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If there is one thing that everyone at Grover Cleveland Middle School knows, it’s that Mr. Grace loves his wife.
That was the first thing Ilyukhina had ever learned about him almost a decade ago when she had joined the teaching staff at the school. She had asked about his weekend, mostly as a formality to ease the awkwardness of their situation as he was giving her a tour around the school, and, in true American fashion, he had decided to tell her every single detail about his weekend, all of which revolved around spending time with his wife.
Certainly nothing has changed since then, considering this is still his favorite topic to discuss. His spouse is the first bullet point in his "About Me" synopsis at the beginning of the school year and the last thing he’ll mention before leaving school (“Gotta get home to the wife,” he says every single day).
And honestly? Ilyukhina thinks that if she has to endure him rambling about how much he loves his wife and their two kids again during their weekly science department meetings, she’s going to kill herself. In front of him.
She’s pretty sure she could write a book on the Grace family with the amount of information that Ryland has disclosed to her (all unsolicited, by the way). His oldest daughter is Allie. She’s fourteen, was adopted from Romania when she was eleven, is quiet, plays the violin, and reads for fun. Kit, his younger daughter, is ten, was conceived via IVF (which Ilyukhina absolutely did not need or want to know, but Grace loves to talk about the biology involved, because of course he does), is hotheaded, plays soccer, and hates school, especially science.
His wife is more of a mystery; despite the fact that he talks nonstop about her, Ilyukhina still doesn’t know her name or what she looks like. She asked to see a picture one time, mostly because she was curious to see what kind of person would want to spend the rest of her life with Grace. but he, in typical Grace fashion, had misplaced his phone and didn’t have time to find it before his next class.
Still, Ilyukhina knows that his wife has worked for the government in some capacity or another for the past two decades, sings in her church choir, and is “the most gorgeous person to ever exist,” according to Grace. Ilyukhina doubts Grace could pull “the most gorgeous person to ever exist, but she supposes it's technically possible. The illusive Mrs. Grace also apparently isn’t into socializing, evidenced by the fact that Grace never brings her along when the science teachers go to karaoke bars or play minigolf together, even though everyone else brings their current partners.
The bottom line is, Ryland Grace loves his wife. Ilyukhina knows it, the rest of the teachers know it, the students know it, everyone knows it. It's a fact that no one questions.
Well, no one questions it until one November morning before the first bell rings. Ilyukhina is grading physics homework at her desk, which is terribly boring and her least favorite part of her job, while her students file into the classroom and get settled at their desks. She tries most of the time to stay out of her students' conversations before class unless they address her, but it's hard sometimes. Especially right now, when she can overhear a group of her students whispering from across the room about school drama. She can’t make out all of the words at first, but she hears, “Grace,” “principal,” and “hooking up.”
This is certainly an interesting collection of words. Like any normal person, she ignores her work to listen to the gossip.
“Oh, they're totally together,” she hears Olivia say to two other girls. “They’re always around each other. Every time I pass them in the halls, they’re talking to each other. And have you seen how he looks at her?”
“Like a lost puppy,” Abby confirms, before adding, “I saw him put his arm around her the other day.”
“Are you sure they’re having an affair, though? I mean, Mr. Grace is nice, and Stratt is…” Rekha trails off.
“Evil?” Olivia offers up, and the three girls descend into laughter.
That’s an interesting development, Ilyukhina thinks. Students gossiping about potential affairs among the teachers was nothing new—in fact, they had correctly predicted that Shapiro and DuBois were hooking up last year. Several students had noticed that they always separately mentioned their excitement for their evening plans on the same days and would come to school the next day much happier than usual. One student had then run into them at a restaurant and come to school the next day declaring that they were “confirmed dating,” after which the pair admitted that the rumors were true. Ilyukhina almost wishes those rumors hadn’t been true, because now Annie brings DuBois with her to all of their hang outs, which she doesn’t appreciate, but that’s besides the point.
