Page 54 of Hopelessly Teavoted
Out of courtesy alone, he said hello to Chet. Devil damn him, Azrael already hated his department chair. Chet Thornington was an absurd man, shirt buttoned up all the way to his neck, shoulders slumped downward. He was always wearing a formal shirt, a thick tie, and a Fabio haircut that hung past his ears. He was even worse here than he was yelling at coffee shop employees and clinging to a dead aesthetic, with his hair slicked back in a futile attempt to mirror a trend that hadn’t been popular for a decade. He looked like a has-been, a rejected regency romance cover model out of work and left with nothing better to do than talk smack about current authors. It was Prufrockian, really.
Chet was arguing with a younger woman Az recognized from orientation as another teacher in his department. Aurora. She had to be no more than twenty-one. Maybe twenty-two.
Far too young for the way Chet was looking at her.
Yeah, judgmental, or not, Azrael hated this guy already.
“It’s the first student day, Aurora. You won’t have grading yet. We’ll be done early. Are you sure?” Chet was stepping toward her, and her body turned toward him, but she flinched a little as he drew closer.
Whatever was between them danced on a line of attraction and pain, and Azrael cleared his throat, not wanting to intrude but also not comfortable walking away.
“No, I’m busy. I can’t.” With a small wave to Azrael, she grabbed a stack of papers off a copier that was still spitting a few of them out, leaving him alone in the room with the man.
“Chet Thornington,” he said, holding out a hand. “Just got back from the leadership retreat.”
Azrael considered refusing the man’s hand after what he had seen. This was the third time he’d met Chet, but being cold would be a bad start to the year.
“Azrael Hart. We met briefly last week at the first day of orientation. And via video call when you hired me.” The man’s hand was just a trace clammy, and Az resisted the urge to recoil.
“Right. Right. My new teacher. The same Harts as the weirdo family with the manor on the hill?”
“Yes,” said Azrael, keeping his anger and magic in check. He was good at it, after so many years of denying himself.
“Sorry about your parents. That was unfortunate.”
“Thank you,” Az said, unsure of how else to respond. He stood awkwardly for a moment.
“Hey, your sister is hot, though. Is she single?”
Azrael glared at the man, who five minutes earlier had been clearly intimidating a much younger woman who, if he was a betting man, Az would be willing to guess Chet was fucking.
“No. And you’re not her type either.”
“What precisely are you trying to imply?”
Azrael stared. This was getting out of hand. “Just that it looks, from an outsider’s perspective, like you, a man old enough to have a specific and clear memory of the Challenger explosion, are messing with a girl young enough to have been your student, if not your kid.” Az ground his teeth. There was the lingering effect of gravedirt, days later, threatening his job already.
Or maybe Chet was just too much of a tool to ignore.
“I don’t pretend to know what you’re talking about. But watch it,” said Chet, glancing around nervously. “She’s from Scarsdale, not here, and she was never my student.”
Azrael snorted. “Does saying that make you feel better about it?”
“Look. We won’t have to like each other, Hart, but I’ve been teaching English here almost the longest. Which means I am the most experienced, and therefore the best at it. From what I hear, you’re taking some of the most crowded class sections. So you need me. You’d do well to keep that in mind.”
The logic didn’t even make sense. Azrael ground his teeth,resolving to cool Chet’s temperature a little, maybe make his shoes more supportive. Something that should make the man just a little kinder. He snapped, but it did nothing. Azrael frowned and looked at his fingers. Was there such a thing as being too big of an asshole for magic?
Azrael knew it was a low blow, but as Chet stormed out, he snapped his fingers again in the empty staff room, and the stack of sticky notes next to him was one shorter. The missing note slipped itself onto the back of Chet Thornington’s shirt, with the wordassholescrawled on it.
He grabbed Aurora’s papers off the copy machine. He sure as hell wasn’t going to let a human monster ruin this poor woman’s life.
This close to a dosing of gravedirt, anger still pushed him over into abject honesty, and he was certain that the effect of his anger toward Chet would last a few more days.
Fortunately, he knew better than to be angry at any children he taught. He’d been a substitute long enough to know that drama and rudeness from teenagers was about what they were going through more than what the person instructing them was going through, and that it would pass if he waited patiently and checked in about what they needed.
No, he would not be angry at the children, but Chet was another story.
When he walked into Aurora’s classroom, the first thing he noticed was her last name, Schumacher, stenciled across the wall in glittering rainbow, she/her pronouns underneath. A giant Black Lives Matter Pride fist hung on her wall, reminding him of his mom and the posters and flags decorating Hopelessly Teavoted, which of course reminded him of Victoria.
