Office Hours

by Katrina Jackson

  Deja couldn’t hear her from so far away, but she could guess what that conversation was like and she slumped down in her chair, feeling suddenly like everyone looking at her and Alejandro.

  ***

  “I hate this,” Deja said, watching her friends whisper to each other across the room as they shared a tin of what looked like a batch of Toni’s oatmeal cookies. Deja’s favorite.

  “I know,” Alejandro whispered to her. “No one really cares about the directory, but once a year, we really have to have an entire discussion about it and nothing even changes.”

  Deja turned to him and squinted in confusion. “Huh?”

  He smiled at her, also confused, and then gestured at the podium at the front of the auditorium.

  Deja followed the direction of his hand and frowned. She rolled her eyes when she saw Gerald Lehman at the podium. Every year, he showed up to ask the Faculty Senate to get rid of the faculty and student directories in a long meandering speech about privacy issues, and every year, someone would explain how it was an emergency response issue or something, and he would get voted down. As soon as Deja saw his name on the schedule the Senate secretary had emailed two days ago, she’d blocked it out of her brain. Too boring.

  “Not him,” she said, turning back to her friends. “Them.”

  It was Alejandro’s turn to follow her direction. “What’s wrong?”

  She looked at him and rolled her eyes again. “They’re over there with cookies, and I’m over here, without cookies.”

  His shoulders relaxed, and he smiled. “I’ve got a granola bar in my bag.”

  She wanted to roll her eyes one more time, but his smile was adorable and so earnest that it made her heart clench. “We can share it,” she said.

  “Deal.” She watched as he bent over to rummage in his bag.

  Her phone lit up with a text message. It was Toni. Of course.

  CUTE. A. F.

  Deja’s face warmed, and she flipped her phone screen down on the table. She lifted her head to glare at her friends until Alejandro bumped into her arm.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

  She sighed. “No granola bar?”

  He slid a granola bar onto the table. “Granola bar is the good news.”

  “Then what’s the bad news? Is Gerald going to bust out another PowerPoint?”

  “That would be the worst news. No, the bad news is that it’s broken,” he said, shaking the package a few times to illustrate his point. He cringed at her. “Sorry.”

  She reached for the package and the tips of the fingers touched. She carefully opened the wrapper, splitting it down the foiled seam and then placed it on the table between them. “It’s easier to share this way,” she whispered, tilting her head so no one – Alejandro, Toni and Marie, especially – could see her smile.

  Alejandro leaned back in his chair, raised his eyebrows at her, and leaned over to press his arm against hers. “Look at you, being optimistic,” he teased. Deja laughed and then bit her lips shut. Alejandro bent over and whispered directly into her ear. “I like the way this looks on you.”

  She frowned and dropped her chin to her chest to look at her boring gray sweater and blue jeans.

  “Happiness,” he corrected. “I’ve always loved the way you smile.”

  Deja sucked her bottom lip into her mouth as he pulled back and smiled down at her, his own bottom lip clenched between his teeth.

  Deja heard her phone vibrate against the table, but she ignored it. Unfortunately, they couldn’t ignore Alejandro’s friend Mike who leaned into his other side.

  “Is that a communal granola bar?” he asked, leaning into Alejandro’s side.

  “No. Bring your own snacks,” he said, pushing the granola bar closer to Deja. “I tell you that every month.”

  Deja grabbed a shard of the granola and popped it into her mouth. She reached for her cup of coffee and then plucked up the nerve to check her phone again, not surprised to see another text message, this one from Marie.

  GET A ROOM! ;)

  11.

  Saturday

  Alejandro didn’t believe in working through the weekends. Ever.

  He’d done enough of that during graduate school to know that it wasn’t worth it; his brain needed time to reset. He’d had to bend that rule every now and then while he was on the tenure track, but now that he had job security, he never broke that embargo, he finished all of his grading and class prep before he left campus on Friday afternoon, or it got pushed to Monday.

  But then he started dating Deja.

  She was still in the thick of the journey to tenure, and she was a classic case of all the worst parts of that endeavor. She worked too hard and only rested when she crashed. She sometimes fell asleep while they were on the phone. She struggled to differentiate between the most important items on her checklist for tenure and the things that felt pressing because they were immediate. She was always tired and rushing around campus. She never just let herself breathe. It was hard to watch when he hadn’t really known her and had only suspected that she was running herself ragged, like most junior faculty often do, but seeing it up close was more difficult by the day.

  He remembered what the tenure track felt like — the insecurity, the anxiety, the manic spurts of writing for hours or days at a time and then months where even getting a paragraph on the page felt like a feat. Alejandro wanted to save Deja from making the mistakes he had or that he’d witnessed, but he also didn’t want to step on her boundaries when their relationship was so fragile and new. Besides, Deja clearly had a hard time prioritizing the things that made her happy, including him. There were things she wanted to do and see and experience, but she avoided them all because she didn’t have time - she didn’t make time – and he was secretly worried that if he pushed her too hard, she’d stop making any time for him.

  So, he worked on weekends.