That rumor had been fun while it lasted, though, because Ilyukhina was notoriously nosy and liked getting involved in things that were none of her business. Since Annie and DuBois didn’t tell anyone, not even her, until after they were caught by a student, Ilyukhina had been able to do a lot of snooping.
Still, as exciting as that was, it was logical that they would hook up. Shapiro and DuBois spent most of their time together at school, they had the same job, and they both had a passion for all things science-related. Stratt and Grace hooking up, on the other hand, doesn’t make sense in the slightest.
Look, Ilyukhina loves to gossip, like a lot, but rumors have to be founded in some truth for them to be fun. Otherwise people could say whatever they wanted. She could start a rumor that space wasn’t real or the sky was green or she was straight, but none of those are exciting because everyone knows they’re not true.
This rumor is too implausible to be true. She wishes it were true because it would be really funny, but there are just too many things standing in its way.
Grace is the main thing, for several reasons. First of all, Ilyukhina highly doubts that he has the ability to carry out an affair considering he is maybe the least subtle person she knows. She’s pretty sure he would spill the secret to literally everyone without even being asked.
Not to mention the fact that he’s somewhat…oblivious when it comes to women finding him attractive. A few years back, it took him nearly six months to figure out that Lokken was hitting on him during passing periods every single day, and when Shapiro finally took mercy on him and told him, he was mortified that anyone would think he would be into someone other than his wife.
Ilyukhina also has a hard time believing Stratt would involve herself with Grace. Granted, Ilyukhina’s knowledge of the woman is fairly limited, considering Stratt is new to the school this year and has refused to talk about herself in that time. The only piece of personal information that Stratt has revealed about herself is that her name is Eva Stratt. Still, she comes off as pretty much the opposite of Grace. She’s cold and reserved and serious, whereas Grace is friendly and outgoing and dorky. She can't exactly see them getting along.
All that being said, Ilyukhina is getting a little bored with the lack of school drama that has occurred recently, and she is enough of a scientist to know that a lack of evidence doesn’t necessarily prove they aren’t having an affair. So this rumor is both definitely not true and also something she is absolutely going to research seriously.
~~~
Over the course of the next two weeks, Ilyukhina gathers the following information from eavesdropping on her students: Stratt has smiled multiple times at Grace when they pass each other in the hallway, which she notably does not do with any other faculty; she always has him come with her to school board meetings instead of literally any other teacher in the building; and they were seen by two students getting out of the same car one morning.
The rumor has developed to the point where the topic has come up in all six of Ilyukhina’s classes, as well as the faculty lounge.
Well, to be fair, Ilyukhina is the one that brought it up in the faculty lounge , but it wasn’t her fault that the other teachers were interested enough to buy into the betting pool she had started! If Stratt and Grace didn’t want rumors to be spread about them, they shouldn’t have put themselves in a position where there were assumptions to be made about the nature of their relationship.
Honestly, though, Ilyukhina isn’t convinced that there’s something going on between them until the quarterly meeting with the science department and administration.
Ilyukhina arrives early to the school's conference room because she didn’t have a class last block and got bored waiting around. The door is shut and locked when she gets there, and she can see through the window that the lights are off, which is a little odd considering they’re always on during the school day.
She peers through the window of the door, trying to see if anyone is in there—mostly because she really doesn’t want to walk all the way back to her classroom to get her keys—when she notices the faint glow of a laptop screen illuminating two figures.
Two figures who are sitting awfully close together.
Granted, Ilyukhina’s eyesight maybe isn’t the best anymore and maybe she hasn’t been wearing the prescription glasses she is supposed to because she looks stupid in them, but she is still pretty confident that she is seeing Ryland Grace and Eva Stratt sit together in a dark conference room with their shoulders pressed against one another as they share a singular laptop. She is also pretty confident that Ryland’s hand is resting on top of Stratt’s, and that Stratt is laughing at something he presumably said.
Eva Stratt doesn’t laugh at anything.
