Hearts on Hold

by Charish Reid

  John stood immediately. “Hey, Dr. Reese. You look like a student.”

  She wrinkled her nose as she crossed the threshold. “Ugh, after the day I had, I don’t want to hear that,” she said, taking a seat before his desk.

  Remembering Jessi’s words, John circled his desk before sitting on the edge in front of her. Listen and read between the lines. Anticipate everything.

  “I hate today,” she said, slumping in her chair. “It started with my 8 o’clock class where only three students bothered with last night’s reading. Those three carried their classmates for an entire hour and fifteen minutes. Now I have to start making reading quizzes to scare the rest of them straight. If that weren’t enough, I’ve got to handle a lacrosse player’s helicopter parents who are concerned about his attendance. And since he’s on academic probation and waived his rights to privacy, I actually have to interact with his parents. The graduate students are losing their minds over this insane federal tax change that now taxes their stipends like it’s income, which it is most certainly not. I mean Jesus, as if graduate students aren’t already neurotic. I had to talk two different girls off the ledge.”

  Boom.

  John took it all in and remained silent.

  “So after all of that, I went home and changed into something more comfortable.” Victoria exhaled a humorless laugh. “But that’s an average day around Pembroke. I should be able to handle it on my own.”

  He reached out and took her by the hand and knelt beside her. “You could,” he said. “But you don’t have to today.”

  She gave a sad smile and brushed the backs of her fingers across his face. “Thank you for saying that, John. But I’m just venting. Not everything can be remedied with your skilled hands or tongue.”

  “I have skillful ears too.” He tried not to close his eyes in response to her soft touch. “Let’s just start at the beginning with your students. While I don’t have any teaching experience, I can say that you can’t reach everyone. Focus on those who want to be there, those who are having trouble, and let the rest go, okay?”

  Victoria nodded. “Sure.”

  “You have no reason to feel anxiety around the parents of a lacrosse player. Use your pull to join forces with his coach. If he can’t play anymore, I guarantee you he’ll get his shit together.”

  She raised a brow as her gaze slid away from his. “True. I suppose that could work.”

  “There you go,” John said, satisfied with his efforts. “Everything is manageable.”

  But something shifted in Victoria’s expression that made him doubt his words. She cleared her throat and sat up in her chair. “Do you have a final draft of the duties you’d like to give me?”

  Still balanced on the balls of his feet, John froze. There was a definite shift in the air. His lover had quickly made the switch to Professional Victoria, a throwback to their first meeting. He stared at her as he slowly straightened up to his full height. “Sure,” he said.

  “Great,” she said with a smile that wasn’t hers. “That would make me happy.”

  That would make her happy? John returned to his side of the desk and sifted through the remaining papers. He hadn’t exactly finished his cleaning task before she’d arrived and his office didn’t look any better than the other times she’d visited. As John flipped through the papers, he frowned. “Now where is that paper?” he murmured under his breath.

  It wasn’t in his multiple stacks so he checked the drawer where he last stuffed folders in. While balancing unorganized folders on his lap, John went through sheets of paper. Invoices, order forms, budgets, book lists, random reviews. No paper regarding the library internship existed in the mess. “Wait, let me check my bag,” he said. Victoria remained silent, watching him with disappointment, he was sure that’s what her eyes read. He got up and crossed the room to his coat rack and dug around the compartments of his satchel. Just a couple of picture books, a notepad, and a half-empty Gatorade bottle that he should probably throw away.

  “You can’t find it?” Victoria asked twisting in her seat.

  He scratched his head. “It’s definitely here.”

  “Do you need help?” she asked. “I can check those papers again.”

  He shook his head and moved back to the desk to check the mail tray. There was a stack of letters he still needed to open, more invoices to sort through, but no internship document. John let out a frustrated breath. “I could have sworn...” He trailed off before returning to the loose papers in his drawer. His search was now less focused and slightly more frantic. “I worked on it yesterday when Becca and I got home. I printed it out in my office.”

  “Did you?” Victoria asked, skepticism colored her voice.

  “Yes,” he said with a scowl.

  “And do you remember where you put it after you printed it off?”

  John retraced his memory. “I made a snack for Becca before her grandmother came by to pick her up. You called while I was on my way to the gym. I swung by to pick up Becca and we went home where I returned to the document. It had a couple of spelling errors that I wanted to correct...”

  “So, did you?”

  “I did and then I printed it out again, but Becca needed help with her math homework, so I left the office for that.” By the time he’d finished with that, John assumed that his day was more or less over. It was around midnight when he settled down to read a book. And then Victoria called him. John’s eyes darted upward to see her chewing on her lip. Realization dawned on her face as she read his thoughts.

  “So it’s still at your home.”

  “Most likely.”

  “Your home computer isn’t connected to this computer?” she asked, gesturing to his desk. “By the cloud or something?”

  He shook his head.

  “You didn’t email it to yourself?”

  “We wouldn’t be having this discussion if I had,” he said in a curt tone.

  Victoria rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. “I tell my students to always email papers to themselves. There are word processors that you can save in the cloud and access anywhere.”

