Work Text:
You have only been at your new job for about one hour and fifty-four minutes, and already you have spilled scalding hot coffee on your leg, been offered money by a drunk guy to go home with him, and accidentally walked in on someone in the bathroom.
Only four more hours to go.
As you walk to over to the man who just sat down in a booth by the window, you try to repeat your mantra to yourself: this is just temporary, all you need is a little extra cash while you finish your dissertation, and when it’s done you can quit. And if you can’t find a job in your field, well, at least now you have experience in the service industry.
When you reach the edge of the table, you slide an easy smile onto your face and pull your notepad and pen out of your half apron. “Welcome in! Can I get you started with anything to drink? We have coffee, iced tea, Pepsi products, milkshakes. Or do you need a few more minutes?”
The man looks up at you and blinks in surprise, like he was not expecting you to be there. There’s a moment of incredibly irrational panic, where you wonder if you have actually just hallucinated the past two hours, and you don’t actually work here, and everyone is about to laugh at what’s happening right now. (You are running on very little sleep at the moment.) But you look down at your uniform, the pen and paper in your hands, and confirm that, yes, you do work here, and he is the one who is acting weird.
He huffs out a small laugh at whatever expression must be on your face while you go through these mental gymnastics. “Sorry—I come here all the time, and normally they just start making my food when they see me locking my bike up outside, and then someone slides it onto the table without saying anything.”
Oh. Okay, that makes more sense. “They’ve probably already made it, then, and just didn’t tell me.” As if on cue, the bell in the window to the kitchen rings. “I’ll bring it over and try to remember that for next time. Oh—I’ll get you a water, too.”
The man smiles easily at you, and you take a moment to look him over. He seems a little older than you are, probably around five years, maybe a little more, you think, but he’s well-kept, despite the fact that his hair is kind of sticking up all over the place like he hadn’t bothered to brush it after rolling out of bed. Wire-frame glasses that are barely hanging onto the tip of his nose, striking blue eyes, and—okay. Right. You are at your job, and you need to be working, not giving this man the up-down. “I’ll take a coffee as well,” and then he squints down at your name tag, “uh…Gertrude?”
“Ah—yeah, that’s not my name, they just haven’t made my tag yet, but apparently I have to wear one for customer service, or whatever. Even though it’s not right.” You tell him your real name and he nods, probably because it fits a little better than Gertrude does. “I’ll be right back.”
You run over to the window and grab the plate. Pretty standard diner breakfast fare: two pieces of wheat toast, scrambled eggs, some bacon. You return with the food and a glass of water before scurrying off to grab the coffee pot and a mug. “Thank you,” he says, and it should be a little gross because his mouth is already full of food, but you find that it is actually kind of cute.
Stop that, you tell yourself. Don’t crush on this random guy at your workplace. That never ends well. And besides, you don’t have time for dating. Your current chapter was due two weeks ago, and your advisor has started sending you passive-aggressive emails checking on your progress. Sometimes she doesn’t even put anything in the body of the email, just a subject line that says ‘how many pages have you written this week’ in all lowercase. “No problem. Let me know if you need anything else, um…”
“Oh, right. Ryland.” He lifts up the lanyard around his neck, which has a little ID badge titled ‘GROVER CLEVELAND MIDDLE,’ underneath which is a picture of him and his full name, ‘Dr. Ryland Grace.’
There is a lot to comment on here. You think you live pretty close to that school, first of all, but that’s probably the least interesting thing, because you live close to the diner, too, and so he must stop here for breakfast on his way to work. You settle on the picture, because it is laughably bad: he is only sort of smiling, but mostly he looks surprised, like the flash caught him off guard.
Ryland notices you looking at that and grins sheepishly. “Not the best picture, I know. You think I would be used to the flash since I have to get my picture taken every year. But, no. And of course this is the one going in the yearbook, too.”
“That’s…unfortunate. And also amazing.” Your gaze drops to his full name. “What’s your doctorate in?”
“Molecular biology. So, as you might be able to guess, I teach science.”
“Little overqualified for middle school science, huh?”
He smiles, but it’s a little strained. Oops. You don’t know what you said that is causing this reaction, but either way, it’s not good, because you would really like him to leave a nice tip so you can buy groceries later. “You would be surprised. Teaching middle school is not for the faint of heart.” Wonderful. He’s not totally pissed at you. You might actually be able to eat dinner tonight.
You simply nod and look at him for a little longer, and then realize the coffee pot is still in your hands and is starting to tip dangerously toward the floor. “Enjoy your breakfast! And let me know if you need anything. Just call my name—or Gertrude, honestly, either works, because I’ve already started to respond to it.”
“Actually—” His voice stops you from turning around completely. The coffee sloshes in the pot, and you hold it with your other hand to stop it from spilling on your legs (again), and this is a bad idea because the glass is incredibly hot. You keep it there out of spite and embarrassment. His eyes dip down toward your hand, but he does not comment on it. “Could I get some sugar? For the—coffee. Not like that. Just normal sugar.”
Shoot. You forgot to ask him about that. “Of course. Any cream?”
“Nope, just some sugar. Coffee. Coffee sugar.”
Your eyes crinkle a little at the edges. This is very dangerous. He’s cute, and he has a job, and he is most definitely a nerd who is slightly awkward but still polite. “You’re fine. I’ve been working since four AM, and the late drunk crowd was—well, about what you expect. I got comments much worse than asking for some sugar.”
Ryland winces at that but doesn’t say anything else, so you leave to return the coffee pot and grab him one of the sugar containers from the counter. You watch as he immediately grabs it after you place it on the table and dumps an absolutely obscene amount of sugar into his mug. Like, it is so much. Enough that you wonder if the texture of the drink is now equivalent to wet sand. “I have a bit of a sweet tooth,” he offers, a little embarrassed.
