Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [112]
“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.
“I guess it’s my turn, then,” he said at last. “To walk away.”
“Looks like it,” Felicia agreed. “Since it’s my room and all.”
Nothing left to say, Will rose and went to the door. He caught a final glimpse of Felicia, the most beautiful, loving woman he had ever known, sitting curled up on her couch, knees pulled against her chest, arms wrapped around her legs, and he walked out.
And she didn’t say anything to stop him.
Chapter 28
Even at the time, those last months, weeks, and days of Starfleet Academy ran together in a kind of watercolor blur for Will Riker. By the time a couple of years had passed, he was almost completely unable to remember the precise sequence of events that had transpired. As he was living it, he couldn’t see any rhyme or pattern, just work and more work.
He got up in the morning, forcing himself out of bed even though he didn’t feel like he’d had nearly enough sleep. Usually, he hadn’t. But when he rolled from his bed, the first thing he did was to check the computer, to make sure that any notes he’d made the night before-he had, in recent weeks, developed a habit of waking up at various times during the night with fresh ideas and inspirations-were, in fact, comprehensible. Then he quickly scanned the material he’d studied before going to bed. After a rushed breakfast, he dashed off to his first class. A series of classes interspersed with brief study breaks followed. In late afternoon, after his last class, he went to the gym for a hurried workout, then showered and had dinner. After dinner it was up to his room for more studying until he either dozed off at the computer or could no longer retain what he was working on. That was when he finally allowed himself to go to bed, only to begin the whole process again in a few hours.
But somehow, he got through it, and his grades, when he saw them, were the highest he had ever received. Around campus there was mixed relief and concern at grade time, as those who had done well hurried to call friends and family and share the news, and those who had not agonized over their missteps and the possible cost to their future careers. Will didn’t have any family to contact, though, if you didn’t count his father who, he was pretty sure, was still missing someplace. And he hadn’t seen much of his friends lately-some, like Dennis and Felicia, wanted nothing to do with him, and the rest had been more or less abandoned in the mad rush toward finals and graduation.
Now that it was over, Will could exhale and start working on mending some of those fences, he figured. But his relief turned out to be a little premature. With graduation looming, that meant, he had every reason to believe, posting to a starship, and there was work to be done in preparation for that. He spent what seemed like hours filling out the documentation necessary for a Starfleet assignment, and he had to pack his personal items, some of which he simply gave away, or recycled, on the theory that a starship berth wouldn’t give him a whole lot of personal space. And then, before he knew it, graduation day was upon him.
“I’m no Federation president or galactic celebrity,” their graduation speaker began, his plain, folksy voice amplified to fill the cavernous space of the Academy’s vast auditorium. “I’m just a country doctor who has become sort of important, if at all, simply because I’ve managed to outlive all of my enemies.” Admiral Leonard H. McCoy looked out