The flush in her cheeks told me she didn’t mind.
When I took my own turn in the cage, I caught her watching me with that same flush of awareness, biting her lip and running her eyes like a physical caress over my form.
“You really liked checking out my form,” I told her, waggling my brows.
“I’m sure that’s all it was,” she said, choking back a laugh. “I was just innocently checking out your form.”
“There was nothing innocent about it, smalls. You were hot for my body.”
“Hmm. And how long was it before we sealed that deal, out of curiosity?”
“Four fucking months.” I remembered those four months and the blue balls that memorialized them well.
Birdie laughed outright. “Should I apologize for making you work for it?”
We had just arrived at the math building, and I stopped just outside the door, my hand on the handle and my eyes direct on Birdie’s. “Never.” The air was charged between us as I remembered, and she imagined. She looked away and I opened the door.
“Why’d you decide to teach?” Birdie asked as we entered.
The humongous brick building housed both my classroom and my office. I led the way to my classroom first, glancing back at her question.
“I was inspired by a high school teacher,” I answered, inserting my key into the lock and swinging the door open.
My classes were held in a first floor amphitheater-style room, with rows of tiny desks ascending from a dais in the front with a tech podium and desk. I had found it strange, at first, to stand in the center of a group of students as a professor. Only last year I’d been part of that audience when I wasn’t serving as a TA, finishing up my last couple of grad classes.
It quickly became completely normal, though. I’d wanted to teach since I was in high school, when the trig teacher I’d been assigned to had shown me that I could actually do math, and a switch had flipped in my brain.
I jogged down the steps to my classroom desk and opened the drawer, shuffling around for the flash drive I needed to make modifications to for tomorrow’s class. Birdie waited on the uppermost step, looking around curiously.
“I struggled with math for years and had all but given up on ever actually learning anything. I figured I just didn’t have a mathematical brain, but instead just had possessed physical or kinesthetic intelligence. That’s why I was such a good ball player,” I told Birdie now, shrugging. My voice echoed in the empty room.
“Like how good?”
“Good enough to have done something with it if that’s what I wanted.” Finding what I needed, I closed and locked the drawer and climbed the steps to Birdie.
“You could have gone pro?”
I kept forgetting she didn’t know any of this stuff. The history between us. The things that made us who we were.
“I could have,” I said. I placed a hand on the small of her back and led her from the room, closing and locking up behind me. “But I knew I’d be an even better teacher than I would an athlete, because I’d struggled. A teacher, Mr. Bo, opened my eyes to the possibilities.” I directed her down the hall. “My office is this way.”
I had an ulterior motive for bringing her to my office. When I opened the door, would the memory of the night of the accident come rushing back? I wasn’t sure, if I was honest with myself, whether I wanted that to happen or not. But then again, it could be the best thing for us. Get us over this hill we seemed to have stalled on. Steeling myself, I opened the door and motioned her inside. I watched her expression closely for something to indicate how she was feeling, but her face was as diffident as it had been since she had awakened. I walked past her and started combing the bookcase for the text I needed.
“How?”
“Huh?”
“You said he opened your eyes. How did that happen?”
“Oh. Sorry, I lost my train of thought. I was complaining one day. I think I’d gotten a crap grade on an assignment because I didn’t show the right steps or something. He told me that was a load of horseshit, and I actually had one of the most mathematically-inclined brains he’d taught in recent years.”
I remembered his words, stern, with no room for argument. Just because you don’t solve a problem the same way everyone else does, doesn’t mean you don’t get it. You’re getting it on an entirely different level.
“And you wanted to make sure that no one else struggled in the same way.”
“Pretty much. I mean, it’s a little difficult by the time they get to college. But I can hopefully have some impact, you know?”
She was looking at me instead of around at the office, and there was a softness in her gaze I hadn’t seen in a while. “Yeah. I know.”
“Anyway.” I located the book I was looking for and turned back to her. “This is my office.”
“Where the magic happens?”
I laughed, a bit uneasily. “If that’s what you call grading, phone calls, and meetings with…various people.”
She looked then, studying the solid wood shelves behind the desk, the small window hidden with blinds, the metal filing cabinets in the corner by the door. Her eyes fell on the desk and she walked closer, leaning her weight on it.
“Have I been here before? There’s something…” She tapped her temple with her forefinger. “…niggling.”
“You have, plenty of times.” I smoothed a hand across the surface of the desk. “You helped me christen the place when I got the job.”
Her cheeks pinkened. “We had sex on this desk.”
“We had very good sex on this desk.”
“Hmmm.” She boosted herself up to sit on it and I walked around its expanse to ease onto my hip beside her. “Have you ever had sex with a student?”
“Jesus, Birdie! Of course, not!”
“It was just a question. You’re very good-looking. I can imagine plenty of your female students being hot for teacher.”
I wasn’t amused. Her observations were hitting too close and I could barely spit out a sentence that made sense. My brain was spinning in the opposite direction as part of me tried to decide if I should just tell her. “I just got this job this summer. We’ve been together since January. I wouldn’t cheat on you.”
“Hey.” Birdie touched my knee, the warmth of her palm a brand through my gray dress slacks. “I’m sorry. Obviously, I hit a nerve.”
I stood and her hand fell away. “Forget it. Let’s just go.”
I walked away, trying to ignore the feeling I was leaving something behind.
“Oh, what we could be
if we stopped
carrying the remains
of who we were.”
Tyler Knott Gregson
November 21 │Birdie
“BIRDIE, YOU HAVE COMPANY!”
Mom’s voice rose upstairs, where I’d been lying down and napping. This pregnancy exhaustion had grown to epic proportions and I could not keep my eyes open at certain points of the day. It was good that I wasn’t working at the moment, because there was no way I’d be able to hold a job. I’d look for a job a bit later when I was nearly past the first trimester.