“I might have figured that out, yeah.”
He takes a sip of the coffee and sighs contentedly, eyes fluttering shut. Oh, no. This is bad.
You clear your throat. “Let me know if there’s anything else. I’ll be around,” you gesture vaguely toward the rest of the diner, “for the next four hours or so. Not that you’ll be here that long. You know. Job. Not that I’d kick you out or anything. Okay. I’m going to go now.”
His lips pull into a smile as he raises the mug to take another drink. You turn on your heel to check in on your other table and try not to think about how much of a disaster that interaction was.
The diner starts to fill up a little more as the morning breakfast crowd comes in, mostly old couples and blue-collar workers. You do your best to turn up the charm, adjusting your lines based on the customer, hoping to maximize your tips. Your fridge has been depressingly empty for a few days. Maybe they’d let you take something home from the kitchen.
You stop by his table once to ask if he’s still doing good, and then again to refill his water and coffee. Finally, he signals for the check and already has his card out when you return with the receipt.
After you ring him up, you’re about to walk back over to give him his card and the final receipt when you see the bowl of Tootsie Rolls by the register. You grab one and place it on the table in front of him along with a pen. “Have a good day,” you say, and then after a few moments, you tack on, “and have fun with the middle school science. And that sort of stuff.” What is wrong with you?
If Ryland is wondering the same thing, he doesn’t show it, simply taking the candy and sliding it into his pocket before picking up the pen. “Thanks. We’re doing the Krebs cycle, which will be very fun for me, and possibly less fun for them.”
“That sounds…vaguely familiar? I haven’t taken a science class in—a long time. Probably over a decade.” You try to think back, but not a lot comes to you. “Isn’t that, like, really hard? Especially for middle schoolers?”
He grins and looks up at you, reflexively lowering his glasses. He must be far-sighted, you think idly. “I’m a bit of an overachiever.”
This should not affect you in the way that it does, but suddenly you are wondering if that extends to every area in his life. Like physical ones. Okay, that’s enough of that. “Well—good luck with all of that.”
When you return a little later to bus his table, you grab the receipt and look it over. Generous tip! Score! He didn’t think you were a total weirdo! You bring it a little closer to your face and realize that he’s written something on the back, so you turn it over. There’s a little diagram of the Krebs cycle, complete with little pictures and labels.
You are so screwed.
--
He’s back, two days later, when you’re working again. (Technically, he could have come in on the days you weren’t scheduled, but you don’t want to assume.)
“Welcome in,” you call behind you when the door chimes. “Be with you in just a moment.” This morning had been a little slower—no drunk crowd, just a few truck drivers stopping in for food before getting back on the road. You don’t realize that it’s him until you turn around from the coffee machine. “Oh, it’s you! Your food is probably—” The ding interrupts you. Thank you, bell.
After a few minutes, you slide the plate in front of him (two slices of wheat toast, scrambled eggs, bacon) along with a glass of water, a mug, and the sugar canister. You are very proud at how quickly you learned to carry this much stuff over the course of your first shift. “Morning, Ryland,” you smile, pouring out his coffee.
“Morning, not-Gertrude. Your name tag is right, now.” His eyes flick down. He looks about the same as he did two days ago; hair still slightly messy, the wire arms of his glasses begging to be put out of their misery, lanyard resting on top of his tie. It all creates the same fluttery feeling in your stomach that it did then, too. Whatever. Having a harmless crush makes the job more fun. “Oh, you remembered.”
Ryland is already grabbing the sugar and dumping it into his coffee. “Yeah, it’s a little hard to forget when someone pours a metric ton of sugar into their drink. I don’t know how you still have teeth.” He does the thing again, where he takes the first sip and acts like he’s seeing God. Something does a little flip in your chest. “And I have a pretty good memory. Mostly use it for dates and stuff, but it comes in handy for other things.”
He chokes a little on his coffee. That’s weird. “Er, dates? Like—dating?”
“Oh—no, no,” you laugh, “sorry, I can see how that’s confusing. I’m a grad student in history. So years and those sorts of boring things. I can’t even remember the last time I went on a date.” Hm. That was not a normal thing to say to a customer. “Uh, sorry, I don’t know why I said that.”
“It’s. You’re fine.” He takes a long sip of his water. “Grad student, huh? Masters?”
“PhD. Currently ABD, so. I’m kind of in hell.”
“Oh, gosh, I bet. I really do not miss that. How many years do you have left?”
You watch as he starts piling his eggs onto his toast before taking a giant bite. He really doesn’t do things halfway, does he? The overachiever comment from the other day pops into your mind, suddenly, as you watch him catch a stray piece of egg and pop it into his mouth. “Uh, this is supposed to be my last year.”
Ryland glances back up at you. You should probably end this conversation to go check in on the elderly couple at the counter, but you stay standing there anyway. “Supposed to?”
“I might be. Taking a little longer on my dissertation than I should be. My advisor is—she’s not very happy with me, at the moment.”
He smiles and his eyes go a little distant. You think he might be recalling some memory from his own grad student days. “Well, you know what they say. It doesn’t need to be a good dissertation, it just needs to be—”
“A finished one,” you interrupt, a little grin of your own playing on your lips. “Yeah, I think I’ve heard that line before. Once or twice.”
The two of you just stare at each other for a moment. His fingers start messing with the handle of his mug. They’re nice fingers, you think idly. Probably good at lots of things.
