Sweetest in the Gale

by Olivia Dade

  That said, his former administration’s casual unconcern for vulnerable students, the incidental cruelties he and his late wife had tried to combat for years, had made the professional aspect of his transition easier than he’d feared. He was glad to be teaching at Marysburg High, under a principal like Tess Dunn. Proud, actually.

  His students didn’t always leave his classroom delighted, but they never left it bruised and humiliated. Or hungry, for that matter, due to Tess’s relentless advocacy on that topic.

  He wondered what Candy had looked like as a teenager. Whether she’d spent school days in pain. Whether she’d demanded better options, or simply tried to shove herself into a spot that would always be too small for her.

  Whatever her experiences in high school, the woman she’d become took up space unapologetically and did not suffer quietly. He loved that about her.

  So she probably wasn’t actively hurting right now. Still, her frame was large enough that the student seat didn’t look entirely comfortable for her.

  Easily remedied, that, as long as she didn’t get stubborn on him.

  Getting to his feet, he rolled his desk chair in her direction. “Here. Take this.”

  She didn’t argue, and it felt like victory. Especially when her smile widened, plumping her cheeks and crinkling the corners of her eyes. “Thanks. I’ve been eyeing this chair for a year now, wondering how it felt.”

  They switched places, and he watched, pleased, as she sank into the extra-wide, cushioned seat.

  His old desk chair had collapsed right before the move from Wisconsin, and his former mother-in-law had insisted on ordering him a new one as a sort of going-away present. She’d had it delivered directly to Virginia, and he’d known why as soon as he saw it.

  It was more appropriate for a CEO than a public school teacher, all tufted, plush, gleaming leather and generous lines. Incredibly comfortable. Undeniably expensive. Huge.

  It didn’t fit under his desk, of course. After a year of hard use, that leather was already scuffed and damaged. One of the casters had never quite recovered from an encounter with gum over the winter. By springtime, his students had felt comfortable enough to tease him about his fancy-man chair and inquire about the whereabouts of his butler.

  But Marianne’s mother had wanted to do something nice for him, and she had. Even though, if she’d asked his opinion, he’d have requested a mesh chair like Candy’s. Which was, of course, why she hadn’t asked.

  “This…” Candy smoothed her palm down the padded-leather length of the chair arm, her touch lingering. Caressing. “This is the most gorgeous, comfortable piece of furniture that’s ever deigned to inhabit Marysburg High. Aren’t you worried it might be stripped and sold for parts on our faculty gray market?”

  He followed the movement of her hand, swallowing over a throat as dry as chalk dust. “We had one of those at my old school, but I hadn’t seen any evidence of it here.”

  “Most exchanges are kept pretty quiet. A file cabinet for a work table. A new desk in return for sponsoring the Latin Club.” She shook her head. “That was an ill-advised agreement, by the way. Poor Magistra Anderson. Between the two of us, it wasn’t grape juice in her clay cup at the Saturnalia feast last year. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been shouting that particular Catullus poem from her dining couch.”

  He tried to imagine Magistra Anderson, nearing retirement age and seemingly frail, drunk and shouting semi-obscene poetry in a retrofitted sheet.

  Yeah, that sounded about right. Especially given the Faculty Holiday Party Incident, as his colleagues chose to refer to the event. Like any good Roman, the woman enjoyed her wine.

  But that wasn’t the point.

  “Are you saying my chair may not be safe here over the summer?” He pursed his lips. “I took it home last year, but I was hoping to leave it from now on, because that thing is a behemoth.”

  She tilted her head back against the lavishly cushioned seat, her eyes closing. A small, blissful smile teased the corners of her mouth. “Outright theft is rare, and your chair is too distinctive to offer plausible deniability. Normally, I’d say you’re fine. But now, having sat in it…”

  With her lips parted, her face soft with pleasure, Candy wasn’t simply striking.

  A reckless surge of heat incinerated his thoughts and left him tangle-tongued.

