Forevermore Read online

  They made a big show of saying how much they loved it and couldn’t believe they were getting paid. I took the opportunity to escape to the bathroom while they were falling all over Willa. It was nice to get away from their constant chatter.

  A few minutes later, I headed back to my workspace. Willa was talking to the girls out in reception. “Really? Because I think calling someone a freak and a retard is cruel and offensive.”

  I stopped in the hallway. I didn’t want to eavesdrop, but as a foster kid, it was how I kept from being surprised all the time.

  “We were kidding around, Willa, come on,” Krystal said.

  “You might be able to fool your parents with your innocent act, but I know if I called you those things, you wouldn’t think I was kidding. Your feelings would be hurt.”

  “She can’t even read!” Krystal protested. “She’s, like, super dumb.”

  “That’s it,” Willa said in a chilling voice. “I’m not going to treat either of you like you’re too young to know the difference. I know you understand that what you said was hurtful, and still you said it. That’s not just a mean thing to say. It’s a mean thing to do. I don’t like mean girls.”

  “We’re not mean,” Kortney screeched. “We’re the most popular girls in school.”

  “Popularity has nothing to do with being nice. You guys are done here.”

  “No, we’re not,” Krystal talked back. “We’re only on level four, and it’s the first day.”

  “I don’t hire mean girls,” Willa told them.

  “Yeah, but, but,” Kortney stuttered.

  “Come on, Kort. Dad will do something about this,” Krystal said in that annoying know-it-all voice she had. “I thought you were cool, Willa.”

  “Krystal, look at me,” Willa paused and waited for Krystal to follow her order. “Your dad works for me. I pay his salary. If you want to whine to him about this, he’s going to hear what I have to say and he’ll believe me. If you don’t want that to happen, head on back and tell him you’re bored and don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “Whatevs!” Krystal said.

  I backtracked to the bathroom, sick to my stomach that Willa had to hear that the girls in my class thought I was dumb. I didn’t want her to have to deal with them. Maybe I could get their jobs back. It was going to be awful going back out there. Willa was going to lie to make me believe that they left on their own. Adults usually tried to soften things for kids.

  The bathroom door opened to show Willa’s face. “Liv, come to my office for a sec.”

  I followed her back to her office and heard the girls pass behind us with their dads. At least I wouldn’t be in the reception area when they left. It sounded like they were giving them the “bored” story. I didn’t blame them. I’d barf up my lunch if Briony or M heard something bad about me from Willa.

  Willa tried to look happy, but I could tell she wasn’t. Like the time her friend Des kept asking me about my mom in front of all of their friends. That was so embarrassing. M got me out of there, but not before I saw Willa’s face go red and her eyes glare at Des.

  I waited for her lie. I guess I should be thankful that there were adults in my life that would think a lie would be better than the truth if it hurt, but I didn’t like lies.

  “If someone is purposefully mean to you, you can call them on it, you know?”

  I looked up from my lap. She wasn’t sugarcoating it for me?

  “I try not to sink to their level, but I call them on it.” She looked at me, but I didn’t know what to say. “I guess that might not always work with kids, though, right?” She waited for my nod. “And I might have just made things worse for you at school, too, huh?”

  I couldn’t nod at that one. She meant well, but she just made sure I’d be cornered at school tomorrow. It was pretty cool that Willa took my side, though.

  “Well, crap.” Willa sat back, thinking.

  “It’s fine,” I tried to reassure her.

  “It’s not, but I couldn’t let those little brats stay here. Krystal’s been driving me nuts for two years ever since I hired her dad.”

  I laughed. Adults never spoke this way around me.

  “Hey, what’s going on in here?” Caleb showed up in the doorway wearing his trademark big smile. “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

  “Is someone speaking, Liv?” Willa asked me, not even looking at Caleb. “I distinctly remember saying that I don’t talk to thirteen-year-olds who are taller than I am.”

  I giggled at Willa’s comment. They were always kidding each other.

  “Aww, Willa, you love talking to me,” he replied easily.

  “Correction, I used to love talking to you until you outgrew me, punk!”

  “I can still hear you from up here,” he taunted, coming over to stand next to her. He was barely half an inch taller than Willa at a few inches over five feet. He had big feet, though, so he was probably going to grow a lot more. “Come on, Livy, Hank and Terrence are out front. Show us what you’ve been doing so we can start earning some bucks.”

  I never minded when Caleb or Briony called me Livy, just when everyone else did. They let me live with them, so they could call me anything they wanted. Plus they meant it affectionately not like they thought I was still a baby.

  I smiled at Willa and headed back out with Caleb. He and Hank were always really nice to me. He didn’t seem to mind that I was more than a year younger and a girl. He treated me like a brother would. It made me feel good to be around him. It would take my mind off of having to deal with the mean girls tomorrow.

  M / 3

  The student stared at me with eyes pleading, but they lacked sincerity. Oh, he wanted his grade changed. That was sincere enough, but his ask didn’t have the conviction of someone who understood he’d screwed up and needed a pass. He just wanted me to change his grade without having done anything to fix his case study. He thought by scheduling the appointment and coming in to see me that I would do as he asked. Some professors did that. They didn’t like denying the request or didn’t want to do the extra work to help the student get a better grade. I wasn’t like that.