  He pulled his car into the first parking space he saw. He checked his hair in the rearview mirror and made sure he looked casual, not too thirsty, and ready to work. He felt the exact opposite of all that, but if he showed up looking like he wanted to throw Deja over his shoulders and go back to his house to watch movies or spend the rest of the day in bed, he knew she’d clam up.

  When he was satisfied that he looked less needy for her attention than he felt, he stood from his car, grabbed his satchel from the backseat, which was much lighter than normal since he’d left his laptop at home. He didn’t want to do any real work so he’d thrown a book he needed to read for a graduate class he was teaching next semester figuring he could read unhurriedly while Deja worked. He just wanted to spend a little time with Deja before the semester ended and he flew home for Christmas and the new year and they were separated for over a month.

  As he walked toward his favorite coffee shop, he realized it was much colder out than he’d thought. He dug his hat from his bag and pulled it down over his ears, frowning at having to ruin his hair just to stay warm. He walked faster and hoped he could minimize the damage. When he rounded the corner onto Main Street, he smiled at Deja’s back. He jogged a few steps and tapped on her right shoulder. She jumped and turned to him with bunched, angry eyebrows that relaxed once she saw him. And then she smiled.

  It was pathetic how happy it made him to see her entire mood change for him.

  “It’s cold,” she whined.

  “I know. Sorry, I didn’t think it’d be this bad when I suggested meeting up.”

  “This is why I stay home,” she said with a laugh.

  God, what he wouldn’t have given to be at the stage in their relationship where they could spend the weekend just hanging out in one of their warm apartments. If they had been, he’d have invited her over and not let her leave his bed until she had to teach her first class on Monday, but they weren’t. More importantly, when he’d suggested they spend the weekend together, Deja had immediately started to list all the grading she had to get through before exam week, so, h
e’d pivoted quickly and suggested a work date.

  He pulled the front door to the small and trendy Il Café, completely out of place in Centre, but a nice option to the Starbucks where all the undergraduates congregated, especially before midterms and finals. This café was a little pricier, much more pretentious, and mostly populated by faculty and a few grad students. It was the perfect place for them to work if they had to be out although Alejandro was a little worried they might run into someone they knew, which might freak Deja out.

  “Why is this place so packed?” she asked as soon as they stepped inside and in line to order.

  They started peeling off their layers.

  “It’s always packed on Saturday.” He pulled his hat from his head.

  Deja opened her mouth and then smiled up at him. “Your hair,” she said, lifting onto her toes and reaching for him.

  Alejandro instinctively bent down and closed his eyes as she plunged her fingers into his hair to smooth it back into place. Feeling her touch, him, even in such a benign way, felt intimate, especially after a week when they’d barely seen one another off campus and on campus Deja was always very careful not to touch him. He suddenly didn’t care what his hair looked like, only that she kept touching him.

  She eventually finished fixing his hair and her fingers trailed over the outer shell of his ear, a featherlight touch.

  It took all his self-control not to physically shiver under her touch or kiss her. But he opened his eyes slowly and didn’t hide the desire he felt from her. He bit his lip and let Deja see just how much he wanted her, even if he wouldn’t act on it just yet.

  Her eyelashes fluttered and her lips parted on a soft pant.

  “Better?” he whispered.

  The left side of her mouth lifted into a grin, and she nodded as her eyes dipped to his mouth.

  His hands clenched at his sides.

  Just then, the café’s front door opened. Deja pulled her hand from him and the cold air from the open door only accentuated the loss.

  “You want to go find a table?” he said, straightening. “I’ll get your drink.”

  “You don’t have to,” she said, eyes darting side to side and her hands clutched over her stomach.

  He sighed and smiled at her calmly, hoping it would put her at ease. “This again?”

  “I don’t want anyone to think, you know…”

  “That I might buy a friend a cup of coffee?”

  “You know what I mean,” she said.

  “I do, and I think you’re worried about nothing. But if you’re really worried about people noticing that we’re…you know,” he said with lifted eyebrows and a week. She rolled her eyes but chuckled lightly. “Then maybe you shouldn’t run your fingers through my hair like that. Very unprofessional.”

  She licked her lips.

  “Or look at me like that,” he added.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you want me to kiss you.”

  She licked her lips again. “I’ll go find a table,” she said and then rushed away.

  Alejandro smiled and watched her walk away.

  ***

  For the past fifteen minutes Deja had been trying not to yawn and failing.

  “Alright,” Alejandro said, closing his book, “let’s get out of here.”

  She shook her head. “No, I can’t. I only have two more essays to read, and then I’m done,” she frowned at her laptop screen, “with that batch.”

  “Do them tomorrow,” he said.

  “I have a whole different stack of essays to start tomorrow. If I don’t finish these today, I’ll be behind.”

  Alejandro looked at her with soft, warm eyes. “Deja,” he said, and she knew she wasn’t going to love what he said next. “I know you have a schedule, and you’re terrified about falling behind, but I promise you that working yourself to exhaustion is not the way to stay on track. Isn’t that basically what you told Jerome?”

