the person I am now, at this time, in this moment. If I can change that in time, fine. But that still doesn’t help us right now.”
“Apparently there is no help for us now.”
“It doesn’t look that way,” he agreed.
“Well,” she said, sniffling and trying on a smile. “Fun while it lasted, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I am sorry. Really, really sorry.”
“Me too, Will. Me too.”
He sat there a moment longer, feeling impossibly awkward. There was nothing to say or do that was the right thing, in this situation. He wanted to touch her, to throw himself at her, to scoop her into his arms and apologize, to tell her that he’d been stupid and he’d be different now. But he knew that wasn’t true, and he wouldn’t fool her for a second. He was right, he could only be the person he was. And the person he was put his career ahead of everything else. There would be plenty of time for relationships after he had achieved what he needed to professionally. For now, he had to prioritize.