Page 94 of Office Hours
For the first time in forever, I feel like I belong.
I take a long, scalding sip of my latte, and the bitterness is perfect.
I barely havetime to process the grade before the front door blasts open and Andie comes barreling in, trailing a cloud of cold air and the sharp, almost ozone tang of sidewalk salt. She spots me instantly—maybe it’s the hair, maybe the posture, maybe just the way I’m vibrating at a frequency only the desperate can see.
She doesn’t walk, she power-marches, parka half-zipped, boots squeaking, cheeks flushed so red she looks frostbitten. She lands in the seat across from me like she’s been launched. There is no preamble.
“Tell me you checked,” the sassy blonde demands, eyes glittering.
“I checked.”
“And?”
I turn my phone to face her, finger trembling as I slide the screen across. She leans in, nearly jamming her nose to the glass. When she sees the “A,” her whole body snaps upright.
“YES!” she yells, way too loud for the jazz piano mood, then flattens her voice and tries again, a hissed whisper: “YES. YOU LEGEND.”
The tarot lady looks up from her deck and grins. The barista gives us a thumbs-up. I’m mortified, but also elated.
Andie wraps me in a hug so tight it knocks the air from my lungs. She smells like vanilla body spray and the outdoors. Her hair leaves a static electricity shadow on my face.
“I’m so proud of you,” she says, and it’s not a joke, not even a little.
I blink, and for a second my vision goes blurry, but I hold it together. “We did it,” I say, my voice small.
She pulls back, wipes under her eyes with the heel of her palm, and immediately starts digging through the sugar caddie on the table. “This is a full-sugar day. All bets are off,” she announces, and proceeds to dump five packets of sugar into her thermos of black coffee. The sweetness must be astonishing, but she drinks it anyway, eyes never leaving my face.
We fall into easy talk, the kind you only get after surviving a war together. We gossip about the other finals, the tragic fate of mutual friends who failed to surface, the looming threat of next semester’s tuition. Every now and then, Andie circles back to the grades. “You know what this means?” she says at one point. “You’re locked in for the scholarship. And you could—if you wanted—apply to the co-term. I mean, who even are you right now?”
I laugh, but I feel it, too: the giddy, unstable sense that my life just leveled up, that the girl who almost flunked out is now the girl who could go for a master’s.
“Look at you,” Andie marvels. “From hot mess to campus genius. God, I wish my parents would believe it. I’m texting my mom right now. She’s going to lose her mind.”
She holds out her phone and takes a selfie with me, which I hate, but she insists, and I don’t have the energy to resist. She posts it instantly, hashtags it “#livinglife #nerdalert #watchherglow.”
I smile despite myself. The café has settled into a late-morning lull. The barista is restocking the pastry case, the jazz has shiftedto something slower, sadder. The tarot woman is packing up her cards. For the first time all break, I feel something like actual peace.
I pull out my phone and compose a text to Liam. The words don’t come easy. I write, “Thank you for helping me become a better student. I couldn’t have done this without your guidance.” I stare at it, debating if I should add more.
Andie leans in, reading over my shoulder. “Send it,” she whispers.
I hover my finger over the button, then set the phone down.
“I will,” I say. “In a minute.”
Andie grins, then raises her cup. “To a minute,” she toasts.
We clink, and the world feels just a little less fragile.
After sending the text,I get hit with nerves. Did I come off as too needy? Too lame? But then my phone vibrates again, harder this time, as if it can sense my indecision.
The new message is from Liam. I see the notification bubble, and for a moment all the air is vacuumed out of the room. I swipe to open.
So proud of you. Can we talk seriously this week now that grades are out? Are you feeling better?
I read it twice, then a third time, as if repetition might reveal the hidden layer I know he’s tucked inside. My pulse spikes; it’s almost audible, a tap-tap-tap like a bad snare drum in my throat.
What does he mean by “talk seriously”? Is this the beginning of the end—one last, surgical incision to cut us apart, now that I’m technically not his student anymore? Or is it the other thing, the thing I don’t dare name, the possibility that this is not the end but a beginning?
