Page 9 of Falling for Hailey

“I want to work on the demo with you,” Josh said. “I can help you figure out who our ideal customer is.”

“I can handle that part on my own, thanks,” I said stiffly. “One of you take the initial promotion and one of you take follow up. Decide or flip a coin.”

“I don’t care,” Christy said, looking back at her messages. I looked at Isabel sort of desperately. We were the only glue holding this group project together.

“Okay then Christy, why don’t you take promotion and Josh can do the follow up,” I said, just flat out assigning them each a job.

I made notes on my paper and suggested a time we could all have preliminary work loaded to our shared Docs as well as setting up a weekly check-in email reminder to keep us all on track. Later I’d make a checklist for everyone with deadlines figured out so we would have plenty of time to troubleshoot and put together a finished presentation with slide deck, handouts and everything. I really hoped that Josh didn’t ask me for help. When class wrapped up, I moved my chair back to the row and gathered my things.

“Let me walk you to your car,” Josh said, appearing unwanted at my elbow and standing too closely. I didn’t meet his eyes and in fact busied myself with turning my phone volume back on and pretending I had a text.

“No thanks, I’m good,” I said.

Josh narrowed his eyes at me, and the look he gave me made goosebumps rise on my arms. For a split second I felt like he was going to grab me. I took a step backward. Then the threatening darkness in his face receded and he just walked away. I breathed a sigh of relief that he took no for an answer and dialed up Maria on the phone so I would be demonstrably busy with a conversation if I passed him on the path out of the building. I hurried to my next class and if I kept looking over my shoulder the rest of the day to see if he was following me, that was probably just me being skittish.

CHAPTER8

RICK

Friday morning, I did my weekly check-in with each project group after I finished the lecture. I’d looked over their preliminary work including the proposed project outlines the night before and had notes for each one. When I reached the spot where Hailey’s group was gathered, I glanced at my notes.

“Your project is off to a good start, although I noticed in the outline and from the initial stages of the writing that the three women in this group are doing the work while, Josh, it doesn’t look like you’re contributing at this stage. Remember that although it’s a group project, you receive an individual grade as well based on the quality of the work you personally contributed to the finished product.”

I surveyed their faces waiting for one of them to stick up for him and say he’d helped them behind the scenes or something. Not a word, although Hailey’s face lit up and she smiled at me. A smile from a student shouldn’t have hit me like an arrow to the chest, but this one did. Her already pretty face was transformed as if the sun had emerged from behind clouds and bathed the room in light. I turned away intentionally and looked at Josh who predictably was glowering about my statement.

“My part is the follow through. So it comes later. I have to wait on all of them to get done first,” he grumbled.

“It’s follow up, not follow through. You’d be better served to collaborate with your classmates on their strategies so you can plan and begin work on your portion. As far as using them as an excuse for why your work isn’t progressing, I wouldn’t recommend blaming others for your procrastination. It doesn’t work in a business setting any better than it does in a classroom. You need to make a noticeable effort and produce at minimum a draft for your part of the project before the next class meeting, and make sure it’s up to the standard of the group’s existing work.”

I was running out of patience with his attitude, and what little professional veneer I had working for me was about to give way. I wanted to tell him, man to man, to spend less time trying to look down another student’s top and more time getting his shit together before he found himself on the floor missing a couple of teeth. He was an arrogant little shit and while I doubted he’d make it through the marketing program and graduate, I wasn’t delighted at having to deal with him in my 200 level course.

I checked off their group on my notes and hastily dismissed the class. It was a couple of minutes early, but I needed to shake off the bright rush of warmth that had suffused my chest when Hailey smiled at me. She smiled, I reminded myself. Not ‘at me’ specifically. She was probably just glad that someone with authority was calling out her slacker classmate on the project.

That evening I met my friends at the bar for a couple of drinks. I was happy to get a chance to see them since we had all been busy with the first month of classes. We’d exchanged emails and texts, and I’d talked to Aaron at the gym, but we hadn’t had much of a chance to catch up.

When I sat down, Hamilton was talking about how he was stuck teaching a pre-law section this semester because someone was on sabbatical. Drake added that his intro to criminal justice class seemed to consist of ‘Criminal Minds super-fans’ who thought they were going to be solving murders every week as police officers. Kyle’s graduate level Women’s Studies courses were going well as always and he had some really promising students who wanted to do their final group project on the way high-profile TERFS like JK Rowling have set feminism back by making it less intersectional.

“I think it’s a great idea, of course, but there’s already some noise in the class about which Hogwarts house they think they’d belong to and why talking about this kind of thing ruins their childhood.” He rolled his eyes and took a drink.

“Have you reminded them that they’re adults and that you should never meet your heroes?” I asked. “Because a lot of good writers and filmmakers and artists have really problematic view, not just on transgender people.”

“Yeah,” Aaron said. “You say that because you’re not a Slytherin. What are you, Hufflepuff?”

“I’m not at Hogwarts and neither are you. I’m thirty-seven years old and don’t care which fictional dorm I would live in,” I said.

“Damn, same old Rick,” Hamilton said. “Take no prisoners.”

“Look, I’m sorry if you wanted to dress up in wizard outfits and I’m a grown-ass man who doesn’t want to play,” I said. I couldn’t quit thinking about Hailey, and it was making me irritable.

“Sounds like someone isn’t getting any,” Aaron observed.

“Aaron,” Drake said, “he’s already pissy so don’t remind him.”

“Remind me of what? I’m running a very successful marketing firm and teaching at Berkeley. I don’t have time to go pick up women at this point in the semester.”

“That reminds me, how’s your course load?” Kyle asked, neatly changing the subject.

“It’s fine. All my classes were full, and my attendance is pretty good. My 200 class is doing group work, and about half of them are pulling the bullshit where only one or two people in the group do anything and the rest make excuses and act like —”

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