“Well? What do you have to say?”
“About what?” Flipping onto her back, Sky glared at the phone, not that her father could see her or had ever been discouraged by her words or frowns. He waded through her anger and tears as if her verbal lashes were passing ocean currents to be endured instead of harsh waves to be avoided. “What do you want to know now?”
“You weren’t listening, were you?”
“No, Admiral, I wasn’t.”
In the ten minutes he’d spoken, non-stop almost, crushing silence now bloomed in the distance that separated daughter from father. A distance that had nothing to do with Sky living in Buffalo and Robert in Annapolis.
“I thought you agreed to stop calling me that.”
She had. Shit. The looming darkness and her mood had Sky getting out of bed and padding through her one-bedroom loft apartment. Cool hardwood floor felt good against the heat of her bare feet. Down the hall and into the open living/dining room, she didn’t bother turning on the light. Three half wall length windows she hadn’t taken the time to cover with blinds or curtains, blessed her with the waning echoes of sunlight.
Red-and-orange rays glistened off the Niagara River, the sun a ball of descending fire mirrored in the water below her fifth-floor apartment. She would miss Maryland’s Renaissance Festival in September as well as the state’s Seafood Festival at Sandy Point State Park. Nitro Circus would return to the city of her birth in July. The Annapolis Crab Feast would go on without Sky in August unless she decided to take a long weekend and visit Robert. Her father held no fondness for crabs, but the event took place at the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, which was all the motivation he needed to make the outing an annual event. As she watched jet boats glide through the fast water and under Peace Bridge, Sky hoped, in time, this city would feel like home.
“Will absence make your heart grow fonder?”
“Why do you do that?”
“Give you an opening as long as the USS Annapolis? I don’t know. You ran away from home and me, what do you want me to say?”
“Another opening. You don’t want me to answer either of those questions. Or maybe you do. Do you want me to say your absence from my life didn’t make your heart grow fonder for me? Or do you want to hear you left me first, so my leaving you proves we have something in common other than my dead mother?”
“Yeah, I knew you had it in you. Feel better?”
No, she didn’t. Hurting her father never made Sky feel better, even though he deserved all the venom she’d once spewed.
Sky sat on the white, L-shaped sectional sofa she had the movers place under her living room windows. In the morning, sitting there made for excellent reading. The sun at her back and her day ahead of her. Now, as the sun gave way to the moon and darkness encroached, Sky felt trapped by the sureness of her past and the uncertainty of her future.
“Maybe we should stop doing this to each other.”
“If you want me out of your life, Sky, just say it.”
“Would you respect my wishes if I asked you to stop calling me and to never visit?”
“If it’s what you really want. Is it?”
“Are you responsible for my invitation to SUNY’s Summer Leadership Retreat? I didn’t apply, and my president hadn’t gotten around to completing the nomination form when I got an early acceptance letter. Do you have any idea how that could’ve happened?”
“A lie or the truth? Which will make you less angry with me?”
Damn him. When would he ever learn? When would she?
“You can’t make up for not being there when I was a kid by trying to run my adult life. It doesn’t work that way. We won’t work either if you don’t step back and give me room to breathe.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes, okay. I’ll respect whatever boundaries you put up as long as you don’t cut me out of your life and you call me once a week. I want to have a real conversation with my daughter. I want to know how your new job is going and if you met someone special. I may have been a shitty father to you, but I know I’d make one hell of a grandfather to your children.”
The man pushed even while pledging to stop his overbearing ways. Robert Ellis was hopeless, and so was Sky. No matter how incensed he made her or how deeply he’d hurt her, Sky didn’t think she could stand going back to not having him in her life.
“One call a week. That’s it until I say otherwise. The job keeps me busy, but it’s great. I don’t have time to date, so I don’t have a special someone. And that’s the closest we’ll ever get to having a conversation about my love life.”
Not that Sky had a love life, which she also had no intention of talking about with her father.
“It’s Saturday night, and you’re beautiful. Too lovely to spend a weekend inside and by yourself.”
“If I were out, we wouldn’t be having this wonderful conversation now, would we?”
“Sarcasm. You’re better than that. Now, who is the young man you don’t want to tell me about?”
“There is no young man.”
“Of course, there is. I won’t believe you if you tell me no one, in the two months you’ve been there, hasn’t asked you out for drinks or dinner.”
She disliked her father, even more, when he saw what she didn’t or wouldn’t. Next time she took a job offer, Sky would make sure to put more than a single state between her and Robert.
The notification alert on her cell prevented Sky from answering her father right away. She’d heard the beep, which meant the thing had to be… ah, on the kitchen island beside the fruit basket.
“I have another call, Robert, I have to go.”
“Robert? Well, I guess that’s better than Admiral.”
“I could call you Bob.”
“I hate that name.”
“I know.”
“Fine, Robert then. I want to meet him.”
“Meet who?”
Sky made short work of the distance between the sofa and the small, functional kitchen and to her cell. One touch brought the phone to life. Sure enough, she had a text message.