  “Now I think you’d better research how to install LoJack on a desk chair, Griff. Otherwise, it may go missing.” Her eyes opened, and her smile turned into a wide, deliciously wicked grin. “If it does, don’t check next door.”

  Despite his ever-increasing agitation, he had to respond. “Should I prepare for the My New Desk Chair Is Definitely Not Griff’s Purloined Possession Initiative?”

  “Perhaps.” Leaning the chair back, she heaved a lusty sigh. “Oh, yes. Flights of angels would definitely sing me to my rest in this seat.”

  Distracted from his own lust, he frowned at her.

  She snickered. “Rest in the most literal sense, Griff. I’m not actually going to die of excessive comfort in your desk chair.” Then she sobered and levered herself back to vertical. “Which is a terrible, awkward, tone-deaf segue, but by now, you should know not to expect better from me.”

  Whatever this conversation would contain, he’d likely prefer to avoid. But avoiding something Candy wished to discuss was much like attempting to avoid an incoming, football-field-size asteroid by dodging a few feet to the left. Ultimately pointless. Guaranteed to be loud and fiery and painful.

  So he crossed his arms over his chest and waited.

  “Thank you. For yesterday.” Resting both forearms on his desk, she tapped her cast with the fingertips of her right hand. “I’m still…”

  Her gulp shifted the shadows contouring her throat. “I’m still, um…sad.” She bit her lip, then forced herself to continue. “Guilty. Angry at myself and her. But I didn’t have nightmares last night. I didn’t wake up crying. Talking helped. So thank you.”

  She was trying so hard. Using the direct words they both avoided at all costs.

  That determination of hers could heave mountains from the flat earth.

  He inclined his head, honoring her efforts. “You’re welcome.”

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Desperate to forestall further gratitude, he jerked his chin toward her cast.

  “What are you doing?” When her dark eyebrow cocked in mute answer, he amended, “What are you attempting to accomplish with what you’re doing?”

  She glared down at her cast. “My skin itches beneath this albatross.”

  “Because you’re healing.” And thank heavens for it. “Good.”

  Now the scowl transferred to him. “I’m itching because I can’t wash under there, and I’m dirty.” More tapping, now a bit more forceful. “It’s a travesty that modern medicine hasn’t made this process less onerous.”

  Tap, tap, tap.

  She was going to damage something if she didn’t stop.

  “Candy—” he began.

  “It’s unbearable.” Her mouth sulky, she returned her attention to her forearm. “The doctor said not to use a pencil or ruler to reach the right spot, but by God, I will make this infernal itching stop somehow.”

  Tap, tap, TAP.

  He couldn’t stand it. Lunging forward, he claimed her busy fingers and lifted them away from her cast. “Stop that.”

  Her brow beetled, she promised retribution with a fulminating glower.

  But she didn’t remove her hand from his. And he didn’t let her go.

  “As you say, you can’t stick anything inside the cast, because it might break the skin and cause an infection.” He’d done his research after their night in the emergency room, to understand better what she’d be experiencing in the coming weeks. “What are your other options for dealing with the itch?”

  “Tapping.” Each syllable was crystalline and distinct, etched with ire.

  Nevertheless, her hand didn’t so much as twitch in his, while he was
suddenly floundering. For words, for purchase, as her spike-lashed stare and long-fingered grip dragged him to sea.

  Eyes locked to his, she swayed closer. Closer still.

  Her lips were parted again, full and soft, pink as the tide of color washing onto her round cheeks. Within his grip, her hand turned. Clasped his.

  The slide of flesh against flesh, his fingers spearing through hers, opening them wide, all shadowed clefts and damp warmth…

  The metaphor might be earthy and unbefitting, but it turned him hard.

  “What else?” he whispered.

  He’d tried for assurance, but instead produced the desperate gasp of a man sinking beneath the waves. It would be humiliating, if his mind could acknowledge anything but her.

