Professional Development (Benchmarks)

by Kate Canterbary

  That was what arguing with Tara felt like. The reasonable solution was retracing my steps and sliding my hands along the walls until I found an exit, but I always opted for screaming myself hoarse or flailing on the cold dirt floor.

  I never took the smart route with her. When we'd first started working together, every conversation was a basement nightmare. It was still a nightmare but now it often came with a side of evil entertainment. She made it really damn entertaining to hate her. She showed up to every fight, took all the bait, and debated everything I dangled in front of her.

  I still didn't know how to get out of this space. At least I'd learned how to amuse myself while I flailed and screamed.

  "Why am I the problem, Tara? Is it my high expectations for teachers and students? Is it my stellar record in the classroom? Perhaps it's all the parents who thank me for helping them get their kid into an elite high school. Yeah, must be it. That's the root of the problem, me excelling at my job."

  From the corner of my eye, I saw her shaking her head. "You're so great," she drawled. "You're just amazing in every way. That's the real issue. You're just overwhelmingly perfect."

  "Evidently, you have an issue with that."

  She shoved a bookmark between the pages, saying, "I have an issue with you thinking you're always right, with your refusal to consider any other point of view, with your belief the only outcomes that matter are test scores and high school admissions. I have a gigantic problem with you behaving as if I'm ruining your life by me excelling at my job."

  "You're skipping the part where I am often right and it's a waste of time to consider other perspectives," I said. I skipped the part where I acknowledged she was ruining my life.

  She threw her hands up and glared out the window. "I brought this book so we wouldn't have to talk," she said, her words just above a whisper. "You could drive, I could read, never the two shall interact. I'm trying, Drew, and you're being a psycho. If you're going to tear down my every attempt at making this work, you might as well pull over and let me out because we know how you want this to end and we know you always get your way."

  She was wrong about that. She didn't know how I wanted this to end. She thought she knew but she had no idea.

  And I didn't always get my way. Not when it mattered the most.

  Chapter Four

  Tara

  I woke up with dread in my belly. I should've been excited about this training but I couldn't get excited about anything when the prospect of unemployment loomed large on my horizon.

  There was a difference between aggressively debating meaningful points with Drew and flat-out fighting with him.

  Yesterday was a fight and it confirmed all of my suspicions. Drew intended to block me at every turn and, somehow, he was going to get away with it. He always got away with it. I didn't understand what made him so untouchable.

  I checked the time on my phone and gathered my things for the day. Thanks to all the tossing and turning, I was awake and ready to go earlier than necessary. At least it gave me time to grab some coffee before the session started in one of the hotel's large meeting spaces.

  These events always had coffee and tea available but I loathed coffee brewed in large quantities. I couldn't explain the difference between light and dark roasts if I tried. Nope, I required a make-it-just-for-me coffee.

  I couldn't remember whether there was a coffee shop in the hotel lobby. I hadn't paid much attention when we'd arrived last night.

  After hours in a confined space with Drew, the only thing I'd cared about was getting away from him. The entire situation was bad enough but after we'd stopped at a sandwich shop for a quick meal, he'd rolled his shirtsleeves up to his elbows and drove the remainder of the distance with bare forearms.

  The audacity of that fucker. Really.

  But, with respect to coffee, I knew hiking around downtown Albany was a possibility. I shrugged on my coat, hoisted my bag to my shoulder, and headed toward the door. I didn't mind leaving the hotel this morning, considering I'd be closed up in a windowless ballroom for the next eight hours and—

  —and I walked straight into Drew freakin' Larsen.

  "Oh my god, what are you doing here?" I cried, stumbling back against the door and slapping a hand to my galloping heart.

  He responded with a slow blink and a scowl that told me he wasn't concerned with the fact he'd scared ten years off my life by lurking outside my room.

  He extended his arm toward me and it was then I realized he was holding two cups of coffee. "Here."

  I took the cup and examined the order label on the side. Large almond milk latte with extra cinnamon sprinkle. My exact wintertime order. "What—how—I mean—thank you?"

  He shook his head as if my gratitude was annoying. Typical. Leave it to Drew, with his impeccably pressed trousers and dress shirt that fit like skin, to blow off the one pleasant word I said to him. If there was justice in the universe, Drew Larsen wouldn't have made clothes look this good.

  "Everything about that order sounds terrible," he said, taking off in the direction of the lobby.

  I followed but refused to match his near-sprinting strides. We had plenty of time and I required all of it to figure out how he knew how I took my coffee. "And yet you still ordered it."

  "Only because I wasn't going to risk arriving late because you require specialty coffee." Drew glanced over his shoulder and realized I was several paces behind him. He stopped, waited for me to reach him. He raised his paper cup before continuing down the hall. "Black."

  "Congratulations," I replied. "Unfortunately, the only prize for drinking bitter, boring coffee is the hollow sense of self-importance. I hope you enjoy it."

  "You could've just said thank you," he grumbled.

  "I did. It was the first thing I said."