Ilyukhina steps back from the window and glances around the hallway, looking for someone else to confirm what she is seeing, but the only other person in the hall is a sixth grade boy. She figures it would be irresponsible to involve him in this, so she turns back to the window and sees that they haven’t moved from that position.
She knocks on the door and watches as they practically jump apart, Stratt rolling her chair far away from Grace as he comes to open the door for her.
“Why are you making that face?” is the first thing he asks as she sits down at the table across from the two of them.
“What face?” she replies, immediately trying to suppress a grin, which is hard because she'd just gotten practically all the confirmation she needs that they are having an affair.
“You’re smiling weird."
“No, I’m not,” Ilyukhina responds, even though she most definitely is. She practically buzzes from anticipation as she waits impatiently for the others to arrive and the meeting to conclude so that she can tell Annie everything that just happened.
All of the information Ilyukhina had gathered up until this point was circumstantial. Did Stratt smiling at Grace or Grace putting his arm around her or them carpooling to school one morning really prove anything? No, but it was fun to theorize about.
But this? This is evidence. And Ilyukhina is close to proving her hypothesis.
~~~
“Stratt’s gone for the rest of the week.”
Ilyukhina jumps slightly in her chair as she looks from her computer screen to Annie Shapiro standing in her doorway at the end of the school day. It is only Monday, so it’s odd that Stratt is leaving for that long. Normally she doesn’t like to attend conferences that are more than two days because she hates to be away from the school building longer than that. She seems to be under the impression that the whole place will crumble if she isn’t there.
“Okay?” Ilyukhina asks, trying to figure out what that had to do with her.
“It’s a conference in Portland,” Annie continues, wiggling her eyebrows at Ilyukhina. “Grace is also coincidentally out of the building all week.”
Oh. Now that was interesting.
“Is he also attending conference?” Ilyukhina asks before she gets too excited about this development. It wouldn’t be the first time Stratt had chosen him as the school's representative at an event.
Annie’s eyes glint as she grins widely. “Well, not officially, of course. It’s just for administrators. However, Stratt did mention that she was going to the airport straight from school, and I did happen to see her get into Grace’s car, and he refused to tell me where he was going for an entire week earlier today, so…”
Ilyukhina smiles slowly as she realizes what that means.
~~~
The betting pool grows considerably once word gets out that Stratt and Grace are gone. People place bets on all sorts of things–when it started, who initiated it, how they'll be exposed. One teacher from the English department puts three hundred dollars on Grace’s wife murdering him once she found out about the affair. A different teacher bets that his wife already knew, and another one puts money on it being a threesome (Ilyukhina isn’t really sure how she is supposed to figure out if that is true to pay out the bet, but she decides that’s a problem for her future self).
Yao bets five hundred dollars on the fact that Stratt and Grace aren’t having an affair during lunch at the end of the same week, which is a terribly boring option, and Ilyukhina tells him so.
He says, “I want to win,” before going back to eating the salad he'd packed from home.
“There’s no way you’re gonna win if that’s what you’re betting on,” Shapiro laughs, and he just shrugs.
The whole betting ring nearly gets shut down when some students find out about it (Ilyukhina still isn’t sure how) and threaten to tell Stratt if Ilyukhina doesn’t let them in on it. Obviously she can’t do because that is insanely illegal and she is their teacher, so she has to persuade them that they can start their own betting pool instead. That’s still morally dubious, but it’s far less illegal than her letting them join the one she'd started. She finds out from Olivia, Abby, and Rekha in her first block that the top theory in their betting ring is that their affair will be exposed by Mr. Grace calling Ms. Stratt “Eva” in front of a group of people.
Which he does two weeks later.
The whole school goes on a field trip to the zoo because they'd met their goal for the annual fundraiser. It is a chaotic outing, and while Ilyukhina is generally fond of chaos, she does not appreciate the sort that involves wrangling hundreds of middle schoolers in a large, crowded place. Her and Grace’s classes get paired together, which she doesn’t mind because he’s funny most of the time and he’s not DuBois (not that she has a valid reason for disliking him other than the fact that he’s dating Annie, but she’s not going to unpack that any time soon).