  “I can…” Her glare had metamorphosed into a different sort of heat, and her nostrils narrowed in a deep, deep inhalation. “I can blow cool air from a hair dryer around the cast’s edges.”

  His eyelids had turned heavy. So heavy.

  “No hair dryer here.”

  Slowly, she shook her head. “No.”

  Her lips puckered as she formed the word.

  When he placed her hand back on his desk, her chin dropped to her chest. Only to snap upward again when he claimed her other hand instead.

  He carefully, slowly sank his fingers between hers a second time. The cast covered most of her palm and crossed between her thumb and forefinger, but everything else was bare. Vulnerable. His.

  He lifted their clasped hands. Rested them against his bristly cheek.

  Then he blew into the edge of her cast. Cool air, where she couldn’t reach. Relief for her itch as his became agony. Again. Again.

  Her hand trembled against his, and he rubbed his beard against that tangle of interlaced fingers. Abraded her skin to see the bob of her long, pale throat as she swallowed in silence.

  “Better?” A murmured word against her thumb.

  He could take the pad of that thumb between his teeth so easily.

  Silently, she shook her head and rolled his chair closer, until her skirt brushed against his pants. Closer, until his knee was between hers, pinning that skirt tight to her long thighs.

  He blew again, cool air against hot skin, and they both shook.

  “It still itches.”

  She’d whispered that, but he read it in the movements of her lips.

  “Make it better, Griff,” she said.

  Her cheek was fiery beneath his stroking knuckles, her hair soft in his fist, her mouth plush and wide and entirely hers. Quintessentially Candy’s. Not quiescent or accepting under his own mouth, not even from the first moment, but full of demand and passion and obvious, heartbreaking caring.

  He sucked on her tongue, swallowed her moan, and it was just like her. Exactly like her.

  Unexpectedly sweet. Irresistible.

  There was no mistaking her for another. No doubt in his mind whose lips he’d claimed, whose breath filled his straining lungs, whose whimper of need drew his open mouth over her stubborn jaw and down that fragrant throat in hungry, wet kisses.

  And in the end, that was what made him stop.

  His hand splayed and gliding over the silky cotton of her blouse, an inch away from the swell of her breast, he froze, arrested by sudden realization.

  He’d done it again. Touched her without thought, without conscious intent.

  Candy. Clearly, unmistakably Candy. Not Marianne.

  For these past minutes, Marianne might never have existed at all, except as a sweet memory stored in the dimmest recesses of his lust-clouded mind.

  His wife.

  He’d forgotten his wife.

  And only a careless, selfish man touched without thought, without understanding his own intentions. Without making sure those intentions wouldn’t hurt the woman beneath his hands.

  Unsteady and flushed and embarrassingly erect, he heaved himself away from Candy. As she stared up at him in silence from his desk chair, hugging herself awkwardly, he stumbled over a brief apology, and then—

  His own damn classroom. The kiss he’d initiated. The woman he desired.

  He fled them all.

  Six

  It was the choice of a coward, Griff knew.

  Instead of discussing his ignominious flight from his own classroom face-to-face with Candy, or even calling her to discuss it over the phone, he e-mailed her that night instead.

  In writing, sometimes the directness that eluded him in conversation became possible. And in such an important matter, with such an important person, he needed plain words and clarity more than ever.

  His hand on the mouse shook as he clicked send.

  FROM: griffin.conover@qc.k12.va.us

  TO: candice.albright@qc.k12.va.us

  SUBJECT: An explanation and apology

  Candy, I owe you an avalanche of apologies, but please let me start with this one, inadequate though it may be. I will try to be as direct as I can, because I owe that to both of us, and because I need to learn. Finally, I need to learn.

  I like you. I admire you. I care about you. I want you.

  That’s why I kissed you. No other reason.

  I’m sorry if I caused you to doubt that. I’m sorry I left so abruptly. I’m sorry if I hurt you. I’m sorry I started us down a path I couldn’t explore to its end, wholeheartedly and with clear purpose. I didn’t mean to mislead you, although we both know that’s the facile excuse of a scoundrel. It’s also—at least in this case—true.