  "No, you screamed like I was holding a decapitated head rather than a cup of nausea-inspiring coffee," he replied.

  "Perhaps I screamed because you were lurking outside my door and that shit is creepy. You could've knocked or even texted me."

  "I was waiting for you," he snapped. "I didn't want to bother you."

  "Oh, so you'd prefer to give me a heart attack first thing in the morning? How kind of you."

  "There is no winning with you," he murmured.

  "With me? You're out of your damn mind if you think I'm—"

  Drew edged into my space, his hand hovering over the small of my back but never actually touching me as he shuffled me around a corner.

  Completely unamused by this morning's antics, I leaned back against the wall and took a sip of my coffee. Cinnamony perfection. He watched me for a second, so damn perturbed by my refusal to take his bullshit seriously.

  With his hand flattened on the wall over my shoulder, he leaned down to meet my gaze, his chest nearly brushing mine. "Say thank you."

  I arched a brow. "I already did."

  "Say it and mean it."

  We stared at each other for a moment, the scents of coffee and cinnamon swirling around us.

  We hated each other, that was fact. But there were instances like these where I wondered if I understood the full spectrum of hate.

  Maybe there were corners of hate that were more than wanting someone to burst into flames or, less fatally, never be able to find a phone charger when they needed it. More than wanting to beat them at every game.

  More than any of that, maybe hate wasn't hate at all.

  "Tara," he whispered, edging even closer. At this range, I could see the flecks of gold and amber in his eyes and imagine the texture of his dark, close-cut beard. "Say it."

  "Thank you for the coffee." There were ten sarcastic, cutting jabs waiting on my tongue but I held them all back as he watched the words moving over my lips like they had shapes and forms he could distinguish from thin air. "Thank you for remembering what I like."

  "You're welcome." He stared at me with those dark eyes of his, as if he could see inside me and page through my thoughts. Except he didn't, he cou
ldn't. I didn't allow it. He saw only what he chose and only the worst of me. "We should go. I don't want to be late."

  "We're not going to be late." I glanced at the arm extended toward the wall and then back up at Drew. "But since it's important to you, why don't you back up and return to your body bubble? We're not going to be on time if we stay here all morning."

  He closed his eyes, blew out a breath, and jolted away from me like I was toxic waste. He ran his palm over his jaw and marched back to the main corridor without sparing me a second glance.

  "Come on," he called, back on his impatient bullshit. "Ten minutes early is the same as five minutes late."

  I knocked my head against the wall with a groan. This obnoxious fucker.

  Chapter Five

  Tara

  Ten minutes early, five minutes late—none of it mattered. Not when this conference kicked off with half an hour of pastries and networking—and Drew was acting strange.

  He was always strange. Anyone who started sentences with "This might be nihilistic of me, but" qualified as strange. However, this morning had the makings of a personal best for him. Creeping outside my hotel room was a solid start and now, when he could've been mingling with the other participants like an ordinary person, Drew was posted up at the coffee station. That would've been perfectly reasonable if he hadn't waggled his black venti at me in the hallway.

  At first, I thought he was simply avoiding me. Hanging out with the dark roast and heavy cream because he wanted to unload another lecture about something he knew and I didn't made sense considering this wasn't the forum for another one of our heated discussions.

  But I'd left him alone.

  The second we'd checked in for the training and received badges announcing our names and schools, I'd split to make the most of this interstitial time before the session launched.

  There were mini muffins to hoard and people to meet, none of whom were angling to get me fired. In the ten minutes since, Drew had only made it as far as the coffee station and that was very strange.

  This should've been Drew's jam. He loved being the guy who knew people, the one who had every contact in his phone.

  He liked being able to say, "Let me give Thatguy at Thatplace a call. He'll handle this in seventy-one seconds."

  From the other side of the ballroom, I watched as Drew went on fussing with sugar packets. Sugar, of all things. He'd die before he sweetened his coffee. He kept it black and bitter, same as his soul.

  Okay, that was unfair. His soul wasn't completely black—or bitter. He never let anyone forget his Ivy League pedigree but he also cared about our school and the teachers and students in undeniably massive ways. He went out of his way to celebrate their successes and support their development even if he scowled at my cookies-and-songs approach to celebration.

  His soul was only black and bitter when it turned its glare on me, which was really fucking frustrating. I was a ray of goddamn sunshine. Everyone loved me. I brought baked goods to early morning staff meetings and never missed a birthday. I was a good person, dammit. Never before had anyone regarded me with such open, detailed, absurd hostility.

  And somehow, I'd spent two years on the receiving end of that hostility without realizing until this morning that Drew Larsen was paralytically shy. I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed it until now but watching him awkward-wiggle through introductions at the coffee station made it painfully obvious.

  At this moment, he was pretending to be busy with the milk carafes—Which kind of milk is that? Half and half, amazing. Is this one full? How about I give it a shake to find out. Oh, yes, very full. Wow. Full of milk this carafe is. So full I'm unable to carry on a conversation. Lots of milk going on here, step aside, please. I must tend to inspecting this milk, thank you—to avoid the pair of women angling for his attention. They were also eye-fucking him like he was a breakfast treat they intended to share.

