Chapter 2
Stella:
His hand stayed raised, steady and unhurried, while I stood frozen at the podium with the clicker still pressed against my palm.
The lecture hall had gone quiet in that particular way classrooms do when students sense drama brewing, when forty-some undergraduates collectively hold their breath because something interesting might actually happen during an eight AM psychology lecture.
I could ignore him. I could call on literally anyone else—the girl in the third row who always sat with her hand half-raised, the guy near the window who looked like he'd actually done the reading.
But ignoring a front-row student with his hand up would be obvious, would be weak, would be exactly the kind of thing that gets noticed and whispered about in the campus coffee shop later.
"Yes?" My hand tightened around the marker until my knuckles went white.
He leaned back in his chair with an ease that made my jaw tighten. "I was just wondering, Professor Morrison—when you talk about anxious attachment developing from inconsistent caregiving, does that pattern continue into adulthood? Like, if someone experiences an intense but brief connection with another person, and then that person suddenly disappears without explanation, would that trigger the same kind of anxious response?"
The classroom stayed silent.
My fingers went numb around the clicker.
He wasn't.
He wouldn't.
"Could you give a more specific example?" The words came out before I could stop them, and I immediately wanted to snatch them back, swallow them whole, pretend I'd never opened my mouth.
His smile was all innocence and sharp edges. "Sure. Let's say two people meet at a social event. There's an immediate connection—maybe one of them is going through something stressful, and the other offers help. They spend the night together, not necessarily in a romantic way, just... sharing space. And then one person leaves before the other wakes up, leaves money on the nightstand like it was some kind of transaction instead of a human moment. Would the person who got left behind develop trust issues from that?"
Someone in the back row laughed.
Then someone else.
Then the whole classroom erupted into scattered giggles and whispers, the kind of knowing amusement that college students specialized in, that particular frequency of gossip that could turn a professor's carefully maintained authority into a campus-wide joke by lunchtime.
My face stayed perfectly still.
I'd practiced this too, back when I was defending my dissertation in front of a committee that included the professor who'd spent six months trying to dismantle my research methodology.
I knew how to keep my expression neutral when every instinct screamed to either run or fight, how to maintain that mask of academic detachment even when my pulse hammered against my throat.
"That's an interesting hypothetical," I said, my voice carrying across the lecture hall with the kind of crisp authority that came from pure survival instinct. "But you're conflating attachment patterns with acute stress responses. Attachment theory deals with long-term relational templates formed in childhood, not isolated incidents in adulthood. What you're describing would be better understood through the lens of social exchange theory—the idea that relationships operate on a cost-benefit analysis."
I clicked to the next slide, not caring that it didn't actually connect to what I was saying.
"When someone leaves money after an encounter, they're attempting to reframe the interaction as transactional rather than relational. It's a defense mechanism, actually. The person leaving the money is trying to avoid the vulnerability of an unequal emotional exchange by converting it into something quantifiable and therefore controllable."
I met his eyes for the first time since he'd raised his hand.
"So to answer your question—no, the person who got left behind wouldn't develop attachment issues from that single incident. They might feel confused, maybe a little insulted by the money, but unless there's a pre-existing pattern of abandonment in their history, one awkward morning wouldn't be enough to create lasting psychological damage."
I paused, let the silence stretch just long enough to make my point.
"Of course, the person who ran away and left the money? They're the one with the real attachment issues. Probably avoidant attachment style—someone who gets uncomfortable with intimacy and creates distance through whatever means necessary. Even financial ones."
The classroom had gone quiet again, but this time it was different. This time they were listening, leaning forward, actually engaged with the material because I'd turned his little power play into a teaching moment.
His smile had faded.
Good.
"Any other questions about attachment theory?" I asked the room at large, deliberately breaking eye contact with him. "No? Then let's move on to Bartholomew's four-category model."
I made it through the rest of the lecture on pure adrenaline and spite, my voice steady as I walked them through secure versus dismissive versus fearful attachment styles, my hands only shaking when I turned to write on the whiteboard and no one could see.
The fifty minutes felt like fifty hours, each second stretching out while I hyper-analyzed every word that came out of my mouth, every glance I didn't let myself make toward the front row.
When I finally dismissed them, the scrape of chairs and rustle of backpacks filled the hall with blessed noise. I busied myself with shutting down my laptop, organizing my notes, doing anything that would justify keeping my eyes down and away from the stream of students filing out.
Most of them left quickly, eager to get to their next class or back to their dorms. A few lingered to ask questions about the upcoming assignment—easy, procedural things that I could answer on autopilot.
And then they were gone too.
Except for one.
I didn't have to look up to know he was still there. I could feel his presence the same way you feel someone standing too close behind you in line, that awareness that prickled at the back of my neck and made my shoulders tense.
"Professor Morrison?"