  I ran because—

  Fuck, this is hard.

  I ran because my feelings for you still sometimes seem like a betrayal of Marianne, our marriage, my love for her, and her love for me.

  My desire and affection for you are mixed with shame, and that’s not right. For either of us. I don’t intend to become emotionally or physically intimate with you again until that shame is gone, and I can stand before you a man free and eager to offer what you need and what I want to give.

  In the meantime, we’re still colleagues. If you’re willing, we will continue to work together on the poetry initiative, although I’d prefer to do as much of the planning as possible via e-mail. Unless you wish it, I don’t intend to avoid you, because you’re my friend. If you need help with anything—anything—please call on me. Extended interludes alone together can’t happen, however, since I find you—

  Well, I find you irresistible. Even when I should resist.

  I need time, Candy. I don’t know how long. It may be a week. It may be a year. It may be the rest of my life.

  Since I know we speak the same language, I’ll allow myself this: Of the three things I need to do to live in this world, I’ve accomplished two. Not the third. Not quite yet, even though I know the time has come.

  Whatever happens next, please believe I regret any harm I’ve caused you, and I wish you only good things. You deserve time and attention and understanding and effort and affection.

  You deserve love, Candy. Full-throated, devoted love.

  I hope I can offer that someday.

  If you’re not still waiting if and when I’m ready, I’ll understand. I want your happiness, and you are not a toy for me to stow away until I’m free to play.

  (Not that I consider anything we’ve said or done together a game. Let me be clear about that.)

  I’m so sorry.

  Griff

  No novel, no television show, no amount of internet noodling could hold his attention.

  It flowed like a river to sea, inexorably, back to Candy. Always. Back to his mouth on her flesh in his classroom, and back to an e-mailed response that might come at any moment or never, depending on how she’d reacted to his flight that afternoon and his subsequent message.

  Leaning back on his couch, he propped an ankle on his knee and jiggled his leg. Tunneled his fingers through his hair, which was beginning to resemble straw at the ends. Stared in the general direction of the television, where—because of the popularity of the Gods of the Gates series—historians were di
scussing the Aeneid.

  Specifically, Dido. How, left behind by the man she loved, she stabbed herself atop a funeral pyre and burned to ash as Aeneas’s fleet sailed from her harbor.

  Candy was no Dido. With or without a lover, heartbroken or not, she’d forge ahead, stalwart and determined. She was the rightful hero of an epic poem, rather than a secondary character or simple love interest.

  Griff, though…hmmm.

  He’d never considered harming himself. Not directly. But whether he resembled the queen of Carthage in other discomfiting ways—

  Well, that was less clear to him.

  Or maybe it was clear, and he simply didn’t want to acknowledge the clarity.

  Candy’s e-mail arrived before the end of the documentary, and relief mingled with renewed terror as he clicked on the message.

  But he should have known, really. Terror had no place and held no purpose in his relationship with her.

  A heart as big as the skies, he’d said, and here lay further proof.

  FROM: candice.albright@qc.k12.va.us

  TO: griffin.conover@qc.k12.va.us

  SUBJECT: Re: An explanation and apology

  Griff, you made me no promises, and you owe me no apologies. Any hurt I may feel, I’m experiencing because of my own choices. Thank you for caring about my feelings, though, and thank you for caring about me. Thank you for making your position clear.

  Now let me do the same.

  I understand that you may not be ready for a relationship in the immediate future, or conceivably ever, and I don’t want to force myself upon you or make your life more difficult than it already is. I also don’t want to interfere with your grieving and/or recovery processes.

  Any boundaries you specify, I promise to honor. As you know, I am a woman of my word.

  If you’d prefer to cease non-professional contact entirely, I will accept that too. In case that’s your preference, let me say this now:

  I like you. I admire you. I care about you. I want you.

  That’s why I kissed you. No other reason.