Like grading! That’s what you’re thinking of in that moment. You really need to go back to doing your job. “Well, I’ll leave you to your food. Holler if you need anything.”
He does a little mock salute before you walk away. Unfortunately, there are still not that many customers, which is bad both because you would really like more money and also because now you have nothing to do with yourself. You settle on watching him for a little while, promising yourself that this is not creepy. You are simply making sure he doesn’t need anything.
His water is only half empty, but you are really, really bored already, so you walk over to fill it up. “I forgot to ask earlier—how did it go with your students? The Krebs. Thing. Cycle! The Krebs cycle. And the ATP stuff.”
“Glad to see my diagram was helpful.”
“Oh, it was great. Very detailed. You must be a really good teacher.”
His ears start to turn a little pink. It is adorable. You are in so much trouble. “I don’t know about that right now. It’s—I may have overestimated the ability of pre-teens to understand cellular respiration.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” You have the sudden urge to lay a hand on his shoulder. The urge gets stomped down, because this man is a customer, and this is only the second time you have met him, and to top it all off someone has just walked in. “Welcome in! Take a seat wherever you’d like.” You turn your attention back to him. “Sorry, duty calls. Enjoy your mug of wet dirt.”
You hurry away before you can consider this last sentence over any further in your mind, because you are fairly certain it was one of your disastrous attempts at flirting. For some reason, you always default to playful insults, and—look, it’s been a while, what with the dissertation of it all looming over your head. The last time you’d dated was about four years ago, with someone a few years above you in your program. That did not go over well.
The next time you walk by, he asks for the check, and this time you bring it over with a Tootsie Roll and a mint. Those are immediately swiped off the table and stuffed into his jacket pocket.
There’s no diagram on the back of the receipt this time, but there is a drawing of a little cell guy. Next to it is a speech bubble. Apparently, the tiny cell is saying, “Thanks for the glucose!”
You take a picture in case you don’t remember to keep the receipt after you’ve cashed out your tips at the end of the shift.
(This does not happen. You think about the drawing for the next few hours, and before you leave, it gets gently folded and put in your bag. The receipt now lives taped up on your wall next to your desk.)
--
You are scheduled the next three days in a row. He comes in for two of them, Thursday and Friday, and each time you give him some candy with his receipt, and in return you get two more little drawings. One is a diagram of mitosis. The other is a mitochondria, with a very long pun about being the powerhouse of the cell. You wonder how long it took him to think of it, or if he just had that at the ready.
After your shift on Saturday, the day that you do not see him, you buy a variety pack of candy with some of your tip money. You tell yourself that this serves two purposes: one, so you can have a snack while you work. The second one is very obvious, and does not need to be acknowledged.
--
Ryland immediately notices the new candy selection.
“Wow, Skittles? I’m really getting the five-star treatment here.” This time, instead of putting the candy into his pocket like usual, he immediately opens the bag and chucks a few into his mouth. “Thanks. I didn’t even know you guys had these here.”
“Uh, yeah, I guess. I found them—in the back. Where things are stored.” If by ‘in the back’ you mean ‘in your backpack,’ then, yes, you are technically telling the truth. He doesn’t need to know all of that.
“How’s the dissertation coming?” He laughs when he sees the face you’re making. “Sorry. The dreaded question.”
You try to let the grimace slide off your face. “It’s—fine. There are. There are words. In a document.”
“Words are good.”
“When there’s enough of them, sure.” A sigh leaves your lips. “I really need to send in this chapter by the end of the week, but the AC in my shitty apartment isn’t working again, and if I go into the department I’ll just talk to everyone. It’s a problem. I’m probably, like, avoidant or something. I don’t know, I haven’t been to a therapist in a while.” What is it with you and oversharing with this man that you serve breakfast to almost every morning? “Sorry. Anyway, I’m thinking I might come here and try to power through the rest so I have something to give my advisor. At least I’ll have free coffee here.” Because your little Keurig is also broken. You are very, very broke. Hence the waitressing job.
Ryland simply nods along and doesn’t comment on the therapist thing. “A change of scenery might be good. Help the words come a little easier.”
“Here’s hoping.” You watch as he finishes the Skittles, shaking the bag so the last few fall into his mouth. His lips are a little stained from the candy. “Well, anyway. If you see me here in a few days out-of-uniform, feel free to pay your respects. Because I’ll be dying on the inside.”
The laugh that comes out of him is a little startled, as if he wasn’t expecting it to happen himself. You blink. The crush is not staying little, not remaining a tiny thing that you keep in your pocket and take out to pass the time at work.
It’s just been a while, you tell yourself. That’s all.
--
You pick a fantastic day to work in the diner, because it is currently pouring outside. While the rain helps cool things down—and therefore alleviates the AC issue—there’s a leaky roof tile in your shoebox apartment that still hasn’t been fixed despite your numerous maintenance requests. The thing drips incessantly, and the rhythmic noise of the water falling into the bin you’ve placed underneath it drives you absolutely insane.
Really, you need to find a different place to live, one that doesn’t fall apart every other day. But that requires money. Which you do not have. So, instead, you put the bucket down to catch the dripping, hoping that it won’t overflow in the time that you’re gone, and drive to the diner. Normally you just walk, but it is literally apocalyptic outside. Maybe, you decide, if you manage to finish your chapter, you’ll drive to the nearby strip mall and treat yourself to some window shopping. (Again: no money.)
The diner provides just the right amount of background noise to help you settle in. Well, it would, except you’ve been staring at the cursor in your document for about eight minutes straight, like you’re expecting it to do something on its own, but it simply blinks back at you.
