Page 13 of Chalk It Up

I plead the fifth. But also, yes.

Thea

Behave yourselves

Me

Calm down, I’m tutoring Adeline

Thea

May the odds be in your favor

Me

That’s not even the right hand gesture

Thea

I’m too lazy to look through GIFs.

I send her a stream of kissy and produce emojis because I know she’ll get a kick out of it and set my phone back in my desk drawer.

chapter 9

August

I don’t know what in the world I just did. Driving back to the office, I contemplate the horrible decision that I somehow created on the spot. I went to that classroom determined to tell Evangeline to give Addie a different part in the program. I somehow walked out with her agreeing to what will be at least weekly dinners at my house to help Addie instead. I scrub at my beard in exasperation. I am a certified fool. I might be making a storm in my head, but a big part of myself is saying I’m not. Telling me that I need to be on guard for so many reasons.

Evangeline is brilliant and beautiful and cares more for Addie than I want to admit. I’m a grown man and I can handle being around a woman for a couple of hours. At least that’s what I try to tell myself. I work with Thea and plenty of women from the office every day and I have no issues. Not women that care to go out of their way for your daughter. Irrelevant. I also entirely failed to take our reputations into consideration. I remind myself, again, that there is nothing going on but outside of tutoring, which is entirely appropriate. So why does it feel like it’s not?

There is something about Evangeline that sticks to my ribs. Yes, she cares for Addie, but there’s more. She has nervous tics that are so obvious, but I’m sure she thinks she’s hiding. She tries to play it all off so confidently. And when I raged into her in her classroom, did she flinch? I wanted to shrink into the smallest version of myself after seeing that.

But I can’t fixate too much on it because I’ll start wondering why she’s so flinchy and want to maim whoever made her that way. Suddenly I feel protective over a woman who all I’ve done is scare and boss around like I’m any better than whomever caused it.

I pull into work replacing the view of the trees for my office today. I have footage to cull through and some contracts that Thea is dropping off for me to run over, even though I’m quite certain the contracts fall more under Alana’s jurisdiction. But today, I’m grateful for the distraction.

An hour of culling goes by too fast and the work is too mind numbing to fully distract me from thinking about dinner tomorrow. A knock sounds at my door as Thea comes in with the contracts. I don’t know that I’ve ever been so glad for a distraction–the contracts–to come through my office.

“August, here are the quotes and contracts for you to look over.” Thea leers at me and drops the folders on my desk. What on earth? I’ve never seen her look less like the sun than she does right now. I run through a catalog in my mind of our interactions to see where I’ve wronged her but nothing sticks out.

“Hey, is everything okay?” I ask while sifting through the names on the tabs of the folders she brought. Her and Reid work together like a choreographed dance with how organized they are and how well they both communicate with me on work.

Thea’s mask of frustration slips into surprise for just a second, and I can’t say I blame her. Very rarely do I ask anyone if they're okay. It’s not for lack of caring, because I do. But I prefer to just put my head down and work and leave.

“Yup.” She pops the “p” and pivots to leave. “I’m just fine.” she tacts on and closes the door behind her. That was cryptic. Is someone else not fine? Deciding I can’t do anything with the half hints she’s dropping, I turn my attention back to the contracts.

I finish finalizing the contracts and head to Alana’s office to drop them off. Her office is always immaculate. She doesn’t have any personal touches to it but what it lacks in sentimentality it absolutely makes up for in class, openness, and comfort. She toes a perfect line of corporate and welcoming.

Her floor to ceiling windows on two of her four walls give her the most gorgeous view of the sunrise that bathes her light oak desk in natural light. Potted plants are tastefully scattered throughout, homey but not a total greenhouse.

She’s on one side of her desk with Reid on the other, both probably waiting for the files in my hand. I start over but have a strange tickle on my neck like I’ve interrupted something I shouldn’t be close to, and neither has noticed me come in.

They finally notice my presence and I lay the folders down much more gently than Thea slapped them on my desk. “That was fast.” Alana compliments. It was too fast. Now I don’t know what to do with myself.

“Thanks.” I respond and turn to Reid. “Hey, Thea came into my office earlier in a real mood. You guys worked together earlier on the contracts, did you do something to her or did she mention something that was wrong?” They both stare back up at me stunned. Seriously, what has gotten into me and why do I care about what’s going on in Thea’s life? Something about it just keeps pulling at my gut like I’m supposed to know.

“She was perfectly pleasant with me.” Reid explains. Why does everyone keep emphasizing singular words? Can we not just be grown adults and talk? “But she seemed tired so I asked what was up and she said she was at a friend’s house the night before. She didn’t mention who, just that her friend needed some moral support and that it was kind of a last minute thing.” Given the incident that happened at the grocery store, I have a strange feeling that this friend everyone is talking about so conspicuously is actually Evangeline. With that train of thought, I feel like even more of a jerk for barging into her classroom today.