They’re standing at the zoo entrance, trying to get the attention of sixty teens and preteens so they can explain the rules, which isn’t going well. To be fair, Ilyukhina isn’t trying very hard to calm them down, mostly because it’s funny watching Grace try and fail several times in a row. He normally has great control over his classes, more so than most other teachers, but it turns out that whatever respect his students have for him vanishes the second they leave the classroom.
“Okay, guys, listen up!” Grace calls out. No one does. He tries a few more times to no avail before Stratt appears by his side.
“Are you having trouble controlling your class, Dr. Grace?” she asks him, the faintest hint of a smile on her lips. That's weird, because no one at Grover Cleveland actually calls him "Dr." even though that’s his technical title, plus Stratt is smiling.
“Of course not,” he lies.
“It is going quite well,” Ilyukhina chimes in, which is also a lie. “You just need to let them get their crazy out.”
“They seem to be getting a lot of ‘crazy’ out,” Stratt says as her gaze shifts from Grace to Ilyukhina, the smile instantly dropping from her face. “You need to inform them of the rules before we get started.”
“Oh, really? I wasn’t aware,” Grace responds sarcastically, far more than most other teachers would risk when speaking to Stratt. Ilyukhina supposes that this must be one of the benefits of sleeping with her.
Stratt ignores the remark and whistles sharply until the students take the hint and go quiet. “Continue,” she says, and turns to head to the next group of students that needs to be tamed.
“Thanks, Eva,” Grace calls out as she walks away. Ilyukhina watches in amusement as he cringes the second the words leave his mouth, and his slipup causes the newly quieted group of students to lose their minds screaming. Ilyukhina hears at least three people shout, “I told you so!” and several others say something along the lines of “I won the bet!”
Grace stares blankly at the group of students, mildly embarrassed at the slip up but still confused as to why that elicited such a reaction in them. Ilyukhina laughs briefly because this is the most Grace thing that could have possibly happened before she realizes she is going to have to calm down the students again. The situation suddenly loses its humor.
~~~
“It’s our twentieth wedding anniversary this Saturday,” Grace says unprompted in the faculty lounge one Thursday. “It's crazy to think my wife and I have been married that long. I mean, we met when I was nineteen, and here we are now, married for twenty years with two kids and a dog.”
Ilyukhina makes eye contact with Shapiro briefly before Shapiro says, “A lot can change in twenty years. People, relationships. It’s strange.” She raises her eyebrows at Grace to see if he picks up on the implication behind the statement. He doesn’t, of course, because he’s oblivious, so she just pivots and adds, “Congratulations. Are you doing anything?”
“Yeah, actually,” Grace perks up. “We’re going out to dinner, and then there’s a meteor shower Saturday night, so we’re going to go to the planetarium to watch. It should be fun; we both love space. She used to work for the ESA, actually.”
“Is that right?” Ilyukhina asks disinterestedly. Grace’s infodumps about his wife had always been somewhat annoying, but they didn’t even have the benefit of being endearing now that everyone knew he was cheating on her with his boss of all people. The whole affair is a bit of a double-edged sword, in regards to how it affects Ilyukhina. It is fun to theorize about, but it also makes situations like this painful.
Grace does not notice her disinterest and continues rambling until he has to leave to get ready for his next class. The second he exits the room, Shapiro turns to Ilyukhina and whisper-shouts, “He’s lying!”
Ilyukhina gives her a quizzical look. Shapiro elaborates by adding, “I was talking to Stratt earlier. Asked about her weekend plans. She said she was going to the planetarium to see the meteor shower. Which is an awfully big coincidence, isn’t it?”
“A little hard to believe,” Ilyukhina confirms, nodding. Her mind is moving at a hundred kilometers a minute with this newfound information. Everyone at school basically knows that they’re having an affair, but this could give her the opportunity to prove it, to settle the bets and be right.