The door chimes as it opens, and you reflexively glance up before returning to your staring contest. Then you look up again, because it’s Ryland, and he currently looks like a wet cat, both in terms of misery and being drenched. He sees you after a moment, and you offer him a little wave. (It’s one of those incredibly awkward ones, where you’re worried that the person you’re waving at might not see you, but obviously he’s going to see it, because he’s looking right at you, which just makes it all even more awkward.)
His shoes squeak against the tile flooring the entire time he walks over, until he plops down into the booth to sit across from you. He takes his helmet off and sets it on the table. Water drips from his hair, and one of the little rivulets slides down the bridge of his nose. That is—that’s an image to review later.
“Morning,” Ryland says cheerfully, in spite of the fact that he looked about ready to cry a few minutes ago. “It’s a little damp outside.”
“…Yeah. I think you might have brought the entire Bay in with you.”
Gertrude (whose name tag you borrowed for your first shift) comes by and slides Ryland’s breakfast and a cup of coffee in front of him without a word. Hm. He really doesn’t talk to anyone else who works here, you realize, because otherwise he probably would have made a joke about the chances of two Gertrudes working in the same diner on that first day.
You don’t know what to do with this information.
Nothing comes to you, so you chuck it away somewhere in your mind before sliding the sugar over to him. He smiles gratefully and starts concocting his cement mixture of a beverage. “So. How’s the writing coming?” You say nothing at this, simply resting your elbow on the table and smushing your face into your hand, giving him the most despairing look you can conjure. “That bad, huh?”
A frustrated noise grumbles in the back of your throat. “It’s just—I know what this section needs to do, and I’ve outlined it, but. Every time I write something, it’s shit.”
“Hey, language,” but it’s almost entirely muffled by a piece of toast (wheat) and eggs (scrambled).
“Sorry, Mr. Grace,” you scoff. You’re smiling, though. “I don’t know why I’m having such a problem with this chapter. I thought it would be my favorite one to write, but…”
Ryland swallows his current bite and looks at you for a moment before finally speaking. “Can I see it?”
“What, my dissertation? It’s not exactly easy morning reading.”
He waves his hand and starts sliding your laptop around to face him. “I’ll just look at the abstract and the intro to your current chapter.”
Then the only sounds are him clicking around the headings of your document and the bustle of the diner. This is, possibly, the worst: watching someone read your dissertation right in front of you, with nothing to do but wait for them to finish. At least when you send things off to your advisor, you don’t have to watch her angrily leave comments. Sometimes they highlight entire paragraphs and just say ‘bad.’ Super helpful.
After a little while—but not as long as you expect; he’s a shockingly fast reader—he nods and looks back up at you. “Take my advice with a grain of salt, because this is way out of my field of expertise, but I think you need to move your current section up. It makes more sense to go before the previous one, which seems to me like it’s actually the crux of the chapter.”
You blink at him a few times before slowly dragging your laptop back in front of you. You look at your chapter introduction again, and then skim the section he’s talking about. “Huh. That’s actually—I think you’re right.” You look up at him. “That’s the most helpful advice I’ve ever gotten on this thing. Genuinely. Can you be my advisor?” Ryland simply laughs at that and takes a sip of his coffee. His eyes do the thing. It’s fine. You’re fine. “Seriously, though. How come you’re not in a department somewhere with a cushy office? You’d have grad students lining up out the door.”
The coffee mug is set down gently. “I was, for a little while. Then—well. I might have. Kind of implied that someone wasn’t worth the organic materials they were made up of. At a conference. Um. The UNESCO conference. In Denmark.”
He looks at you while you take in this information. Finally, you say, “This might sound really insensitive. But that’s kind of awesome.”
This draws another laugh out of him, the startled one, and you can’t help the massive grin that grows on your face. “Really? It’s awesome that I insulted one of the most preeminent microbiologists alive and got my funding cut?”
“Well. When you put it like that, it’s less awesome. But do you know how many scholars there are in my field that I would love to call an idiot? There’s a lot,” you answer for him. “Do you miss it?”
“Honestly? No. I actually enjoy my life now.”
“There you go. That’s all any of us can hope for.”
Ryland starts fiddling with the spout of the sugar canister. “Yeah. My colleagues had a slightly different opinion, back then.”
“Fuck ‘em.” You don’t give him the time to call out your language again, even though you know he’s (mostly) joking when he does it. “I mean it. Obviously, I would kind of kill to have been in your position, because getting a tenure-track job feels less likely than winning the lottery, but if you’re happy, who cares what they think? You’re, like, preparing the next generation to be capable citizens, or whatever.”
He doesn’t say anything at that. He simply stares at you for a while with an unreadable expression. This is a new one, one that you haven’t seen on his face before—not that you spend that much time looking at his face (you do)—and you find that you would very much like to know what it means.
You do not get to, because then he’s looking down at his phone, and his eyes go wide. “Shoot. I am going to be so late.” Right after he pulls out some cash and slams it on the table, there’s a loud clap of thunder. The timing is almost comical.
“Ryland. I drove here. Do you want a ride?”
You think he might be getting ready to politely refuse, but then he glances at the window and the way the rain is pummeling the glass. “…Possibly.”
--
“I have to ask,” you say, white-knuckling the steering wheel, because it’s kind of hard to see out the windshield at the moment, and you really need new wiper blades (the reason you have not gotten them should be obvious at this point), “how exactly did you word the thing you said? At the conference?”
He clears his throat beside you. “I believe I called him a ‘staggering waste of carbon.’”
“Oof. That’s good.”
Ryland simply hums and then points out the window. “It’s the next turn, there.”
Then you’re pulling up to the school. It really isn’t that far from the diner. “Here, give me your phone.” You hold your hand out expectantly.