  My eyes shifted to check that my office door was still open. I usually conducted these types of appointments in my classroom, but it was in use and he didn’t want to wait. They never wanted to wait when their GPA was on the line. He was graduating at the end of the term, and this paper’s C was threatening to bring his current A in the class down to a B+, which didn’t sit well with him. I rolled my chair a foot closer to the door. He wasn’t crowding me. I set up the chairs in my office specifically to keep students from crowding me, but he was pretty eager about me changing his grade.

  “See what I did here?” His finger pointed to an aesthetically pleasing section in the paper. He formatted his papers exactly how I liked them, but he’d dropped the ball on content this time. “I posited that the belt speed kept the line from maximum efficiency. I bet no one else did that, Prof.”

  Everyone else had done that. It was an operations management class. Factory output was always the first item analyzed. “It isn’t enough to state the theory. You need to prove it. You should have noted the actual speed. Then if it was increased by X amount, it would have resulted in an increase in X number of units each day.”

  “But,” he sighed and couldn’t come up with another argument, much like his lacking paper.

  “You had a project due in another class and slapped this together at the last second because you can write these things in your sleep, right?” I guessed.

  He shrugged. It was funny how college age men could become exactly like my teenage stepson when called on their crap.

  “It’s easy to let things slide in the home stretch, especially when you know a certain subject comes easy to you.” I tried not to let my tone slip into lecture mode. “Your conclusions are all correct, but you don’t have any analysis or proof to back them up.”

  “What can I do? I can’t let my grade slip in this class, P
rofessor D.”

  Now we were getting somewhere. The pleading had turned to reason, and his eyes showed his honesty. I always had extra work for anyone wanting to improve their grades. The University of Virginia was hard enough, the graduate business program one of the best. They’d done the hard work getting accepted. The least we as professors could do was help them to achieve the best grades their level of work commanded.

  I turned back to my desk and fingered through the shelves until I found the case study I always kept available for extra work. I pulled a copy from the shelf and handed it to him. “By Thursday’s class. Do a thorough job this time, and it gets added to your grade count to help minimize the effect of the C on this study.”

  His shoulders fell a bit, but he bounced back pretty quickly with a cheeky smile. “No chance you can just replace the C with the one I’ll get on this paper?”

  “No chance.” My tone was firm. My students knew they could get away with quite a bit in my class, joking around, talking over each other, talking out of turn, but I wasn’t a softie when it came to grades.

  “Thanks anyway.” He stood and headed for the open door.

  I glanced down at my laptop and checked to make sure he was the last appointment of the day. Shutting down the computer, I sorted through my lecture notes until I found the topic for tomorrow’s classes. Those were added to my bag with the laptop and I exited, pausing to lock the office.

  Several doors stood open in the hallway. My stomach clenched. In the past, I would have walked right over to the staircase without even glancing into the offices much less saying anything to anyone on my way out. These days I had to be seen making an effort for Briony’s sake. She was a well-liked faculty member on campus. At first no one understood why she’d be with me, the faculty outcast. Over the last couple of years, she’d gotten me to attend more faculty functions and people were forced to deal with me. They still considered me odd, didn’t understand Briony and me together, but no one seemed to fear me as they used to. I would be happy to go back to barely speaking to anyone, but because it would reflect poorly on Briony, I made an effort.

  The first two offices had student appointments. The professor in the third was on the phone. Only one more open office door before the staircase. Fourteen steps away. I could do this.

  Dr. Goldberg looked up as I was passing by. Tension tightened my neck and shoulders. I’d maybe spoken to this guy once at a faculty party. I knew nothing about global marketing and that was pretty much all he talked about.

  “Afternoon.” I added what I hoped was a friendly expression and nod of my head.

  “Dr. Desiderius,” he replied and looked like he wanted to say more, but my pace had taken me past his office and the stairwell door loomed in front of me.

  I tried not to take the stairs two at a time as if running from any possible encounter, but it was difficult to break old habits. Meeting someone on the stairwell was even worse than walking past an open office door. Thankfully, it was getting hotter outside and almost everyone took the elevators when it was hot outside.

  Pushing through the exit door, I felt the first wave of spring heat roll over me. The end of March shouldn’t be this warm, but it was a nice change from the frigid days we’d had in February. I checked my watch and smiled at the time. I could make a detour before I had to pick up the kids.

  Briony’s class schedule flashed in my mind. She had a venture capital overview class going right now. Was it in the i.Lab or not? No, on Mondays, she was over in the regular classrooms. That gave me just enough time.

  As I stepped onto one of the brick pathways crossing Flagler Court, my eyes caught sight of a familiar figure. Quinn, the women’s head basketball coach, was striding toward Saunders Hall. I didn’t often see her at work. If I did, it would be closer to her office at the sports complex, but occasionally she came up this way for the excellent café.