“The man who’s calling you at eight-thirty on a Saturday night.”
Not a call but definitely a man. Her house phone slipped from her hand, Sky’s attention riveted to the text message from the walking temptation that was Dr. Malcolm Styles.
16% of people met their spouse at work. The celestial sphere, a dome under which the sun, moon, and stars dance and sing in cosmic harmony, is an astrological phenomenon eclipsed only by the limitations of our vision and the gravity of our fears.
The African American Studies professor had a way with words. Perhaps he should’ve chosen the field of English or astronomy because no one, other than astronomers, referred to the sky as a celestial sphere. Men were forever using sky idioms with her, some for seduction, others for humor, but all with the goal of appearing unique and clever.
In her thirty-five years, no one had weaved such a creative and thoughtful sentiment about her nature name. But what had Sky forgetting her father on the other phone and taking a seat on a barstool at the island and rereading the message were the man’s arrogance and insight.
limitations of our vision and the gravity of our fears
Dr. Styles didn’t know Sky well enough to make such bold statements. Yet he had, which angered and intrigued her to the point of shooting off a reply text.
You have my number for school-related purposes only. Our next scheduled committee meeting is in two weeks. Be on time.
Before sending the text, Sky searched the net. It didn’t take her long to settle on the right article. She pasted the link to the message and sent the text to Dr. Styles.
A grin played about her lips when she picked up the phone. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to—”
“What’s his name?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“So, there is someone. I knew it.”
“No, there isn’t.”
> Her cell beeped again, and Sky’s smile returned.
25 Office Romances Gone Horribly, Terribly Wrong, really? I gave you stats, and you send me BuzzFeed Community News. Try again, Dr. Ellis.
He ended his message with another emoticon. This one was a chocolate piece of candy with red filling spilling out into a heart design. The image was sweet, the sender sappy.
Sky’s smile grew, and her quiet Saturday reading EBC’s Strategic Plan for Diversity didn’t seem so dull.
“I’ll call you around this time next week, and we’ll talk.”
“About him and for a half hour.”
“About my job, your health, and for fifteen minutes.”
“Ten minutes and you accept the invitation to the retreat.”
Sky had thrown Robert’s guilt gifts back in his face many times. This gift, however, she’d grabbed with both hands. The opportunity for networking and skill building were too good to allow pride to stand in her way. Sky had no intention of not going, but she would never admit that to her father.
“Make this the last time. Promise me.”
“I promise. No more interfering in your life. Personal or professional.”
Sky wanted to believe him, wanted to, for once, trust her father to not be exactly what he was—a selfish ass who put his needs and wants before everyone else’s.
“Thank you. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, sweetheart.”
After a phone call with her father, Sky would normally grab a bottle of wine, a plate of cheese and a bowl of popcorn, then find the bloodiest movie on cable to watch. If she couldn’t disembowel Robert Ellis, then she could enjoy senseless violence. Tonight, however, she had a much better alternative to a gore fest.
Snatching up her cell, she walked to the bedroom and jumped on her bed. The good professor had sent her another sappy emoticon. Two cacti, of all things, embracing with huge smiles on their faces.
Sky raised Malcolm’s sappy sticker with an upside-down emoticon with blood running from his eyes.
That’s sick. You don’t have a romantic bone in your body. We’ll have to work on that.
Romance is overrated.
For long minutes, Malcolm didn’t respond, but when he did it was with a single image. A pic of him holding a red rose between his plump and very kissable lips.
Damn. The summer retreat couldn’t come soon enough for Sky. If she had to spend any more time around Dr. Malcolm Styles, her rule against dating in the workplace might die a painful death at the twin blades of lust and loneliness.
2
President Hicks would like the Diversity Progress Committee’s final report before the last day of exams, which is May twenty-third. Due to leadership changes in the committee, that deadline is an extended one for us only. Every other standing committee’s report is due a week earlier. If possible, I’d like to meet the same deadline as everyone else.”
Half of the fifteen people who sat around the conference table in the suite of the Office of Diversity & Inclusion grumbled, others lowered their eyes and the rest, like Malcolm, did or said nothing to give away their feelings about Sky’s statement. The woman wouldn’t win fans or friends this way, not with her proposal. No one liked more work, especially at the end of the school year.
She steepled long, thin fingers and didn’t utter another word until the grousing stopped and she had everyone’s attention. Andrew Parker, Chief of Public Safety and Sarah Gordon, Director of International Programs, sighed with meaning before finally shutting up.
Malcolm hid a smile. Andy and Sarah had given the last chair of the committee hell. Being a devil’s advocate to encourage more and better ideas and approaches was one thing, but complaining for the sake of complaining helped no one, least of all students. For many reasons, some valid, others not, the committee achieved little the last five years. Hell, the last decade. From the look of the new committee chair, Dr. Ellis aimed to change that sad fact.
