13. Oliver

THIRTEEN

Oliver

On Wednesday, while waiting for the fundraising meeting to begin, I am reluctantly determined to turn over a new leaf, start fresh with Ms. Baker… with Georgia.

I’m reluctantly determined not to think about this weekend, or her mouth wrapping around that tomato. The way I so easily bailed on meeting my friends for lunch in the city without a second thought, so that I could hang out with one of my employees . Who is a giant pain in my ass. Who I had just considered firing because she told me to pull the stick out of my ass .

I can’t even think about how much fun I had, like she clawed it out of my cold, dead corpse. Because when was the last time I did something spontaneous and unplanned and silly and a little bit weird? When was the last time I got carried away ? Can’t think about these things, ever.

Most importantly, I cannot think about the feeling of her delicate throat in my hand. What it felt like when she swallowed. I cannot think about my new obsession with her mouth .

I can think about how inappropriate that all was. I must , actually. And I am ready, to be more patient, to listen, to be empathet?—

“OMIGOD I AM SO SORRY I’M LATE,” she breathes as she bursts into the staff lounge, scaring the bejeezus out of the teachers quietly working, the papers they were grading scattering as if Georgia is an actual hurricane. My eye twitches as she looks around the room, apologizing to everyone for her disturbance, picking up fallen pieces of paper, and smiling when she locks eyes with me. “Hi, Mr. Flores! I’m here!”

I take a deep breath and nod at her. “Good afternoon, Ms.—I mean, Georgia.” Her smile grows wider, warmer when she hears her first name. I am perplexed about how radiant she looks, standing there in the middle of the dreary staff lounge. Perplexed at the way I seem to be melting, I clear my throat, gesturing for her to have a seat next to me.

Confused, she looks around at the teachers remaining in their bubbles, resuming their grading. “Is it just me for this meeting?”

I shrug apologetically. “It seems so. There was only one other teacher from the Kindergarten team. Lina has already taken her to her office to plan the ‘lower school’ piece of the fundraiser. It will be just you and me for the ‘upper school’ portion.”

“Oh, that’s disappointing,” she says.

“You obviously know this already,” I start, desperately attempting to keep the mansplain-y tone out of my voice, “but working in education can be thankless most of the time. Lots of unpaid overtime work, both physically and emotionally. I don’t blame teachers for not wanting to give even more than they already do.”

“Boundaries,” Georgia says, bracketing the word with air quotes, referring to what Emmanuel said the day before.

“Exactly,” I nod. “So?— ”

“Oliver?” an old-head fourth grade teacher across the room asks.

“Hey, Sam, how’s it going? Want to join in the fun?” I ask her.

“As much fun as that sounds, absolutely not,” Sam answers. “I have a million papers to grade, and I’m struggling to do it with all your yapping over there. Do you mind moving your meeting elsewhere?” A few teachers around the staff room nod their head in agreement.

“No problem, everyone. Sorry about that,” I say, already standing up. “Let’s move to my office, Georgia.” I gesture ahead of me, trying and almost failing to not peek down the top of her dress.

We walk down the hallway. “May as well start now, Mr. Flores. Care to tell me about this fundraiser?”

“Georgia, please call me Oliver,” I say, regretting it as soon as it exits my mouth. The smile she gives me almost makes up for it.

“But what if I like calling you Mr. Flores, sir?” she jokes, eyeing me carefully, probably feeling real confident after I practically choked her in front of a stranger this weekend.

It takes all of my effort not to elicit any sort of response.

Georgia smirks. “Just kidding, Oliver. But I may keep the ‘sir’,” she adds on, turning back again to wink at me.

“Hm,” I manage. I cough. “So, this fundraiser. PS 2 typically does two fundraisers a year. One in the fall, and one in the spring. For the fall event, we typically organize a ‘Fall Festival.’ We get all sorts of vendors from the community to donate their goods and services to the event. We get bounce houses, carnival activities, a pumpkin patch, and then typically we play and project a movie onto the side of the building once it gets dark. We have lots of food and drink donated by community restaurants available for purchase. Then, we charge the community at least $10 a ticket to enter the festival, but give the option to donate more if you can.”

We reach my office, and I gesture her in.

She collapses in the chair with a small moan, kicking her sandals off and pulling her knees up to rest her chin on. I am staring at the chipped neon pink polish on her toes as she wiggles them when I catch the end of a sentence, “—where do I come in?”

I look up to meet her eyes.

She grins, eyes shining bright. “How can I help?”

I clear my throat and pull up my planning spreadsheet, turning my computer monitor so that Georgia can see it. “Lina and I have already divided the tasks that have to be completed. This column,” I point to my screen, “contains our tasks. We can assign tasks between the two of us using this drop down function I created.” I show her using my cursor. “Then, as we work through the tasks, we can color code them. Red will mean ‘not started.’ Yellow will mean ‘in progress.’ Green?—”

I am cut off from my speech by the feeling of a soft, warm hand resting atop the one I am using to navigate my mouse. She nudges my hand off, and, with a confidence born through expertise, begins working through the code and functions of my spreadsheet. I watch as she expertly changes the conditional formatting of my cells from red, yellow, and green to magenta, neon yellow, and teal. She is in the middle of changing the font from the default Calibri to… is that… Comic Sa… NO… when I finally regain my senses. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

“Just jazzing it up,” she answers without missing a beat, eyebrows furrowed in concentration as she adds italicization to the conditional formatting. “It’s just so… boring. I fell asleep just looking at it. I’m also just making it better.”

I watch as she adds columns that do indeed make the spreadsheet more efficient and detailed. I watch, in awe, as she creates an incredibly useful pivot table in less than twenty seconds.

“Voila!” she sits back, picking her feet up and wiggling her toes once again. “This is a really great planning spreadsheet, even if it was a little… uninspired. I just added a few things. What do you think?”

I stare at the spreadsheet, speechless. “It’s… good.”

“Good?!” she shrieks. “It’s fucking amazing!”

My mouth twitches with the beginnings of a smile. It’s as if Georgia claws it out of my face. “Okay, it’s amazing. Although, I want to make everything the same font size, please. Also, I could do without the Comic Sans.”

“People who hate Comic Sans are just pretentious wannabe designers who think that having a strong opinion on typeface makes them superior to everyone else,” she tells me, as she expertly highlights and changes the entire document to reflect a practical size 12. “Did you know the most accomplished physicists in the world use Comic Sans for their presentations?” she says seriously. “My best friend Eloise told me that after attending a weird physics conference.”

“I did not know that, but I did actually know that Comic Sans is easier to read for people with dyslexia,” I respond.

“SEE!” she shouts, as if we are at a live sporting event. “We’re basically NASA scientists, and we’re making the spreadsheet accessible.”

“Chaya and Emmanuel would be very proud of you,” I tell her.

“How about you?” she asks me, fluttering her eyelashes exaggeratedly.

“Well…” I look at her, try to really see her. I begin to notice the sharpness, the brilliance behind her blue eyes. “No. Maybe.”

I find myself speechless at the radiance beaming back at me.