  “I know but I-”

  Alejandro shook his head. “You work too much. You need to give yourself a break.”

  Deja’s face warmed, and she slumped in her chair.

  Alejandro slid his hand across the table so his fingers could brush hers. No one would even notice they were touching if they weren’t looking, but it was enough to make Deja start to sweat. She tried to bite back a smile, but it didn’t work.

  “I wasn’t ready to be told the truth. Can I get a warning next time?” she said, trying to sound playful even though she felt so exposed; he’d inadvertently poked at a sore spot.

  She always told her advisees to do as she said, never as she did, because she knew much better than them that hers wasn’t a path to emulate. If they wanted to be happy, fulfilled adults with a good work-life balance, they needed to prioritize themselves and their needs better than Deja could. And even if they didn’t yet know they wanted to be well-adjusted adults, she wanted it for them and never let them forget it. Unfortunately, she never listened to her own advice.

  But apparently, Alejandro was prepared to step in where she couldn’t. He leaned across the table toward her. “I’ll always tell you the truth, Deja. And I’ll always want you to be nicer to yourself. You can take that as a blanket warning if like.”

  Deja’s lips hurt from trying not to laugh as hard as she wanted.

  “And until you figure out how to be nicer to yourself, you can let me take care of you sometimes,” he said, focusing on her as if there wasn’t anyone else in the crowded room. His fingers moved between hers on the table, stroking hers noticeably.

  “I let you buy me coffee,” she said.

  “Step one.”

  “What’s step two?” she whispered, hoping it was sex, or at least kissing, even though those seemed like big leaps from coffee. His eyes darted around them. She thought there was a chance she wasn’t far off, and that made her heart race.

  “Let me cook you dinner,” he offered out of the blue.

  Deja’s mouth fell open. “You cannot be this amazing.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “It’s just dinner,” he said.

  “You have no idea how terrible men are to date, do you?”

  Alejandro leaned back in his chair with a bark of laughter. Deja could see people turning to look at them out of the corner of her eyes, and it took a great deal of effort to not look away from the sight of Alejandro laughing or to snatch her hand away from his. She deserved to see and feel these things, she thought. She deserved him, didn’t she?

  “Alright, alright,” Alejandro said after a while. He wiped tears away from his eyes with his free hand and nodded. “You could be right about that.”

  “Could?” she asked and shook her head. “Am. The bar is the floor, but you’re...”

  “I’m...?”

  Deja had to bite her lips again. “Amazing,” she whispered.

  He leaned over the table toward her again. “Take a break and let me take care of you tonight,” he whispered to her.

  She knew by the way his whisper was deeper than it had been and the way his hand covered hers that he wasn’t just talking about dinner.

  She licked her lips, and he boldly licked his own as he watched.

  “Okay,” she said, turning her hand over so their palms touched.

  Alejandro sat back in his chair, the look of happiness and relief so clear on his face that it made Deja feel something she still wasn’t ready to name, but she knew that she liked it. She liked so much about every minute she spent with Alejandro.

  12.

  He and Deja decided to split up for a few hours. She needed to do a few loads of laundry, and he needed to drop some suits off at the dry cleaners before they closed. He also needed to go to the grocery store because he’d somehow thought it was a great idea to invite Deja over for dinner when just this morning, he’d opened his fridge and closed it because there wasn’t anything in there besides a few stray bottles of beer and kombucha. He also needed to call his brother, because Alejandro couldn’t cook.

  Aleja
ndro preferred to go grocery shopping between eleven at night and two in the morning on weekdays, because he was often so busy that was something the only time he could make it there and when undergrads were less likely to be buying energy drinks and frozen burritos. He never went to the grocery store in the middle of the day if he could help it, but not because it would be packed, but because if he did, he usually ran into someone from work and be unwittingly dragged into a fifty-minute-long conversation about fall enrollments; a subject he didn’t give a single fuck about.

  But for Deja, he’d take the risk.

  After the dry cleaners, he pulled into the parking lot and parked. Before he got out of his car, he put his earbuds in and called his younger brother, Angel.

  “I’m busy,” Angel said by way of a greeting.

  Alejandro rolled his eyes and hopped out of his car. “Then why did you pick up?” He grabbed his reusable grocery bags from the trunk and then headed toward the grocery store entrance.

  “To tell you I’m busy. Obviously,” Angel laughed.

  “I need your help,” Alejandro said, ignoring him.

  “I agree. There’s so much wrong with you. Where do you want to start?”

  “With dinner,” Alejandro said irritably. “I need you to tell me what to make for dinner.”

  “I’d ask if this was a joke, but this is pathetic, even for you. Make whatever the fuck you want to eat.”

  “I have a date,” Alejandro said with an annoyed sigh. He had to whisper those words just in case he passed someone he knew. He worked hard to keep his personal life away from his professional life, and even though Deja was firmly in the latter, he wanted her in the former enough to blur a few lines to make it happen, but everyone didn’t need to know that.

  “And you’re cooking? Do you not like her?”

  “Shut up, I can cook,” Alejandro exclaimed, even though they both knew that was true only in the most basic sense.