  John rubbed his knuckles against the side of his face. He was starting to get a little hot. Her tone was patronizing as hell. “I know how the internet works, Victoria.”

  “So you were just unorganized? You didn’t have a plan?”

  John didn’t answer her right away because he crossed the room to close his office door. When he turned around, Victoria was staring at him. “Let’s try a different approach,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I made a mistake because I was busy with other things. Some of those things involved normal errands and responsibilities, while other things were more fun.”

  Her face turned a faint shade of pink.

  “I don’t regret being busy with the more fun things. But you have to cut me some slack, Victoria. A good deal of my evening was spent with you and I simply forgot.”

  Victoria’s lips pressed into a thin line as she watched him return to his desk. “Okay...”

  John couldn’t get a read on her one-word reply. “Okay?”

  “I’m sorry for distracting you.”

  He dragged in a ragged breath before saying, “I’m not asking for an apology. I’m just asking for a little patience.”

  “No, you’re right,” she said, waving him away. “I should have stuck to the schedule. We weren’t supposed to meet up yesterday and I definitely wasn’t supposed to call you for...fun at one in the morning. I set the plan and I didn’t follow it,” she finished with a resolute nod.

  “Where do you get these ideas?” John asked, his temper quickly running away from him.

  “They aren’t ideas,” she said defensively. “They’re the truth. If I promised you order, I should be able to hold up my promise.”

  This is maddening.

  “I didn’t even
want your plan, Victoria,” he said, clenching his chair’s armrests. “I wasn’t interested in four weeks of highly-orchestrated romance.”

  Her mouth fell open as her eyes widened. “What does that mean?”

  He failed to see where her confusion came from. John thought he’d made it clear when she first sashayed into his office with a day planner that he couldn’t plan fucking. He wanted something more with her. Slowly but surely, Victoria was beginning to open up to him, expressing herself and letting her librarian bun down. But the shift between last night and right now was difficult to keep up with. She was putting the mask back in place and being deliberately obtuse. “I want more from you.”

  Victoria took a deep breath and rubbed at the space between her brows. “I don’t know if I can give that to you.”

  “So, four weeks is enough for you?”

  “I don’t know. I feel like you’re putting me on the spot right now and I don’t have a—”

  “—a plan?” John interrupted. “You didn’t come prepared to a conversation about commitment?”

  She shot him a glare. “No, I didn’t. I came here today to talk about work. We’re talking about the original reason for our being together: the internship.”

  “Victoria, I don’t give three flying fucks about the internship. God knows I can email it to you tonight and everything will work out,” John said as he stood. As he walked around the desk, he fought to keep his tone in check. When he got to her chair, she sat up straighter and narrowed her eyes at him. “The work will get done because it always gets done. I’m more worried about getting involved with a woman who only wants me when it’s convenient for her. You’ve got me acting like the governess from that damn book.”

  Victoria shot up from her chair and faced him straight on. “If you felt that way, you should have said something much earlier, John.”

  They stood in direct opposition to one another, separated by anger and confusion. “I should have. But that’s difficult when I just want to be with you. When I am with you, I try to ignore how silly this whole thing is and I enjoy you.”

  “And I enjoy you,” she said in exasperation. “But I have too many things on my plate. I have a suffocating mother who insists on summoning me for parties, while my boss continually questions my competence. And then there’s you...” she trailed off with a furious shake of her head. “You distract me from my path. You’re handsome and smell like a manly forest and you fill my thoughts all the G.D. time. And no other man has made this impact on my life. There, is that what you wanted to hear?”

  I mean, it is flattering. Any man would love to hear how he’s turned a woman’s life upside down with his manly forest scent. If he weren’t so damn frustrated with her, he would have laughed and given her a kiss. But what she just admitted also gave him pause. “Are you saying this is your problem? You’re pushing your anxiety on me, which is easy to do because I’m the one with ADD. You may assume my life is in disarray, but I at least know how to keep it halfway balanced. Can you say the same?”

  Her chest was heaving in anger. “You’ve forced me and it’s failing.”

  He moved forward just slightly, his chest nearly meeting hers. “So asking you to relax is a bad thing?”

  Victoria stepped back and took a breath. “John, stop.”

  John ignored her and took another step forward. “Stop what?”

  Her shoulders slumped in resignation as she peered up at him. Her soft brown eyes rolled upward before settling on his mouth. “I want to kiss you right now.”

  “And you’re free to, honey. I told you, a long time ago, that you could have me. All of me. Can I have the same?”

  Loops of tangled braids swung from her bun as she shook her head. “This is becoming a problem.”

  “You’re thinking about this too hard,” he said, reaching out to palm her cheek. John’s heart thudded in his chest as she moved away from his touch. “How could this be a problem?”

  Victoria didn’t answer right away. She dropped her eyes and stared at the floor before shrugging. “I wasn’t thinking when we were in the stacks that night. Maybe I didn’t consider all of the risks.”

  He wanted to say that falling for someone was always risky. People fell all the time without consideration or plans, and they dealt with the consequences after they stood and brushed themselves off. How could she not see that they were falling together? How could she not understand that falling wasn’t the same as failing? “But that’s a relationship,” John eventually murmured.