“We could go,” she suggests to Annie eventually with a wide grin. “Catch them in the act.” Annie stares at her blankly for a second before she mirrors Ilyukhina’s grin.
“Let’s do it.”
~~~
Ilyukhina and Annie arrive at the planetarium promptly at 7 p.m. that Saturday. It’s packed; apparently whatever meteor shower is happening that night is popular. Everyone’s gathered outside with telescopes and picnic blankets, and Ilyukhina helps Annie set up the telescope she had brought—not that they really need it to see the meteor shower, but it’s still cool to have. If they are going to be undercover spies, they need to blend in.
“Do you see them?” Annie asks once they have the blankets and telescope set up.
“No,” Ilyukhina responds, her mouth full of Goldfish that Annie had brought to sustain them during their investigation. “We can look when people stop moving so much.” She plops down on the blanket, and Annie reluctantly takes a seat next to her.
“What are we doing if we do see them together?” Annie asks, and Ilyukhina pauses. She hadn’t actually thought that far ahead. Her main objective for being here is to prove that she was right about the affair. She isn’t sure what they’re supposed to do after that.
“Don’t know. We will let Yao decide,” she responds eventually. Yao is by far the most responsible among the teaching staff; he’ll know what to do with this information, if they do anything with it.
Both of them are practically vibrating with anticipation thirty minutes later when people finally stop moving around and settle into their respective spots. Annie and Ilyukhina take turns looking through the telescope at the meteor shower and looking in the crowd for Stratt and Grace. The meteor shower actually looks pretty cool, she has to admit; she’d had a space phase as a kid like all scientists, but she’s never seen anything like this in person.
It’s Ilyukhina’s turn at the telescope, when suddenly Annie elbows her and hisses, “Over there.”
Ilyukhina immediately turns to see where Annie is pointing, and sure enough, there they are. Ryland Grace is at his anniversary date with his mistress instead of his wife.
She has to admit, they are pretty cute together, if one ignores the nature of their relationship. They’re both lying down on a picnic blanket. Stratt’s head is resting on Grace’s shoulder and Grace has both of his arms wrapped around her. He whispers something in her ear that makes her giggle–Eva Stratt is giggling–and she turns her head to kiss him. It’s not a long or passionate kiss by any means, but it’s still a kiss, and it’s pretty damning evidence that the affair is real and not just a figment of the school’s collective imagination.
Ilyukhina turns back to Annie, whose eyes are wide. “Oh my goodness,” Annie says at the same time that Ilyukhina says, “We have to tell everyone.”
~~~
The opportunity to tell everyone (well, just the rest of the science department, but that's all of the important people, anyway) arises that Monday during their lunch break when they have yet another department meeting with Stratt. The downside of being a science teacher is that they quite frequently have address parental concerns about how they're indoctrinating children by teaching them about evolution.
Conveniently, Stratt and Grace have not yet arrived, despite the fact that the meeting was supposed to start five minutes ago. Ilyukhina has some theories about what they are doing, but none of them are anywhere near appropriate enough to voice out loud in a school building, so she keeps those thoughts to herself.
Stratt and Grace’s absence does give her and Shapiro the perfect opportunity to fill Yao and DuBois in on their discoveries from the past weekend. Neither of them seem particularly surprised by it, which is odd, because Yao was convinced like a month ago that they weren’t having an affair.
“I knew they were engaged in sexual congress,” DuBois says, which is a very…DuBois way to phrase it. Ilyukhina makes a face, suddenly feeling very sorry for Shapiro if this is what she has to deal with on a daily basis. “There was too much tension for them not to be.”
“She is uptight. It is probably good for her to roll in the hay with Grace,” Ilyukhina agrees.
Yao’s mouth twitches ever so slightly. “Perhaps you do not have all of the information,” he says without elaborating on what they could possibly be missing.
“Oh, please. They were cuddling and kissing in public. That is all the information I need,” Ilyukhina responds, and he just shrugs.
