What is your addiction?It had snuck up on him.
One week after Christine Daae had become the society column's newest sensation, one week since he'd made the colossal mistake of letting his mouth run away without him, and she had not spoken a single word to him. She had even managed the feat of not once looking at him during daytime run-throughs and nighttime performances. If she had to be in close proximity to him, she kept her eyes firmly forward, her lips thin and chin set. And it hurt a great deal worse than he had thought it might.
Reyer's mind kept wandering, unbidden, to the memory of the smile she'd given him and Madame Giry during that stroll in the park on her birthday. How strange that it had only happened just over a week earlier. Now it seemed to belong to a different world, on a different person's face, given to a different person entirely. Perhaps he
was a different person now. He certainly hadn't felt like himself on that day, and ever since. And on reflection, he could scarcely believe he'd been
that ugly to his student. Was it really his place to concern himself with who she chose to consort with, to be so... so... possessive of her?
That was an ugly word, too. And a foreign one. Again--this behavior wasn't like him. And it wasn't his
place, he kept reminding himself.
Do stop caring
so much.Caring.That particular word, that thought, occurred to him at a moment during yet another night of being ignored, watching Christine's determined face and suddenly wishing so desperately for her to smile at him again that it was a physical pain in his chest.
That night, when the performance was over, he went home and had rather too much to drink, hoping in vain to ease the disquiet that had settled over him like a choking blanket.