Easy for Mrs. Bardowski to say. She hadn’t had Cyrus shooting offwhyslike bullets in a machine gun. And I hadn’t gone into detail. I’d kept everything scientific. The body had different systems. We even taught units on the skeletal and muscular systems. Why did people get all weirded out by reproductive organs?
Besides, I thought most parents had a problem with privacy when they had small kids. As in, they no longer had any. As in, their kids followed them everywhere, even to the bathroom, and picked the lock if the mom even tried to keep them out. How had Cyrus’s mom been able to keep her hygiene products hidden from her son for so long?
“Molly.”
I snapped my attention back to Mrs. Bardowski. Her eyebrows were raised expectantly. I rolled my lips between my teeth. I knew what she wanted, but I couldn’t give her the assurances she required—that I would cover the truth in a blanket of, well, what she called common sense but I consideredsuggestio falsi. Or, for those of us who don’t actually speak Latin, a big fat lie.
I could give her some reassurance though. “There were no mentions of birds, bees, or special hugs. I didn’t use, you know, that three letter word. I didn’t tell him at all how babies are made or where they come from. Just facts. Scientific facts about the human body.”
Whereas her fake poppy pin still appeared as fresh as the day it had come out of the factory, Mrs. Bardowski wilted. She rested her forearms against her desk and looked at me like I was a puppy in the pound and my euthanasia date had come up. “I really hate doing this, Molly, but I’m going to have to let you go.”
My palms felt clammy, and I retracted my hand from Mrs. Bardowski’s desk and laid them in my lap. “You’re…you’re firing me?”
“I am so sorry.”
“For telling the truth?”
Her eyes drooped but held mine. “We both know it isn’t that.”
“I see.” About as well as I could without my glasses. I lifted my hand to make sure the black, vintage-style frames still perched on my nose. They did. The blurriness wasn’t due to my horrid vision problems then.
I blinked and was surprised to feel a single tear glide down my cheek. Notching my chin, I rose, ignoring the tightness in my throat and refusing to draw attention to the tear by wiping at it.
“Thank you for the opportunity to work here, Mrs. Bardowski. The experience has been…enlightening.”
“We wish you only the very best, Molly. I hope you know that.”
Fired. The very best. Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe.
I turned, and that’s when I noticed the door to Mrs. Bardowski’s office hadn’t been shut all the way. Which wouldn’t have been a big deal if I hadn’t been sacked and if there wasn’t a very long, very masculine leg leading down to an impressive pair of brown leather chukka boots visible in the three-inch crack between the door and the doorframe.
The curse of my fair skin washed over me, and I knew even without the benefit of a mirror that my cheeks pinkened.
An audience to my humiliation. How par for my course. Oh well. Naught else to be done.
I squared my shoulders and collected my bag while Mrs. Bardowski shimmied around me and pushed the door open the rest of the way.
The man in question rose, as did my gaze. Chukka boots led to starched, gray, fitted slacks, a trim waist cinched with a leather belt and plain silver buckle, and a torso covered by a tailored, gray-and-white pinstriped button-up that hugged the man’s impressive arms like the peel of a banana clings to the fruit.
Oh my.
My eyes lingered, but I forced them upward. One humiliation in the span of a few minutes was enough. I didn’t need this man to catch me ogling his toned physique as well. My complexion adhered to my strict honesty policy. The truth of my thoughts would be written all over my face.
Another system mostly ignored in the elementary years: the endocrine system. Mine was working quite well at the moment, hormones shaking their pompoms like mini cheerleaders in my bloodstream.
I shot my gaze away, swallowed, and then resettled on the man’s face. He had a hint of dark scruff along his chin and jaw, dark half-moons under his gray eyes, and a head of thick hair somewhere between a really deep brown color and true black. Our gazes collided and tangled for a second, pity making the slight downturn at the outer corners of his eyes—not too dissimilar to that of a Bassett puppy—become more prominent.
“Dr. Reed, thank you for coming.” Mrs. Bardowski lifted her arm in invitation to enter her office.
Looking down, I held my bag to my chest and hurried through the hall, trying to outrun the voice in my head—that of my close friend, Amanda, and her slight obsession with a certain medical drama and one of the dreamy characters. If she were here, she’d have already come up with several objectifying nicknames and used them in hashtags all over her social media. #doctordaaaaang #doctorswoony #medicinemanofmydreams
“Hey. Hey, wait up a second.”
My ballet flats paused on the heavy-duty industrial carpeting. I didn’t want to stop. If I stopped, I would notice the students’ artwork I’d hung on the walls only a few hours before. The tissue paper flowers I’d helped six of them create. I’d remember Annabelle telling me I smelled like roses and the excited look in Aiden’s eyes when he wrote his name for the first time without the aid of tracing. I’d remember that I wouldn’t get to see any of my precious students again. Never get to say goodbye to them.
I pressed my finger to the corner of my eye and collected the moisture gathered there before it could fall. Pushing my lips up into a semblance of a smile, I turned toward the man who had followed me down the hall instead of keeping his meeting with Mrs. Bardowski, for whatever reason.
“Dr. Reed, was it?”
