Page 14 of Given Our History

I straighten up so fast that I smack my head on the underside of the desk. Sucking air through my teeth, I emerge with the papers in hand, only to find Teddy standing in the doorway. “Holy guacamole, you scared me,” I mutter, massaging the top of my head. He offers me a hand.

“You did that thing again,” he says, pulling me to my feet. “Censoring yourself.”

“Like I said, I’m trying to form better habits.”

We’re standing far closer than we stood on Monday in the break room. He still smells like pencil shavings and Earl Grey tea, but up close like this, I notice that he’s started wearing some sort of cologne as well—it’s subtle and warm and earthy. He releases my hand. My pulse thrums in my fingers, an aftershock.

“Well,” I say, trying to sound light, airy, even though I’m pretty sure my throat is closing up, “I’ve got a meeting on the other side of campus, so I’ve got to—” I wave the stack of crumpled agendas at him, like that’s explanation enough.

He nods. “Right.”

But neither of us moves. I clench and unclench my fingers, willing them to feel normal. Finally, he sidesteps me, clearing the path to the door. I brush past him, but hesitate in the threshold, words bubbling to the surface. “Do you want to walk with me?” Ohmygod what am I doing? “I wouldn’t mind the company.”

His eyes lock with mine. For the briefest of moments, I think he’s going to say no. The same old song and dance: extending an olive branch only for the other person to set it on fire, ad nauseam. But to my surprise, he says, “All right,” and joins me in stepping out into the hall.

Half of me is wondering what I’m doing and the other half is pleased. We can have this, at least. Something polite, friendship vacuum-sealed in professionalism. If I’m being honest with myself, there’s maybe a teensy, tiny part of me that’s been disappointed not to run into him around the office more. Talking to him makes me feel a little less awful about everything that happened between us, all those years ago. Look at us: we’re adults now. We can be cordial without it needing to remind us of how we used to be, and all the ways we went wrong.

We descend the stairs and exit through the north door. There’s a light breeze today, the first hint of autumn beating back the sticky Maryland summer, and it stirs his hair as we make our way across the grassy quad. I try not to watch him out of the corner of my eye, but it’s also impossible to pretend that he’s not there. His hand rests on the strap of his leather laptop bag, his father’s gold signet ring on his finger, so they must be on speaking terms again. Despite the ring and the stuffy roman numeral at the end of his name, his family doesn’t actually come from old money. His dad’s an auto body technician from Philadelphia, and his mom emigrated from Thessaly.

I’m about to ask him how his parents have been, but he speaks first. “You remember that hike up to the overlook, when we were maybe, what, sixteen?” he asks. “You guys all ganged up on me, trying to convince me to say a ‘bad word.’”

I’m surprised he’s bringing up something from our past, but it’s an innocent enough memory. “I told you that there was no such thing as bad words. Just bad intentions.” My mouth twists in a self-deprecating smile. “Which I now realize is debatable, for the record.”

He laughs under his breath. “Every time you say things like ‘holy guacamole,’ all I can think about is that day.”

It’s a good memory. Sweaty, eaten alive by mosquitos, standing victorious on a slab of rock and shouting across the mountaintops until our voices were hoarse. A warm ache spreads behind my breastbone, not caused by anyone or anything in the here and now—it’s more nostalgic, a yearning for another place, another time. Afternoons spent laid out on warm, sunbaked stone, watching the clouds drift overhead and talking about our plans for the future.

I rub my chest with the heel of my palm. “How’d you end up back in Pennsylvania?” I ask. It’s a personal question, but not too personal. “You always said you were going to leave and never look back.”

He blows out a breath. “Just life, I guess.” I raise my eyebrows at him, waiting to see whether he’ll elaborate, but he doesn’t, and I don’t press for more information.

The buildings in the Franklin Complex are squat, one story and brutalist. They were added to the campus in the late seventies to accommodate a flood of enrollment after the end of the war in Vietnam. Somehow, the architecture is reflective of the zeitgeist. Nowadays, though, the complex is strangely juxtaposed with the more classic brick buildings that make up the rest of campus. There is no ivy creeping up the concrete walls here, no romanticism in the dry, fluffy plumes of bottlebrush that line the planters. We enter the first building and he walks me to the conference room. I expect we’ll say our awkward goodbyes and then I’ll head inside, but when I stop beside the weighty metal door numbered 106, he tugs it open and says, “After you.”

Five boxes of cold hot-and-ready pizza are laid out on the conference room table, spoils of an earlier meeting. Gary’s already seated at the table. His salt-and-pepper head is bent over his phone and he doesn’t bother to glance up at our arrival.

“You’re free to take off, by the way,” I say to Teddy as I flip the lids on the boxes in search of pineapple and Canadian bacon. No such luck. “These meetings aren’t all that exciting.” I take a slice of cheese pizza, cradling it in a napkin, and seat myself at the end of the table.

“I’ve got an hour to kill before my next lecture.” He takes a seat, leaving an empty chair between us, and scoots into the table. “I hope you don’t mind. You’re the only person I know around here besides Julien.”

It’s easy to forget that Teddy isn’t super comfortable putting himself out there and introducing himself to new people. He’s soft-spoken, but it reads more like quiet confidence than social awkwardness. “Mmm.” I finish chewing my pizza and swallow. “I can remedy that.” I gesture back and forth across the table. “Gary, Teddy. Teddy’s a visiting professor of history from Carnegie Mellon.”

Teddy rises out of his seat to offer a handshake across the table. “Most people call me ‘Ted’ these days.”

He probably only means to gently correct me, but it’s a pointed reminder that I don’t know him anymore. Gary sets down his phone just long enough to reach across the table and give Teddy’s hand a firm shake. “Tartans, huh? Still haven’t forgiven you guys for that touchdown in the final quarter last season.”

I assume he’s talking about football—I’m peripherally aware that Irving is a Division III school, but sports aren’t really my thing. Last I checked, they weren’t Teddy’s thing either, and it seems that much hasn’t changed, because he chuckles awkwardly and changes the subject. “How was your summer?”

“Great,” Gary says. “It’s the coming back part that’s not so great. Not even a week into the semester, and Jane’s already called me into her office to talk grading policies.”

Gary Reid has been teaching at Irving for over a decade now. In that time, he’s racked up an impressive twenty-seven official complaints, most of them centered around his insistence on guarding any grade higher than a C+ like a greedy dragon brooding over a gold hoard. Supposedly he gave an A- to a girl in ’07, but that’s something of an urban legend—I haven’t seen any tangible proof. He’s one pissed-off student away from an opinion piece about professors on power trips.

The door to the conference room swings wide, and two others enter: a long-legged man with a halo of sparse, sandy hair, and a woman with a blunt bob, her pashmina shawl whirling behind her like a cape. They’re absorbed in a conversation about Zoom lectures and they don’t stop on our account, though the woman does toss Teddy a quick—if quizzical—smile.

“—whether they reached some consensus about the camera policy,” the woman is saying as she draws out a chair beside Gary.

“Well, not in the organizational sense.” The man withdraws a yellow legal pad from his briefcase and slaps it on the table in front of him. “I’d say if there was a consensus—forgive me, that might be too strong a word—then it was an agreement that these matters need to be addressed on a case-by-case basis, with varying circumstances taken into consideration.”

Now that everyone’s here, I shovel down the rest of my pizza and wipe my greasy fingers on the napkin before passing out the agendas. They’re short, to the point: meeting times, application deadline, award ceremony. I know better than to expect that we’re going to cover all of this today, but I’m determined to start strong.