“Uh—why?” He looks at your hand like you’re holding a bomb.
“So I can drive you back to the diner later? Since you had to leave your bike.” It hadn’t fit in the back of your car, because the thing is really just a tiny, glorified bucket of bolts. You wiggle your fingers a little. “Give it here.”
After a few beats, he shifts in your passenger seat to pull his phone out before unlocking it and placing it in your hand. You tap your number in and set your contact as ‘Not Gertrude.’ Hopefully he gets a kick out of that. “Here. Text me when you’re done and I’ll come get you.”
He looks down at the new contact. The corners of his mouth lift up and his nostrils flare a little. “Will do. Thank you, again. Seriously.”
“Of course.” Ryland moves to open the door. “Wait!” You reach your arm back to grab your backpack and then dig around for a little while, until you finally produce a little snack-size bag of Skittles and toss it at him.
It hits his nose, and he does this little surprised squeak as he brings his hands up to catch it. He looks between you, your bag, and the Skittles a few times. “The diner doesn’t keep Skittles in the back.”
“Uh. No. You caught me?”
The new expression is back. You still really want to know what it means. He does not explain. Instead, he opens the car door and runs to the entrance of the school. Just before he vanishes inside, he turns around and gives you a little wave.
--
It is still raining out, though not the absolute downpour it was in the morning, when you get the ‘All done here!’ text from Ryland.
“Oh, thank god,” you breathe, because you think if you have to spend another second writing you will launch yourself into the sun. You quickly gather up your things and holler, “See you guys next week!” to the kitchen before leaving.
The drive to the school is less harrowing than it was earlier, since you can actually see further than five feet in front of your car. You pull up to the curb and park—hopefully you won’t get towed—and then pull out your phone to send a quick ‘here!’ back to him.
Then you wait. And wait. At one point, you realize that you haven’t added him back as a contact, so you spend a few seconds staring at the blank name line before simply putting in ‘Ryland Grace.’ You didn’t have anything funny like ‘Not Gertrude.’
After about five minutes, you start to get restless. “Fuck it,” you mutter, and you turn the car off and step outside. Your car probably won’t get towed. The rain feels kind of nice, so you walk leisurely up to the door. It’s locked, and you have to press the little intercom buzzer. “Uh, I’m here for Ryland Grace?” Nobody says anything back, but you hear the door click.
Hm. Slight wrinkle in the plan. You have no idea where his classroom is. Thankfully, the admin office is right by the front door, so you pop your head in. “Hi. I’m looking for Mr. Grace? I’m just—I’m giving him a ride home, and he didn’t respond to my text so. Now I’m here. Asking where his classroom is.” They probably didn’t need all of that information.
The directions are only slightly confusing—something about taking a left, and then another left, and then the second right, and his classroom is somewhere in that hallway—and you only make one wrong turn on your way there.
“Knock, knock,” you call into the room.
He jumps from where he’s sitting behind his desk. “Oh, crap, sorry. I got distracted—grading—you know how it is.”
You simply hum while he rushes to gather up his things. His classroom is kind of amazing. Plants, dioramas, cute posters, even a model of the solar system hanging from the ceiling. “How long did it take you to put all of this together?”
“Hm? Oh.” Ryland looks at you, then, gazing around the room in awe. “A few years. We don’t get extra money to decorate, so it all had to come out of my own pocket.”
“Damn.” You smile at him. “It’s really nice. I think this proves my point. That you’re a really good teacher.”
“…Thanks.”
It’s quiet, then, and he doesn’t move from where he’s standing. You’re about to ask him about the look, the new one, the one that is on his face again, but you don’t. Instead, you clear your throat. “Ready to go?”
--
Later that night (like, very much later), you finally send your chapter off to your advisor. Ryland had turned out to be entirely correct: moving the section up immediately made everything flow better. The relief that washes over you when you hit ‘send’ is almost indescribable.
You pull out your phone and stare at it for a few seconds before opening your messages up. It’s late, very late, and he’s probably not even awake, but you send him a picture of the email in your ‘sent’ folder anyway. The attached document in the picture reads ‘FINAL final draft 5.4.’
it is done
Then, about five seconds later, you’re picking your phone up again, because he’s already responded. The tiny workplace crush is, possibly, no longer just a crush at all.
That’s awesome!
What are you going to do to celebrate?
idk, probably put a bunch of stuff in my amazon cart and then never buy it
i have no money
in case you didn’t know that by now
I might have realized that at some point
You should actually celebrate, though.
You get up from your desk to lay on your bed. It feels a little like being a high school teenager in a movie.
i’ll probably just go to bob’s
Bob’s? On Sycamore?
yessir
That place is a crap hole.
It is adorable that his no cursing schtick extends to texting. This whole exchange is kind of adorable, actually.
yeah but it’s MY crap hole
wait
that sounds really gross
ignore that
they have cheap drinks and a pool table
what more could a girl ask for
also, sometimes the bartender gives me a free shot if i flirt with him a little
He doesn’t respond right away, and you bite your lip nervously. Was that too many texts in a row? Or maybe it was the bartender thing. You’re about to type out ‘jk but really it’s just close to my apartment’ when you finally get another text.
When do you think you’ll go?
You really, really hope this is implying what you think it is.
probably tomorrow night honestly
it IS a friday after all
tgif and all that
and i don’t work on saturday so. no need to worry about the hangover
What time?
This is silly. The excitement that you are feeling right now is just silly. The thought does not stop your cheeks from hurting at how much you’re smiling.
like 7
that way i can get drunk and still go to bed at a reasonable time
i’m not as young as i used to be
You stare and stare as the three little dots come up, and then disappear, and then reappear again. Finally:
I’m really bad at pool
Like, really bad.
