Page 101 of Office Hours
We sit in the soft glow, letting the future unspool ahead of us, one quiet minute at a time.
For once, I’m not waiting for something to break.
For once, I’m just here.
The first thingI hear is the noise of chatter coming from outside. I know that Andie will announce herself long before she actually enters the café proper, and right on cue, her voice rings out over the espresso machine:
“Did you order for me, or do I have to live off your backwash like a baby bird?”
The pretty blonde pauses at the doorframe for punctuation, then hurls herself into a chair like a human cannonball, legs folded pretzel-style and face already pink from the walk across campus. She clocks Liam, and—this is new—gives him a high-key, non-ironic smile.
“Hey, Professor T.” It’s more of a nickname now than a title, and the teasing isn’t hostile. “You surviving the Simone tornado?”
He deadpans. “Barely. She keeps me on my toes.”
“Good,” Andie says, then shoots me a look that says, You better not let him get boring now that he’s domesticated.
I slide her a tea I ordered in anticipation. “Chamomile, half a bag of raw sugar. Just how you like it.”
She grins, takes an enormous slurp, and sighs with happiness. “God, you’re an angel.” She turns to Liam. “You ever see her first thing in the morning? Like, before she puts her face on?”
He smiles at me. “I think she’s beautiful at all hours.”
I flush so hard my earlobes burn. “Gross. Stop.”
Andie laughs—actually laughs at one of his jokes, which is unprecedented—and then asks, “So what’s the plan for the evening? You two hitting up the poetry reading, or are you just going to make out in every empty building on campus?”
Liam leans in, all mock conspiratorial. “We were planning on making out in the library, but I hear security’s stepped up patrols since the, ah, incident.”
Andie almost chokes on her drink, then stabs a finger at him. “You told her about that?”
I feign innocence. “Told me what?”
She glares, but it melts immediately. “If anyone asks, I was with you at Chipotle that night.”
Liam lifts his hands. “Your secret’s safe. Academic confidentiality.”
I snort and feel the world slide into its new alignment: the three of us, not as a crisis unit, but as a lopsided family. It’s a little surreal.
We chat—about nothing, about everything. Andie is working two jobs this summer, one at the pool (lifeguard, obviously, because she adores shirtless men) and one dog-sitting for some guy who travels so much that the dog now whines if left alone formore than four minutes. She says she’s thinking of going into veterinary medicine, or maybe running away to join a circus.
Liam talks about his seminar, how half his students can’t stand confessional poetry and the other half are addicted to it. He admits that a kid named Wyatt is already twice the poet he ever was at twenty-one, but that it’s “ennobling, not threatening,” which Andie immediately makes fun of: “Ennobling. My god, do you just walk around talking like that all the time?”
He says, “I try to keep it under control, but your friend makes me relapse.”
They bicker, but it’s friendly now, the tension gone. I watch them and feel, for the first time, that maybe I really can have both—a life with him, and a life with her. That the whole world doesn’t have to be an either/or.
At some point, Liam’s phone buzzes. He checks it, frowns, then says, “Excuse me for a minute. The department chair wants a word about adjunct contracts.” He leans over, kisses my temple, and stands, leaving us in the booth with his half-finished tea.
Andie watches him go, then turns on me with the full force of her laser focus. “You’re happy,” she says, not even a question.
I nod. “I really am.”
She looks at her hands, flexes them, then shakes her head. “I owe you an apology.”
I blink. “For what?”
She bites her lip, and for a second I see her as she was in our first year—scared, fragile, hiding behind hair and bravado. “For not being happy for you sooner. For acting like you were doomed, orI was going to lose you. I was just…” She trails off, then finishes with a shrug.