Stratt finally arrives several minutes later, out of breath and with a red face, which certainly fits Ilyukhina’s earlier theories about why they are late.
“I apologize for my tardiness, I had to pick my daughter up early from school,” Stratt says after sitting down, which is weird because Stratt doesn’t apologize and also because she has literally never mentioned having a child before.
“You have a daughter?” Shapiro asks, voicing the group’s collective surprise.
Stratt perks up a little. “I do. Two, actually,” she tells them. “My husband is picking the other one up now. It seems they have both caught a bug.”
“Husband?” Ilyukhina wonders. She had assumed Stratt was unmarried because she didn’t wear a wedding ring, but now that she looks again, she realizes she just wears it on her right hand. Which Ilyukhina definitely should’ve figured out earlier, considering Russians also wear their rings on their right hands. She’s spent too much time in America, she decides. Still, it never occurred to her that Stratt and Grace were both having extramarital affairs.
“Yes?” Stratt confirms, sounding somewhat confused at Ilyukhina's question.
Oops, that was supposed to be an inside thought. But that confirmation certainly makes this situation much more exciting.
“We should go ahead and get started,” Stratt continues.
“What about Dr. Grace?” DuBois asks.
“He will be here shortly,” she tells them, and launches into a spiel about the parents' latest complaints. Ilyukhina isn’t really paying attention–she can’t, not with all of this new information that she has learned–and apparently neither is anyone else, because Stratt stops talking in the middle of her sentence and asks, “What is going on with you all?"
The four of them make eye contact with each other, having a silent debate on who should answer that question and what information they should reveal. Shapiro loses eventually and blurts, “We saw you and Grace at the planetarium. We know about the affair.”
Ilyukhina watches Stratt’s face for some change in expression, whether it was guilt or remorse or shame at the fact that she’s been caught, but instead she just looks perplexed.
“Affair?” Stratt repeats at the same moment that Grace bursts through the door of the conference room, tossing out several apologies about his lateness.
“Sorry, I had to pick up Kit and drop her off at her Uncle Carl’s. She got sick–those elementary schools are breeding grounds for germs,” he explains, shuddering at the thought as he takes the empty seat at the head of the table opposite from Stratt. “Gave it to my other kid, too, which is unfortunate.”
Ilyukhina turns slowly to face Annie next to her. She can tell from the expression on Annie’s face that her thought process is mirroring her own, and Ilyukhina says in disbelief, “You both have two sick kids right now?”
Ryland laughs and says, “Well, yeah, they’re kinda the same kids,” at the same moment that Stratt asks, “What is wrong with all of you?”
Ilyukhina starts laughing as Annie says, “Oh my goodness,” and DuBois says, “Of course. It all makes sense now.” Yao remains unphased.
Grace looks around the table confused. “Are you guys okay?”
“You two are married?” Ilyukhina manages to ask once she stops laughing long enough to get the words out.
“Yes?” Ryland says hesitantly. Stratt sighs loudly as Ryland continues, “I talk about her all the time.”
“No, you talk about your wife,” DuBois corrects. “Never once have you said that your wife also happens to be Principal Stratt.”
“Oh, well, I thought it was obvious,” Grace shrugs.
“You said your wife works for the government,” Ilyukhina points out.
“I used to. I work here now,” Stratt informs her. She doesn’t look particularly amused by the situation, which is unfortunate because Ilyukhina thinks it’s hilarious. “Did you think we were having an affair?"
"Oh, not just us. The whole school is under the same impression. Students started the rumors, actually,” DuBois tells her very matter-of-factly. Stratt sighs again and puts her head in her hands.
“What?” Ryland exclaims, looking around the table with a horrified expression on his face. “I–what? No, I would never–No, no, we are very happily married to each other. What do you mean the whole school?”
“We mean everyone,” Shapiro tells him. “There are several betting rings regarding it, actually.”