Disastrously bad.
that’s ok
loser buys the winner a drink? :)
I was probably going to do that anyway
You’re broke, remember?
ouch
you wound me
Am I wrong?
…no
I’ll see you tomorrow
:)
You stare at the smiley face until your eyes start to drift shut, and you fall asleep holding the phone to your chest. It is very teen rom-com, and it is wonderful.
--
Ryland is right: Bob’s is a crap hole.
It is dark, and a little dingy, and the bar is cash only, and the door handle to the bathroom sticks a little. It is, possibly, your favorite place in this entire city, because it’s been there for you through everything: moving, getting over the breakup with that older grad student, passing your qualifying exams, birthdays, everything.
You take it all in with a small smile as you wait, sipping on your drink and guarding the pool table with your life. It’s really not necessary, because it’s only seven, and for now there’s only a few regulars sitting at the bar and a couple making googly eyes at each other in a booth.
A little bit of the condensation from your glass drips onto your jeans, and you frown and try to dab at it with a napkin. You spent way too long, probably, getting ready and trying to figure out what to wear, because it is unclear to you whether this is a date or a friends sort of thing. You know he’s single, obviously, he’s mentioned it before, but you are starting to nervously spiral a little bit. What if he doesn’t like that you’re a little younger? This thought seems a little silly, because you are swiftly closing in on thirty, but—maybe he’s just really weird about it.
All of that is to say that you settled on jeans and a somewhat cute top, because ultimately you are in a dive bar, and you are very serious about winning at pool and getting that drink. A complicated outfit will not be getting in the way.
The door finally opens again, and Ryland walks in. The place is tiny, so it does not take him long to spot you by the pool table. He is—he looks very cute, your mind supplies unhelpfully. His shirt has the periodic table on it, and underneath it reads ‘I WEAR THIS SHIRT PERIODICALLY.’ His jeans. Fit him very well. And the dirty canvas shoes are right at home in the bar.
Finally, you notice that his hair is slightly styled. Not much, and it’s still a little messy, but it seems deliberately ruffled, rather than the afterthought it usually is.
You do not have the chance to consider this any further, because he’s stopped walking to stand right in front of you. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
“Congrats on the chapter.”
“Thanks.”
“You already have a drink.”
You look down at the glass in your hand. You had already forgotten it was there. “I might have gotten here a little early. To scope out the pool table.”
“I see.” He glances behind you at the table, then, which you have already inserted quarters into, and the pool balls are already racked. “I’ll go grab a drink,” he nods towards the bar. But then he doesn’t move, not yet. “Is that the bartender?”
“Uh. Yeah.” You are wishing you had not shared that little tidbit with him.
Ryland nods and seems to be turning something over, very carefully. “Maybe—don’t flirt with him tonight.”
There’s no time to ask why, because he’s already walking away to order something. You already didn’t have any plans to flirt for a free shot, anyway, but now you almost want to, just to see what Ryland would do.
You watch him walk away and then lean against the bar top. You’re not—you’re not looking at anything in particular.
Okay, just one little look.
How are you supposed to—this is so unfair.
--
“You lied to me,” you say accusingly. “You are such a liar.”
He sinks another striped ball and walks around the table. “In my defense, I really thought you were going to be a lot better. You were the one who brought up pool in the first place.”
You gasp with mock offense. “I can’t believe you just said that to me. On today, of all days, when we’re celebrating my dissertation chapter.”
Another ball shoots into a pocket. “I’ll still buy you a drink.”
“Absolutely not. I need to win that drink. It’s about the principle.”
Ryland finally misses—likely only because there really weren’t any good angles—and you step up to the table. “I think you should—”
“Don’t coach me. The principle.” You line up your shot very, very carefully. “Watch. This is where the comeback starts.” If anyone were to ask you about your positioning right now, you would very tactfully answer that there is nothing purposeful about the way you lean over the table or the arch of your back.
You take a deep breath and—“Son of a bitch!” He raises his eyebrows when you stand up, a smile playing on his lips. “Don’t even, we’re in a bar.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Yeah, but you thought it.”
Your brain kind of can’t handle the look he’s giving you at the moment, so you turn your attention back to the table. Of course, you’ve given him the perfect angle, and he wastes no time to—
He misses.
You narrow your eyes at him. Ryland simply shrugs. “Lost my grip.”
“Uh-huh.”
He lifts his beer to his lips, watching you the entire time with a grin. “And I didn’t re-chalk before my shot.”
“Everyone knows that the chalk is just to look cool. It doesn’t do anything,” you scoff.
The bottle stills against his mouth, and then he slowly lowers it. “That’s not—I need you to know that that is not true. There’s a physics to it and everything.”
In your mind, there was a version of tonight where he did the incredibly cheesy move of wrapping his arms around you to show you how to use the pool stick. Apparently, the real version is him animatedly explaining the physics of pool, how factors like spin and angle affect the shot, the way to account for the friction of the table.
It is, you find, much better than the version you cooked up in your brain, because he’s looking at you the whole time, blue eyes wide with excitement, waving his hands around so much that his beer has started to slosh dangerously.
“Alright. Did all of that make sense?”
“I’m going to be so honest. I checked out for a while there. But I appreciate how enthusiastic you were.”
“What was that you were saying yesterday about me being a good teacher?”
You grin and stick your tongue out a little. You hope the way your nose is scrunching is cute and not stupid. “You are. I’m just a bad student.”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “There are no bad students. It just takes patience to figure out how they learn. What’s your learning style?” His voice drops a little at the question. Your fingers tighten around the cue stick. Being asked your preferred method of learning should not be affecting you in the way that it currently is.