  “And I might not be ready for one,” she said.

  She’s slipping away.

  “We’re already in one, Victoria.”

  Upon hearing this, she backed away from him and wiped her hands on her jeans. She was looking for a way out. The frantic look in her eyes read frightened prey animal. “I uh... I need to leave,” she breathed.

  “You don’t have to,” John said.

  “I have to keep things straight,” she said in a shaky voice. “And I can’t do that when I’m with you.”

  It crushed him to hear those words leave her mouth, but he knew they were true. He couldn’t malign her for telling the truth. “Please...”

  Victoria quickly walked to the door. “Let’s talk about this later,” she said briskly. With her back turned, he heard the sniffle and saw the discreet move to wipe her face. “I’ll call you later.”

  When she left his office, she closed the door with a barely audible click. It was emblematic of her character. Despite a sudden rush of emotions threatening to crush her, she chose to remain quiet. He could admire her stoicism to a certain point, but now seemed to be an idiotic time for her to run away from her feelings, from him. John let her go for her own self-preservation, but regretted hearing the softness of the door closing. It wasn’t a bang, but a pitiful whimper. So much for the nudge...

  Chapter Thirty

  Dear Professor Reese:

  Attached, is a full description of Student Librarian duties.

  John Donovan

  Simple and perfunctory, just the way Victoria usually liked it. But the pain in her stomach told her otherwise. He’d given her what she wanted, but he was clearly very angry. She reread the short message several times, noting the shift from “Dr. Reese” to “Professor Reese.” Even that small change was a sucker punch to the gut. There was no warmth in this message, only business.

  “Girl, you look like death warmed over in Tupperware.”

  Victoria looked up from her computer screen to find Paula standing in the doorway of her office. Between the two of them, Paula appeared to be the one who got better sleep last night. Today’s T-shirt was a tribute to Blanche Deveraux. Another editing pencil was tucked in her afro, right above her ear. Effortless cuteness was Paula’s brand. Victoria, on the other hand, was certain she looked how she felt: exhausted. “What do you want, Paula?”

  Her friend’s brow shot up in confusion. “Okay, what’s your problem?”

  Victoria yawned into her fist. “I couldn’t sleep until, I don’t know, four in the morning. I woke up late and didn’t have time to wait in line for coffee, so I’m running on empty.”

  Paula crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the door jam. “You’ve been running on empty for a decade.”

  “Let’s skip the judgement today,” Victoria said. “I need positive energy only.”

  “Alright then, I’m positive that you’re digging your own grave, kiddo. And with every shovelful, you become even more gleefully delusional. How’s that?”

  Victoria let her head fall against her desk with a groan. If she had even an ounce of Paula’s confidence or a crumb of her bombastic attitude, she’d be making fearless decisions all over the place. “Keepin’ It Real Rules?”

  “Exactly. You’re juggling the wrong balls.”

  She snorted against the surface of her desk. “Neve
r mind the other ones,” she muttered. “I’ve effectively dismissed those.”

  “Things didn’t work out with Sweatpants Viking?”

  Victoria shook her head. “I don’t think they did.”

  The quiet pause made Victoria lift her head. She expected Paula to wear the “told ya so” expression she was known for, but found sympathy instead. Paula finally stepped inside, closing the door behind her. “Are you okay?”

  She shook her head again, a lump forming in her throat. Victoria was forced to swallow it down because there was no time to deal with feelings. Not at Pembroke.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not really,” Victoria whispered. She rubbed the space between her brows and grimaced. The sudden lack of coffee was bringing on withdrawal symptoms, yet another wrinkle in her day.

  “When you do want to talk about it, we can have another wine night with Reggi,” Paula said as she ran her fingers through Victoria’s braids. Paula only mothered her when she was heading straight for a meltdown. The last semester of their master’s program had been so terrible that, more than once, Victoria had found herself in Paula’s arms, breathing through a panic attack.

  Perhaps this is not a good sign.

  “Do you want to look through Instagram hairstyles to calm you down?” Paula asked. “You like looking at natural hair tutorials.”

  Victoria nodded. “Yes, please.”

  As Paula scrolled through afro puff, cornrows, and beautiful lace-fronts, she felt her heart rate slow. Victoria relaxed her shoulders and let her mind wander. Not surprising, she drifted back to John and the scene she had escaped. She’d hurt him. She had seen as much in his eyes, the way he’d frowned in confusion. He had reached out for her and she had swiftly moved away. She’d fled.

  Becca had been at the checkout counter as she left John’s office. Victoria had hid her dread as the girl greeted her with excitement. Becca had actually hopped off her stool and hugged Victoria at the waist. It had taken Zen-level concentration to not cry in front of the girl, she rubbed her back and asked her about school instead. While Becca chattered on, Victoria bit the inside of her cheek and prayed that John would stay in his office. She was more concerned about Becca’s feelings at that moment. The young girl had already seen strife in the adult relationships around her, there was no need to add to the drama.