“Over the last month, we’ve gathered student cultural proficiency survey results. We need to analyze the data and make recommendations to the senior staff for improving diversity and equity. I anticipate a two-page report, three at most. It’s now late April, by the second week of May I’d like to have a final report ready to send to President Hicks.”
“But that’s earlier than the normal deadline.”
“That’s the point, Chief Parker. If we want the work we do in this committee to be taken seriously by students, faculty and administrators, and the community, then we must begin with meeting the same deadline as every other committee. Right now, the bar for our work is embarrassingly low. I don’t like what I’ve heard when I’ve walked the campus and spoken with different constituent groups, especially students.”
Sky may have a fondness for dark colors, like the black business blouse and skirt she wore today, but the woman burned hot with passion for equity and equality. Hair, in a natural wavy afro that fell to her shoulders, Sky’s nose flared when she spoke, eyes sparkled with intensity, and her tone didn’t so much as challenge as it did inspire one to moral action.
She nodded to the two student representatives on the committee, a senior and a junior, both female, one African American and the other Korean. “Everything we do is for them. When our students leave EBC, what do we want them to take away? What will they say about their time with us? More, will we feel proud and humbled by the answers to those two questions or embarrassed and ashamed?”
“Dr. Ellis,” Chief Parker began, his dark-blue eyes casting around the conference table before settling back on Sky, “we’re here because we want to be here. We’re here because we care.”
“I know.”
“Yeah, I think maybe you do. But we’re also not used to…” Chief Parker waved his hands in the air as if the action would help him catch the right words to finish his sentence.
“Expectations?” Sky supplied.
Chief Parker snapped his fingers. “Bingo. Look, this is only our fourth meeting with you as chair. Before that, well, best leave the past in the past. Anyway, you’re going a hundred while we’re still in park. Slow down so we can catch up.”
“Speak for yourself. It’s time you got off the shoulder of the road, Andy, and joined the flow of traffic.” Dr. Elena Mosby, Vice President for Student Life and Dean of Students, spoke from the opposite end of the rectangular table from Sky. “We have a little over twenty thousand undergraduate students enrolled at EBC, twenty-eight percent of whom are students of color. Yet ninety-five percent of your officers are white.”
“When was the last time you hired a diverse candidate, Elena? Don’t throw rocks.”
Malcolm thought Sky would interject and stop the argument before it escalated, but she didn’t. Parker and Mosby kept going, then Gordon joined in, unhelpful and leveling her own accusations of inequitable practices from hiring to instruction and assessment.
All the while, Sky watched them with brownish-green eyes of calm steel. Malcolm wondered at her cool exterior almost as much as he wanted to break through her wall to the woman who’d surprised the hell out of him by returning his romantic, flirty texts with sarcastic replies that kept him at Angie’s house longer than he’d intended. When Malcolm had snatched a rose from the vase, put it in his mouth and snapped off a few pics, Angie had rolled her eyes, snorted, and then left the living room.
Pressing his luck, he’d texted Sky the next day. Thirty minutes later, she’d replied with, EBC has a sexual harassment policy. I’ve read it. I suggest you do the same.
He’d ignored the jibe about the sexual harassment policy and came back with, I’ve read EBC’s policy on dating between coworkers. Have you?
Section three of the relationship policy addressed romantic relationships at work. While the college would prefer employees to not become romantically involved with each other, especially when the working relationship was that of superior and subordinate, EBC didn’t forbid such relationships. It was, however, policy for the dating employees to disclose thei
r relationship to the next level of administrator or to Employee Relations.
Considering how private Sky was, Malcolm couldn’t imagine her putting herself in a situation where she’d have to reveal any aspect of her personal life to a third party.
Malcolm, who’d arrived fifteen minutes early to the meeting so he could snag a seat next to Sky, leaned in and whispered, “How long do you plan on letting this foolishness go on?”
Damn but the woman smelled good. Rose and patchouli clung to Sky’s hair and skin the way Malcolm’s eyes couldn’t look away when she shifted her cool, beautiful orbs to him.
“From their conflict, I have a half page of recommendations. Actionable items that, with a bit of wordsmithing, can be added to our committee report. I don’t prefer this processing method, and I will certainly not endorse its continual use, but it’s a start.”
“You’re an only child, aren’t you?”
She paused, blinked, and then stared at him as if Malcolm had asked her the nuclear equation for fission. “Not exactly.”
He had no idea what her response meant, but her body language, which had been open and inviting, slammed shut. Nothing in Sky’s facial expression changed, though, not even the eyes that watched him for a reaction to her answer before turning away from Malcolm.
“Mr. Parker and Drs. Mosby and Gordon, thank you for sharing so many excellent recommendations.”
The argument, which had waned the longer Sky let it go on, stopped altogether with her statement of appreciation.
“Each of you addressed a different but important concern raised by the student survey results. Thank you for taking the time to review the data before today’s meeting.”
Seduction in a Suit: An Office Romance Collection Page 42