There are options here. Either you play it safe, crack a joke, and take a shot that you will probably miss. Or. “I’ve always been a pretty tactile learner.”
Ryland hums. “I see.” Then he walks around the table and stands behind you. “Line up your shot,” he murmurs. You think that you might explode, because actually, it turns out, you do get to have the version of the night you concocted in your mind while getting ready.
It is suddenly very difficult for you to concentrate on anything, but you step forward and lean down, aiming for the red ball in front of the back right pocket. His arms come around you, then, and his hands slide over yours. You watch his fingers curl around your left hand. Yes, you think, his fingers are good for a lot of things.
“Keep your dominant eye focused. Aim right for the center since you have a pretty dead-on angle. The friction coefficient is around—”
“Ryland,” you whisper, “that means nothing to me.”
“Right. Just—hit it really hard, so the cue ball doesn’t go into the pocket. You want all of the momentum to transfer to the red ball.” His thumb smooths over your knuckles. Something swirls in your stomach.
You nod and try to ignore the way you can feel your hair catching slightly on his stubble. “Great. Hit it hard. Actionable advice, thank you.”
You draw the pool cue back. His arm moves with you, but he’s careful not to contribute any of his own force to the motion. After a few practice slides, you hit the cue ball for real, and it rolls into the red ball with a crack and stops. The red ball shoots forward into the pocket.
“Yes!” The two of you stand up, and you turn around to give him a high five. Ryland just smiles widely as he looks down at you. That look crosses his face again, and you realize how close you’re standing, and that his cheeks have started to tinge red, but—well. You really want him to buy you a drink. And you’re having fun, a lot of fun, and you want to enjoy it for as long as you can, just in case you are reading all of this wrong and it goes south later. “You’re going down. I am the queen of pool now.”
He shakes his head in disbelief. “One ball sunk and suddenly you’re trash talking. I’ve created a monster. Also, what about that whole principle thing earlier? About not being coached?”
“Fuck the principle, I want my free drink.”
You’re taking a sip of your current drink, the one you bought with your hard-earned tip money (which makes you realize that he’s kind of already bought you a drink, in a sense), when he suddenly blurts out, “Please don’t fuck my principal,” and then you’re choking and laughing, and a little bit of club soda is coming out of your nose, probably, because the joke is already pretty funny but is made that much better with the curse word. You wonder if that’s a very small reason he is so uptight about not cursing; he can wield those words with so much more effectiveness when he does use them.
He hands you a napkin so you can clean up the mess dripping from your face, and for a beat you’re a little worried that you look ridiculous, but he’s still smiling and looking at you with what you’re pretty sure is fondness.
You miss your next shot, and you find that you don’t really care.
--
Ryland does not let you win, because he is, as you have just discovered, intensely competitive. He still buys you your next drink, which you are now sipping on as you sit across from him in one of the booths along the wall.
“I still think,” you say around your straw, “that I could have pulled that off.”
“How so?” He leans his elbow on the table and rests his cheek on the heel of his palm, lifting one finger up to lower his glasses a little. Which feels unfair, but, whatever.
“It’s a feeling.”
“A feeling.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Doesn’t seem like a ‘feeling’ is based on much evidence.”
You scoff playfully and wave a dismissive hand. “You scientists and your evidence.”
His smile grows. You are pretty sure the two of you have not stopped smiling since he walked into the bar. “Aren’t historians pretty nitpicky about their evidence, too?”
“Irrelevant.”
It seems like he’s about to say something else, but whatever it was going to be is interrupted with a yawn. “Sorry, sorry.”
Right. He worked all day today. You’re surprised he’s still upright. “No, you’re fine. We can finish these and head out, you should sleep.”
It’s his turn to wave dismissively at you. “I’ll be alright.”
“It’s okay. Seriously. I had a really good time tonight. My chapter feels properly celebrated.”
“Good. I know I didn’t read the finished product, but—it was good. You’re a strong writer. Really vivid voice. And you made it really easy to follow along.”
Your face feels warm. “Well, that’s—I mean, you have a doctorate. You have lots of practice reading things like that.”
“Biology articles? Sure. History dissertations? Not so much. But I never felt confused when I was reading it.” He clinks his beer against your glass. “Take the compliment.”
“Okay.” You bring your drink to your lips at the same time he does, and the two of you simply look at each other, long after your drinks have returned to the table. There are—you have a lot of things going on in your mind, at the moment, and a question that you would really like to ask, and you’re pretty sure it’s going to go over well, but.
It pains you to admit it, but you are a little nervous, because it has been quite a while since you’ve done this, and the thing that started out as a little crush at work has turned into something so much larger, a thing that you really do not want to fuck up, and you’re realizing that it’s becoming a lot like your dissertation. It is not a thing that you do not want to do; actually, you want to do it so badly, and it is so important, and you are putting it off because there is comfort in remaining in that in-between stage, of being able to say that you’re doing it but never actually seeing it through.
“Okay,” you repeat, standing up, because this has suddenly become a lot. “I am going to go commandeer the TouchTunes now.”
“…Alright?”
The machine doesn’t like the first dollar you try to put in, which is fair, because you’re pretty sure the customer who gave it to you had used it to snort coke. The second dollar, after some smoothing, is accepted. Score. You scroll through different songs before just typing in one of your go-to’s.
A few seconds later, the song is filtering through the shitty speakers of Bob’s, and you slide back into the booth. “Tears for Fears. Nice,” he comments.
“Thanks. To be honest, this is the only song I know by them.”
