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Deja closed her office door at exactly two on the dot, and someone knocked before she could even get back to her desk. She exhaled in annoyance, turned, and wrenched the door open again. Her work smile shifted into an actual smile at the sight of Alejandro standing in the hallway, a cup of coffee in each hand.
“Ready?” he asked, entirely too cheerful for this meeting.
She turned around and muttered, “No.”
The door closed behind him. “Sounds like you’re having a great day.”
Deja grabbed her notebook, a pen, and her phone.
“I swear, I haven’t had a moment to rest since...” Her voice trailed off as the smile on Alejandro’s face widened.
He smiled at her as if they shared a dirty secret, because they did, a good and dirty one.
“Since when?” he asked, prodding playfully at her silence. In barely five seconds, his voice had dipped from happy to aroused, deeper and warm, and Deja could feel it across her skin.
“We promised we wouldn’t do that here,” she whispered. Her mouth was suddenly dry.
“Do what? It’s just a question.”
Deja turned to her desk, swiping at the sweat on her upper lip. “I need to turn the heater down,” she muttered to herself.
Alejandro laughed softly behind her.
She grabbed the water bottle on her desk, sipped, and then walked across the room to turn the heater down. When she turned back to Alejandro, she avoided looking him in the eyes. The last thing she needed was to let him make her horny before a meeting where all eyes would be on them.
“Shouldn’t we get to this meeting?” she asked.
He stepped to the side and nodded at her office door. “After you,” he said.
“Alejandro,” she whispered, walking toward the door.
“Deja,” he whispered back as she passed him.
Deja opened the door to Marie’s hand, raised as if she was about to knock.
“Well, well, well, what have we here?” Marie sang as her eyes lifted to see Alejandro behind Deja.
“We’re just heading up to the meeting,” Deja said defensively.
“Mmmmhmm,” Toni replied from the hallway.
Deja rolled her eyes and stepped into the hallway. “You two could have gone to the conference room without us. Why are you here?” She closed and locked her door after Alejandro exited.
“Us,” Marie whispered to Toni with a smug grin.
Alejandro laughed. Deja let out a frustrated breath.
“We went to the conference room, but Mike was there with Layla Morgan. Hard pass,” Toni replied.
“You two left Mike with Layla?” Alejandro asked.
“If he wanted to be saved, he should have said something,” Toni said with a shrug.
“Why is she even on this committee again?”
Deja rolled her eyes and turned to Alejandro. He raised his hands in supplication. “She overheard Dean Ward talking to me about it last month and asked to join. I couldn’t say no, especially not in front of the Dean. No one asks for more service.”
Deja sighed. “What’s done is done. Let’s just go,” she said, a knot of tension forming in her gut.
***
Meetings go south every day in so many ways, but Deja had assumed that a first meeting just to put all the committee members in the same room for a brainstorming session would be the easiest meeting of her day. Certainly, easier than going through a student’s essay draft line-by-line. And while there were still so many things Deja still didn’t know about how the university functioned, apparently expecting a smooth meeting was the height of naivete.
She was surprised into speechlessness. Shocked at first, and then angered.
To be fair, she and Alejandro had handpicked their friends and faculty of color they trusted to be on the committee; Toni, Mike, and Marie, alongside Dr. Keith Tolentino, one of the few full professors of color in the Art department. They were great. But the problems started as soon as the committee veered away from their handpicked members. Layla had spent most of the meeting looking at Alejandro as if she wanted to eat him and wasn’t at all worried that the other people in the room would notice. The Dean had asked for one of the Associate Deans, Martin Stampp, to sit in as ex-oficio. He was less of a problem than dead weight, since he’d sat down, introduced himself, and then promptly dozed off for the rest of the meeting. And then there was Caroline Enwright, chair of the Women’s Studies department, another of the Dean’s appointments.
Deja knew of her by name and had seen her at events around the College. She’d even probably met to her at some point, though she didn’t remember it. As soon as Caroline had introduced herself, Deja knew she wasn’t going to like working with her. It had only gone downhill from there. Caroline was out of touch with student needs, especially the needs of students of color, and she was dismissive of their challenges and downright hostile toward developing programs for their success, which was the entire purpose of this committee. She was also openly condescending to Deja and Marie because they were junior and adjunct faculty. In a nutshell, she was every stereotype of older white women in academia rolled into one thin-lipped, passive-aggressive, elitist form. And in kitten heels to boot.