  Any normal human would go over and greet her friend. Quinn was a nice lady, married to the best friend I had. Of course, I should go over and say hello. I shouldn’t immediately want to duck back into the faculty building to ensure that she not see me. We could talk. I’d talked to her at many of her dinner parties, but she wasn’t Willa. No one in the group was Willa, and because of that, I still wasn’t comfortable striding over with the sole purpose of striking up a conversation.

  I checked my watch again. If I went to say hello I might miss my window with Briony. If I didn’t and Quinn saw me, I’d probably be teased relentlessly at the next dinner. Physical torture would be easier than enduring everyone’s attention focused on me.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I took one step in her direction. I had to become more comfortable with this. It had been three years that I’d known Briony and by extension these friends of hers. Several years that I’d known Willa and her partner, Quinn. I should be able to do this without breaking out into a sweat or counting just to get through it.

  On the fourth step, a group of students approached Quinn and surrounded her. If not for her exceptional basketball caliber height, I would have lost sight of her. Seeing that the group wasn’t going to move on quickly, I swiveled back toward Briony’s classroom. This was an acceptable diversion. I could feel good about avoiding Quinn today.

  A few students greeted me as I walked toward Briony’s classroom. I never had any problem greeting students. I stopped trying to analyze why I wasn’t a social freak with students but I was with people I’d known for years.

  At the door, I stopped and peered through the glass. Her students clumped together in the first two rows of seats. Any other professor would have had to bribe the students not to spread out in the five tier room, but Briony’s students clustered around her naturally. Most of her entrepreneurial courses were electives, which meant smaller sizes and specialized interest. Four of mine were in the core curriculum, which meant more students but many would rather be in a different class. I often envied Briony her specialty.

  With two minutes left in class, I felt okay about slipping inside. Nearly every head turned when I did. That always bothered me, but because I’d already met with this class, it wasn’t unusual for me to be here.

  “Hey, Professor D!” one of the students called out, inciting a few similar greetings.

  I smiled at them and shifted my eyes to my beautiful partner. Her blond hair had grown out a bit since I’d first met her. The long layered cut suited her as well as the shorter version I’d fallen for. After three years together, I knew every inch of her trim body, how it felt against me, in my hands, under my mouth. It looked just as good wrapped in her elegant professional dress as it did naked in our bedroom.

  “Nice of you to join us, Professor,” Briony’s voice spilled over me, soothing every frayed nerve I experienced from the walk over here. “I was just telling the class that you’ll be part of the pitch deck evaluations.”

  My eyebrows rose. It made sense to have me there, but we hadn’t talked about it first. Usually she accommodated my more reticent attitude toward new activities, but she must have orders from the dean on this one.

  “I’m sure they’ll be dazzling,” I spoke to the class, basically telling them they had better dazzle us if they wanted to be one of the two businesses to get funding through our summer venture class.

  The bell rang and most of the students raced for the door. Three went up to Briony but wouldn’t stay long. Time was short so Briony would move them along. I headed toward her. This sometimes hastened the departure of students. Today was no disappointment. Within a few minutes, the last of the students slipped out the classroom door.

  “Hello there, sexy prof.” Her tone no longer held any trace of the reserved professionalism that greeted me when I walked in the door. Her eyes raked over me, seeming to enjoy every bit of the view. The heat I encountered outside didn’t come close to what one of these perusals could do to me. “What brings you over?”

  “You,” I answered honestly. Games that might make her insecure or incite jealousy so she’d always b
e working to find out how much I loved her were pointless, and I’d never be good at them anyway.

  She blew out a long breath. “Thanks, I needed that today.”

  “Hard day so far?”

  “You might have guessed that Dean Goudy stopped by. He wants these proposals in top notch condition before they’re presented. He brought up the three businesses that are no longer operational now.”

  “Oh, please.” University politics were so exasperating. “All three companies were bought out at a huge profit. What do they have to complain about?”

  “It feels like they’re trying to document failures to justify killing the program.”

  “Then why not just kill it? It’s not like we’re dying to teach this class every summer.”

  “I’ll be forever grateful to it because I got to know you.” She shrugged and looped her arms around me. “But you’re right; I wouldn’t miss having to teach every summer.”

  I glanced over my shoulder to make sure no one was spying on us through the window in the door. We were one of five married couples on the faculty and remained professional in the public spaces. But behind closed doors, we didn’t always follow that policy.

  Her hand came up to caress my cheek, fingers drawing the line of my jaw. “You off to pick up the kids?”

  “Thought I’d just leave ‘em there for a few hours,” I joked. We traded off dropping off and picking up the kids from school every semester depending on our class schedules. I actually preferred picking up to dropping off. It gave me the excuse to leave campus before dark each day.

  “You’ve got about thirty seconds,” she reminded me as her fingers moved down to trace the column of my throat.

  I’d be fine just standing here in her arms for the rest of the afternoon, but thirty seconds would do nicely. “Missed you this morning,” I said. She’d hustled out the door, running too late to stop back into the bedroom to say our customary goodbye.

  “I nearly had to yank Caleb’s arms out of his sockets to get him out of bed this morning. I’m starting to think we need to change his bedtime to an hour earlier.”