He looked confused, his smile faltering. “I’m sorry. Have we met?” He blinked. “You do look familiar, but I—”
“At the leather bar,” I said, and immediately the kids started whispering around us. I rolled my eyes. Of course they’d pick up on that. “I was with Jeremy outside.”
His eyes widened. “Oh. Oh.” And I couldn’t fault him for the way he looked me up and down. Today I was wearing a Michael Kors knockoff dress, checkered black and gray with a floral pattern at the hem. I wore suede sandals, and my toenails were painted blue. Sandy had done them for me the night before, even though I told him I could do it myself. He’d knocked my hands away and babbled on about how Darren was stupid about this or that, and could I just believe it?
I could.
Griffin recovered admirably. I had to give him credit, even as I wanted to show him the door. His smile returned. “Right. I remember you. You were wearing something… different. Didn’t recognize you. How are you?”
“Good,” I said. “Jeremy doesn’t know you’re coming? Shame. We’re awfully busy right now. I know he’s reviewing applicants to take over as director, so he probably won’t have time to—”
“Griffin?”
Griffin looked away from me, and his smile grew. “Hey, Jeremy. Hope you don’t mind I stopped by. Kind of wanted to see where you were spending your summer.” He jostled the bag again. “Brought food too.”
I looked over to see Jeremy standing near the hallway, brow furrowed. He wore navy blue slacks and a purple dress shirt. He looked handsome standing there with his hands in his pockets.
Griffin must have thought so too, because he pretty much forgot the rest of us were there as he walked toward Jeremy. “This place is great! Man, I wish I’d had something like this when I was younger. Probably would have saved me a lot of grief.”
I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about him. After the whole let’s-jack-off-near-each-other fantastic funfest, it’d slipped my mind that Griffin had been after Jeremy. Now I was kicking myself for it.
It certainly didn’t help that I was learning that I could be an irritatingly jealous person. I’d never been that way before, and the fact that it was rearing its ugly head at this very moment was an eye-opening experience I wished I didn’t have.
“Yeah,” Jeremy said slowly. “It’s pretty great. Why don’t you come back to my office? Let everyone up here continue working.” He looked over at us. “Pizza’s on its way, guys. And yes, there’s one that’s half anchovies. Taylor, you’re gross, and you better eat all of it.”
Taylor, a baby dyke with gauged ears, grinned at him as she flipped him off. “Yeah, yeah. Go with your hottie lunch date. Condoms are in the bin if you need them.”
The rest of the kids laughed.
I didn’t think it was particularly funny and almost told Taylor she should reconsider her apparent career choice as a comedian, but who was I to crush dreams of the young?
Griffin bumped his shoulder against Jeremy’s. “Seems like they’ve got your number.”
Jeremy rolled his eyes. “They like to give me grief.” He glared at the kids. “But I’ve got my eye on every single one of them. And I’ll remember faces if I ever have any of them in my classes.”
Taylor gasped dramatically as the others started whispering again.
Jeremy glanced at me, smiling tightly.
Seeing as how it was none of my business, I waved him off. He hesitated as if he were going to say something else but shook his head instead. “Come back to my office, Griff. I’ve got a little bit of time.”
Griff. Ugh.
The kids hooted and hollered as they disappeared around the corner. All but Kai, of course. Kai was staring at me with a weird expression on their face.
“What?” I asked them.
They shook their head. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
A LITTLE bit of time, apparently, wasn’t the five or ten minutes I had envisioned. They were still behind a closed door forty minutes later, and even though I trusted Jeremy, I had to stop myself multiple times from going into my own office to listen through the vent.
I sighed as I paid the pizza delivery guy, hot boxes being shoved into my arms as he saluted me and went back outside.
The kids swarmed me when I turned around. One did not fuck with ravenous teenagers, and I was lucky I escaped with all my fingers still attached. Marina had plates and napkins set out on an old folding table, and I grimaced as the horde descended on the food. Teenagers in a feeding frenzy weren’t pretty.
I was sitting on a chair away from the others, staring down at my phone, chiding myself for being an idiot, wondering if a CODE ORANGE BANANA was necessary. But then I remembered t
hat Sandy and the others had no idea about any of this, and I couldn’t think of a way to be vague enough about it without giving anything away.