“Yes, about that,” Yao speaks up for the first time since this all started. “I believe I just won quite a bit of money, didn’t I? Considering there was no affair?”
That immediately turns all attention from Stratt and Grace to him. “You knew!” Shapiro exclaims accusingly, pointing her finger at him. “You knew the whole time!”
“Of course I did,” Yao nods. “It was quite obvious. They have matching wedding bands, they drive each other’s cars to school sometimes, their kids have the same names and ages. I’m a little disappointed none of you figured it out.”
They all stare at him silently in disbelief until he continues, “Now, Ilyukhina, how much did I win?”
~~~
Ryland looks disgruntled, and he paces around the living room that night at home as Eva sits on the couch and answers emails from her tablet. The girls are both asleep, the sickness having tired them out enough to go to bed without stalling for once in their lives, leaving their parents with alone time that has become increasingly rare.
Eventually Eva realizes that Ryland isn’t going to stop pacing any time soon, and she asks, “What is wrong?”
Ryland pauses his pacing to stare at her, distress written all over his face. “You do realize why everyone at our school thinks I was having an affair, right? Because I talk about my wife all the time, and you’ve never once mentioned me to the point where it seemed implausible for you to be the wife I was always talking about?”
“I didn’t intentionally not mention you,” she responds, before hesitating and adding, “Well. Mostly it was unintentional. We are actually violating several of the school board’s policies currently, but they are choosing to overlook it because there is a shortage of teachers.” She shrugs. It’s not like she is one to abuse her power in the situation, and she only favors Ryland for certain projects because he has been at the school for longer than any other teacher. Besides, she doesn’t really think her personal life is anyone else’s business. Evidently, her mostly American colleagues clearly disagree if they cared enough to quite literally stalk her on a date.
“Still,” he says, flopping down on the couch next to her. “I guess I just can’t believe so many people think I would do something like that. I wish I could make an announcement to everybody like, ‘Hey, not having an affair, that’s my wife.’” He pauses for a second, and she sees his eyes light up in the way they do when he gets an idea.
“No,” Eva says firmly, because she already knows what he is about to suggest, and she is not going to go through with it.
“C’mon, please?” Ryland asks, making those stupid puppy eyes that he always does when he wants something. “You owe me.”
“I absolutely do not,” she scoffs.
“We wouldn’t even be in this situation if you hadn’t kept me a secret–”
“It wasn’t a secret–”
“Please?” he asks, elongating the syllables with his hands clasped together in front of her face.
She closes her eyes and sighs. “Fine. But only because you are being annoying and I have work to finish.”
Ryland starts clapping excitedly. “I love you!"
She rolls her eyes, already back to answering emails, reluctantly responding, “I love you too. You are still annoying, though.”
~~~
Ryland has to admit, he pays considerably more attention to the announcements now that his wife is the one reading them each morning. He pauses what he’s typing when the intercom beeps and sits back in his chair to listen. He’s more grateful now than ever that he doesn’t have a first block, because he’s pretty sure they would’ve used him listening intently to the announcements as fuel for their rumors. Which he’s still not happy about.
But that’s all going to be cleared up shortly, thankfully. Not that Eva was exactly happy with his idea, but it was the most effective option, and he knew that was why she'd agreed to it. She still doesn’t sound pleased, though, when she sighs after what would normally be the end of the morning announcements and says, “It has come to my attention that there are rumors circulating regarding the personal lives of faculty here at Grover Cleveland.”
Eva sighs again over the PA before continuing in a voice that makes it sounds like it clearly pains her to have to be saying this. “I would like to put an end to these rumors, so I am going to say this once and only once: Dr. Grace and I are not having an affair. We have been married for twenty years.”
She continues to explain something about how it would suit them all in the future to not speculate on the personal lives of others, but Ryland can’t even make out the words she is saying because the classrooms surrounding him erupt into screams and cheers. He distinctly hears several people shout, "I knew it!"
Loudest of all, he hears Olesya Ilyukhina’s cackle from her classroom across the hallway.