  Cinnamon roll for two, please.

  It was his own fault. It happened every time he wore those charcoal gray trousers with the subtle pinstripe.

  I'd caught our seventy-two-year-old school nurse checking him out the last time he'd worn them.

  If Drew noticed that kind of attention, he didn't let on. As far as I could tell, the only thing he currently noticed was his desire to avoid the shit out of talking to people.

  My arch enemy, the man who seized every opportunity to crow about Dartmouth and being the first person on staff behind Lauren six years ago, was shy.

  In a way, it made sense that I'd never noticed. Drew knew the entire staff the way I knew my siblings, and he was on a first name basis with every student's parents. Whenever new people visited our school, he entered those situations in a position of clear, comfortable authority. Giving tours and answering questions about our academic program wasn't the same kind of interaction as meeting brand-new people at an out-of-town conference.

  Suddenly, I saw his thirst to rub his fancy Dartmouth degree in my face less as a personal attack and more of a self-defense mechanism.

  It was still a personal attack but now the origin made more sense. It wasn't about me, not all the way. The King of Dartmouth was a little insecure and he covered it up by being a colossal asshole.

  Funny how that worked out sometimes.

  For no reason other than curiosity—only curiosity, not some odd desire to rescue him from another ten minutes of unstructured mingling and dairy analysis—I excused myself from the group of academic leaders from a network of independent schools and made my way toward him.

  When I reached the coffee station, I sidled up beside him and set my cup down. I popped the lid and added an unnecessary shake of cinnamon.

  He glanced over, staring at my cup while he circled a stirring stick around his. "Why? Just…why do you pervert a perfectly good beverage with powdered cinnamon?"

  "Because it's fun," I replied, my gaze locked on the cup. "A little unexpected too."

  "A pickle would be unexpected," he remarked. "Cinnamon is just a poor choice."

  I glanced at the packet of sugar clutched in his hand. I wanted to tease him about it—about everything—but more than that, I wanted to make this work between us.

  I wanted to stop meeting him at his level with all the taunts and harsh criticisms and one-ups.

  I wanted to channel my energy into decorating my little apartment for Christmas and thinking up the perfect gifts for my friends and family rather than updating my résumé.

  I wanted to go back to being me, that goddamn ray of sunshine I was, not the angry, competitive brat I turned into around him.

  A ray of sunshine would stay here, right beside the storm cloud until his thunder dissipated. I could do that for him. I could get him through this—and maybe then we'd be able to get through this career quicksand together because it wouldn't be Drew is the best and Tara is the worst anymore.

  The rivalry would die and I'd finally banish the image of me grabbing him by the beard and ordering him to kneel and—well, the specifics of those errant fantasies were irrelevant.

  Aside from the beard-grabbing and such, we'd be a team, sunshine and storm clouds all the way, and I'd like that. Instead of fighting over everything, we'd be able to lean on each other in ways that had nothing to do with one-upmanship or competency signaling.

  If we were a team, I wouldn't hate it when he scheduled parent-teacher conferences for my grade levels and he wouldn't grouse about me developing fun instructional skits with his teachers. We'd take all the energy we'd devoted to fighting this war and put it toward our partnership.

  "I was looking over the session topics for today and tomorrow," I started, finally glancing up at him, "and I have some ideas."

  "It's always a treat when you think for yourself, Miss Treloff."

  Not taking the bait. Not taking the bait. Not taking the—"I was thinking about how to share out this content with the staff. Since we have a few minutes now, maybe we could brainstorm some plans for disseminating information. We don't have a lot
of time to play with in terms of whole staff meetings but there is a good deal of flexibility with our grade team meetings and common planning time. I'm also seeing a lot of overlap in content that would be helpful for a few of my folks and a few of yours. We could—"

  "I've already developed dissemination plans," he interrupted, tossing the sugar back in the bin. "I'll send you my drafts. Just use that and save yourself the mental workout. You're here to listen and learn. Don't make it more complicated on yourself, Tara."

  He turned, stalked back to the table with his coffee, and taught me the most valuable lesson of the day: never give Drew Larsen the benefit of the doubt again.

  He didn't need it and he sure as hell didn't deserve it.

  Chapter Six

  Tara

  We sat side by side in our assigned seats but acted as if we didn't know each other. Every time the session called for participants to pair up or engage in an exercise, Drew and I turned in opposite directions.

  We ignored the shit out of each other. It was better than fighting but it left me with the overwhelming sense that my time would be better utilized searching for a new job.

  I could barely concentrate on the information being presented. The speaker was masterful and I was eager to share the content with my team, though I couldn't get away from the reality I might not have a team for much longer.

  By the time late afternoon rolled around and the session was nearing its close for the day, I was ready to faceplant on the bed in my hotel room and forget about Drew, even for five minutes.

  For all that I wanted the faceplant and the forgetting, the collaborative thing to do next would be debriefing the training over dinner as Lauren had instructed.