Page 28 of Coached By the Grumpy Gargoyle

Every file on my desk is color-coded, alphabetized, and squared to the blotter, because between first bell and now I have reorganized every object in this office that would hold still. I started with the transfer files, which were already alphabetized. Then I moved on to the pamphlet rack, which nobody has ever read in order. On a Thursday, the candy dish is down to the flavors nobody wants, and I sorted those too, by wrapper color.

Clearly, I'm doing great.

I went to lunch and sat in the corner of the staff room with a sandwich, making myself eat it. If anyone asks, I was fine. I reapplied this lipstick three times today, by feel, no mirror, and kept smiling whenever somebody looked my way. Nobody asked anything I couldn't answer.

Normally this is where the funny version of my morning would arrive. That's what I do when things go wrong. I find something ridiculous in it, tell the story, make somebody laugh. Usually, by the time I'm finished, I can bear it a little better. There's a joke somewhere about breaking up with a man I was never officially dating, I’m sure.

I just haven’t found it yet.

I sit behind my desk and try, and all I can think about is going home, taking off these shoes, and crying somewhere nobody can hear me. Except home is where I was with Bram last night, and I'm not ready to be alone in that bedroom either.

Gene threatened my job this morning if I pushed the case against Cole, and I have spent the hours since trying not to think about the consequences he could have on my job contract. He can call it a fact instead of a threat all he wants. I heard him perfectly well.

Withdraw the complaint, or risk losing the job I love. It’s blackmail, pure and simple.

He expects me to be frightened enough to do what he wants, and I hate that he got the frightened part right.

And the man standing a step and a half away while he did it, the man I woke up on top of this morning, the man wearing a band of raised stone around one finger that means I am his mate for life, said nothing.

I looked at him. I waited for him to defend me, to defend Eli. To just open his damned stone mouth for me. But he did nothing of the sort.

I’m usually gone before someone gets a chance to hurt me. This time I stood there and let him see that I needed him. He didn't have to slay anybody. He could have told Gene to listen to me. He could have reminded him that he'd seen Cole hurting Eli himself. Heck, he could have said he believed me and I’d have been happy. I just needed him to stand beside me.

He didn't. I told him I wanted nothing to do with him, and I meant it when I said it. I still mean it. That doesn't seem to stop me listening for him outside my door. Every heavy step in the corridor makes me look up, and every time it isn't him, I feel stupid for looking.

Last night he said I was the only woman he would ever want, for the rest of his life. I believed him. I lay in his arms and let myself think about waking up with him again, about what it might be like to have him here, with me.

Then this morning I couldn't get one sentence out of him when I needed it. I don't know how to stop putting those two things beside each other.

Maybe the mark doesn't mean he's chosen me. Maybe it means he's stuck with me. His stone reacted, and there's nothing he can do about that. Wanting me in bed doesn't mean he wants to stand up for me at work, in front of the man who can give him everything he's worked toward.

My hands lie flat on the desk. When I'm not finding something else to sort, that's where they stay. Usually, I can't tell someone what I had for breakfast without waving them around. Today I keep catching myself sitting like this, barely moving, until a student appears at the door and I have to look like myself again.

Under the anger, I'm scared. If Gene gets his way, some other adult gets this office. The corkboard comes down. The candy dish goes home in a box. Somebody else sits behind this desk and gets to know my kids, and I'm no longer the person they come looking for when they need help.

But I won’t save my job by leaving Eli to Cole.

The corkboard is behind me, three layers deep in doodles and thank-you notes and photo-booth strips, and somewhere in the third layer is a diagram of the sideline gear cart in the world's tiniest handwriting, drawn for me last year by a boy who knows where every roll of tape in that building lives.

I'm looking at it when the knock comes. Eli stands in the doorway, his hand still raised to the frame.

"Hi, Ms. Hale."

I turn my chair toward him, relieved to see him even before I know why he's here. His hoodie still has the stretched collar. His black hair falls into his eyes, and the taped glasses sit crooked on his nose. It's fifth period. He should be in class, but he's standing here holding his phone in both hands, and I'm not going to send him away.

"Come in." I keep my voice warm and push the files aside.

He comes in. He doesn't sit. He stops in front of my desk, looking down at the phone. His fingers tighten around it, then loosen, and I wait for him to tell me what he needs.

"I need to show you something," he says. "But I have to say a thing first or I'll chicken out. Can I just... say it?"

"The floor's yours. I'm not going anywhere."

He pushes his glasses straight with one knuckle. They settle crooked again.

"I've been putting my phone in the equipment cage." His voice is small but it doesn't stop, and I sit back to listen. "There's a spot on the shelf, next to the helmets, behind the ball bags. You can't see it unless you look straight at it. I'm the one who puts everything away, so I know where nobody looks." He rubs his thumb along the edge of the phone. "Nobody looks at me either, so I'm kind of the expert."

My entire body freezes and I blink repeatedly as my brain catches on to this new information.