“Hey, a classic’s a classic for a reason.”
The two of you go back to looking at each other. You try to steel yourself, because, just like your dissertation, this is a thing that ultimately needs to be seen through. All the way to the end. “I have a question.”
“Shoot.” Ryland makes a little finger gun. It is extremely cute and slightly soothes the nerves bunching up in your chest.
You turn your gaze down to your drink as you swirl the straw around the ice cubes. “Was this a date? Wait, I probably should have led up to that a little more. Except I don’t really know how. Okay. Like I said, it’s been a while since I’ve been on one, and I think I might be a little bit rusty, and I kind of like you a lot, but I have no idea if I’ve been reading all of this wrong. You have this look, you see, and I think I know what it means, but I’ve never asked, and I also don’t know if you’re weirded out by the age gap thing, which I’ve also never asked about either. And. I’m going to stop, now.”
If there’s a God up there, you think, please let the floor open up and swallow you now, because that was probably the worst speech you think you could have given.
But then he’s saying your name, quietly, and you look up at him. “Yeah. You’ve been—your read of the signals is correct. Very correct. I don’t, uh, I don’t leave little drawings for all of my waitresses.”
“That’s good. Good to know. That would probably hurt my feelings.” You feel like you’re about to start giggling like a maniac, because all of the tension in your chest is dissolving, leaving only giddiness.
He seems to be feeling something similar, but then he looks confused for a moment. “Also, ‘age gap thing’? Aren’t you almost thirty?”
“Yeah. Don’t remind me.”
“Hey now. And I’m pretty sure that’s around when that stops mattering.” Another beat. “How old do you think I am?”
“It varies. Sometimes it gets up to sixty because you order the same thing for breakfast from a diner every day of the week. Then it lowers down to upper teens when I watch you pour the entire sugar canister into your coffee. Seriously. I am concerned you are going to develop a health condition.”
Ryland laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and you giggle right along with him, and in a burst of confidence you reach forward and put your hand on his, and you’re thrilled when it shifts to hold your fingers gently.
“Do you—would you like to go somewhere else?” You ask. “Like. A secondary location. But not the kidnapping kind.”
His thumb brushes over your knuckles, just like it had when he was helping you line up your shot in pool earlier. “Your song isn’t finished.”
You shrug. “We can come back another night and I can play it again. I have lots of singles. Some of them don’t work because I think they were used for cocaine.” You pause. “I’m realizing that I sound like a stripper right now.”
He snorts and squeezes your hand. “Yeah, we can go to a secondary location. I’d like that. As long as it’s not, you know, the kidnapping kind. That’s a non-negotiable.”
He keeps holding your hand as you both get up out of the booth, as you walk out the door and into the night air. Neither of you finished your drinks, you realize, but that’s fine. He’ll probably buy you another.
--
epilogue
“Welcome to my crib.”
Ryland takes in your shitty apartment. You had cleaned up a little earlier, in a spurt of confidence, although the bin that you use to catch the water leaking from the ceiling is still out, because it hadn’t finished raining until this morning. “Wow. This is. It is really a place that someone lives in.”
You punch his shoulder then, lightly, and smile while you kick off your shoes and flick the lights on. “Yeah. I really need to move out. But that requires—”
“Money,” he says at the same time you do. “If it makes you feel any better, you won’t be living on a grad student stipend forever.”
“Here’s hoping.” You walk into your tiny kitchen, then, and call over your shoulder. “You can sit wherever. And by wherever, I mean on the couch, because that’s the only seating I have. Do you want anything to drink? I have—” You peer into your depressingly empty fridge. “Well. There’s water, a half-drunk bottle of Sprite, and vodka. So. Pick your poison.”
“I’m fine. What’s up with the unfinished Sprite?”
You take a quick drink of water before padding over to the living room. “It’s a chaser. For the vodka.”
“Of course.”
Ryland is sitting on the couch, and it’s very cute, because he’s trying to be polite but is also incredibly restless, if the way his knee bounces up-and-down says anything. You climb onto his lap. “Hi.”
“Hey there.” He looks up at you at that, his hands coming up to rest on your hips, and you carefully take his glasses off and set them behind you on your thrifted coffee table. “I kind of can’t see without those.”
“That’s fine. If we do something that requires seeing, you can have them back.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Then, before you lose your nerve, you draw your hands up to cradle his face and kiss him, sweetly at first, until you open your mouth, and he groans as you lick along his bottom lip. He squeezes your hips, and his fingers mess with the hem of your shirt a little before slipping underneath it to run along your skin. Yep, your guess is still holding, his fingers are great.
You are about to start grinding down onto him when there is a loud crash, and then the two of you are jumping, and you look behind you. The leaking ceiling tile has, apparently, chosen this moment to collapse onto the floor and knock over the bin of water for good measure.
His chest is shaking with laughter when you lean your head against his shoulder and groan. “Can we just ignore that for now and go back to what we were doing, please?”
“Counteroffer,” he says, still laughing, “I help you clean that up, and then we can resume. And then in the morning you will put in a maintenance request.”
“Deal. And they don’t really respond to those. Hence the ceiling tile that just fell.”
“I probably should have guessed that.”
In the morning, you can’t cook him breakfast because there’s nothing in your fridge, but you order it for him as the next best thing—wheat toast, scrambled eggs, and bacon—and put it onto a plate in the kitchen, wearing nothing but his periodic table shirt and your underwear, as if you had actually cooked it yourself. He comes up behind you and kisses the side of your neck.
The eggs get cold. When you finally eat, you dig through one of your cabinets to produce a fistful of Splenda packets. He dumps each and every one into the mug of instant coffee that you make him.