When Candy walkedinto Griff’s classroom and saw him sitting behind his desk the next day, her smile was a bit crooked. Wry in a way he couldn’t interpret.
He tipped his head to the side. “What? Do I have something in my beard?”
After eating, he always checked carefully for residue. Especially now, with his facial hair bushier and less tamed. Still, he could have missed something.
In all honesty, he didn’t even like the way it looked anymore. He didn’t like how it felt, either.
Last night, he’d reached for his clippers. Then shied away, as the task began to seem much too metaphorical. Much too fraught.
Marianne had always liked him clean-shaven.
As he’d eyed the clippers, though, he’d been considering another woman entirely.
“Your beard remains pristine.” After closing the door, she lowered herself into the student chair nearest his desk with a thump. “I was just…thinking about something. Nothing important.”
Despite her emotional upheaval yesterday, she didn’t appear especially tired or sad today. Her fawn-brown eyes were alert, no shadows beneath them. Even better, that horrible grayness had vanished entirely in the last several weeks, the unceasing demands of a new school year perhaps distracting her from her grief. Or maybe the simple passage of time was eroding her pain, like a tide over stone.
If their late-afternoon conversation in his room had helped too, he was glad.
Under his scrutiny, she shifted in her seat a bit, and he frowned.
Marysburg High didn’t use chairs with built-in writing surfaces, and thank heaven for that. Those damn desks had tormented bigger students at his previous school. Some kids couldn’t fit in them at all, while others had squeezed themselves into the openings with such difficulty, they must have left his class bruised and aching each time.
Over the years, he’d quietly gathered alternative seating. Beanbags. A few freestanding chairs. But even that, he knew, was humiliating in its own way, the need for special accommodation. And teenagers could be so damn cruel sometimes. Not in front of him, of course, because under no circumstances did he allow cruelty in his classroom. But in the halls, by the lockers, he knew at least some of those kids must suffer.
Even apart from the emotional toll exacted by the desks, how exactly did the school expect larger students to pay attention and learn under those circumstances? How could they become their best selves in the midst of perpetual discomfort and pain?
He’d left his old school to escape the sight of someone else’s name on Marianne’s office door. To flee from the way she glided down every hallway and perched at every table and lingered in every doorway, populating every corner of the workplace they’d shared for over a decade. He’d left his old home, even his old time zone, for much the same reason.
The move had drained his scant remaining resources, emotional and physical.
That said, his former administration’s casual unconcern for vulnerable students, the incidental cruelties he and his late wife had tried to combat for years, had made the professional aspect of his transition easier than he’d feared. He was glad to be teaching at Marysburg High, under a principal like Tess Dunn. Proud, actually.
His students didn’t always leave his classroom delighted, but they never left it bruised and humiliated. Or hungry, for that matter, due to Tess’s relentless advocacy on that topic.
He wondered what Candy had looked like as a teenager. Whether she’d spent school days in pain. Whether she’d demanded better options, or simply tried to shove herself into a spot that would always be too small for her.
Whatever her experiences in high school, the woman she’d become took up space unapologetically and did not suffer quietly. He loved that about her.
So she probably wasn’t actively hurting right now. Still, her frame was large enough that the student seat didn’t look entirely comfortable for her.
Easily remedied, that, as long as she didn’t get stubborn on him.
Getting to his feet, he rolled his desk chair in her direction. “Here. Take this.”
She didn’t argue, and it felt like victory. Especially when her smile widened, plumping her cheeks and crinkling the corners of her eyes. “Thanks. I’ve been eyeing this chair for a year now, wondering how it felt.”
They switched places, and he watched, pleased, as she sank into the extra-wide, cushioned seat.
His old desk chair had collapsed right before the move from Wisconsin, and his former mother-in-law had insisted on ordering him a new one as a sort of going-away present. She’d had it delivered directly to Virginia, and he’d known why as soon as he saw it.
It was more appropriate for a CEO than a public school teacher, all tufted, plush, gleaming leather and generous lines. Incredibly comfortable. Undeniably expensive. Huge.
It didn’t fit under his desk, of course. After a year of hard use, that leather was already scuffed and damaged. One of the casters had never quite recovered from an encounter with gum over the winter. By springtime, his students had felt comfortable enough to tease him about hisfancy-man chairand inquire about the whereabouts of his butler.
But Marianne’s mother had wanted to do something nice for him, and she had. Even though, if she’d asked his opinion, he’d have requested a mesh chair like Candy’s. Which was, of course, why she hadn’t asked.
“This…” Candy smoothed her palm down the padded-leather length of the chair arm, her touch lingering. Caressing. “This is the most gorgeous, comfortable piece of furniture that’s ever deigned to inhabit Marysburg High. Aren’t you worried it might be stripped and sold for parts on our faculty gray market?”