What should have been a cordial discussion quickly devolved as Caroline talked down to Marie, who just shut down and stopped talking in the first ten minutes. Deja had balled her hands into fists, her body boiling with rage. She wanted to tell Caroline that she should step down from her high horse since Marie, who taught more classes than anyone else in the room, also taught more students of color than them. She was also, as an instructor, overworked and underpaid, and this service assignment was something she’d agreed to because she cared about her students, not because she was looking for yet another line on her CV. But Deja had long since conditioned herself to be deferential to senior faculty as part of her life on the tenure track, so she shut down soon after Marie.
The strain of keeping her mouth shut was too much for Deja to bear. She began to beat herself up internally for not speaking up on her friend’s behalf. Deja thought of herself as a principled person, but she sat in that meeting and had to wonder if that was true anymore. Had it ever been?
Meanwhile, Toni and Mike tried to work through Caroline’s contrary contributions while Alejandro tried to keep the meeting moving along so they could cover the goals he and Deja had outlined, while Layla hung on his every word but didn’t make any meaningful contribution.
It was a mess of a first committee meeting, and Deja wanted nothing more than to back out of this entire endeavor and run for the hills.
***
“Okay,” Alejandro said, a little louder than he meant, cutting Caroline off mid-sentence. “I think that’s enough for today. Deja and I,” he stressed the words while looking Caroline in the eye, a not-so-subtle reminder that they were the committee’s co-chairs, “will go over what we’ve talked about and send the minutes and points of consideration before our next meeting.”
It was only sheer force of will that made his voice sound calm and professional, because he felt as if his head was about to explode. This meeting had been a disaster. A big one.
“Have a great evening, everyone,” he said through gritted teeth.
Associate Dean Stampp woke up right in that moment, placed both hands on the conference table and stood. “Great work, everyone,” he said and turned toward the door.
Caroline darted after him. “Dean Stampp, do you have a second?” she asked in a voice that sounded like nails on a chalkboard to Alejandro.
“I’ve gotta run to class,” Toni said. She grabbed Marie’s wrist and squeezed. “I’ll call you later, okay?” Marie didn’t answer, and it made Alejandro feel terrible.
“Where’s your class?” Mike asked Toni.
“Paul,” she said.
“I’m going that way, I’ll walk you.” Toni nodded and headed for the door. Mike turned to look at Alejandro with tired eyes. “I’ll call you later.”
Alejandro nodded at him and then Keith as they left the room.
In a whirlwind, Marie stood from her chair and grabbed her bag. She mumbled a goodbye to Deja before rushing from the room.
The only people left were him, Deja, and Layla, and Alejandro felt terrible, but he really wanted Layla to just fucking leave.
Instead, she turned to him with a smile. “Alejandro, do you have a second?”
“Actually—” Alejandro started, but Deja cut him off.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” she said, grabbing her pad of paper and cell phone.
“Deja?” Alejandro called, his face almost hurting with the depth of his frown.
She turned to him and put on her best collegial smile, which only conveyed a fraction of the warmth of her real smile, the smile she’d given him just this morning in her bed. “I’ve got some grading to do,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “I’ll email you later.”
Alejandro’s mouth fell open in shock as he watched her walk swiftly and silently from the room.
“So, Alejandro,” Layla whispered in a seductive tone.
He turned to her and had to force himself not to roll his eyes. He knew Layla had a crush on him. He wasn’t interested. He didn’t care. But he’d never been great at letting people down personally. “What can I help you with, Layla?” he ground out.
She smiled at him and leaned forward, laying her breasts on the table for him to see. He looked away.
“Now that everyone is gone, I just wondered...” She took a deep breath, and Alejandro felt his entire body seize. “This might be forward, but I was wondering if you wanted to get a drink sometime.”
“I’m seeing someone,” he blurted out. He’d struggled with deciding whether or not to tell Sheila this fact earlier, but not now, not with the memory of Deja’s sad smile in his mind. He saw Layla’s face crumple, but he didn’t sit around to help her through this rejection; it wasn’t his job. Besides, he stood with an angry heat in his limbs because Layla had kept him from comforting Deja.
He was mad at her and himself and Caroline and the whole situation. This was not how he’d expected this meeting to go.