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MARCH
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Deja’s mother believed chores were the best kind of therapy.
She didn’t believe in therapy, but if it existed, she believed that it came in the form of a Luther Vandross playlist on Spotify and enough bleach to burn her nose hairs. Deja had spent years trying to convince her that her definition of therapy was skewed, but when times were hard, she fell right back into that childhood conditioning, cleaning everything she could find. It was even worse when she couldn’t sleep, and Deja hadn’t been able to sleep much for the past few weeks. Every time she tried to calm her brain and fall asleep, she’d hear someone’s office door closing while she held Alejandro’s sticky, softening dick in her hands, and she’d be wide awake again.
She’d been up most nights with her headphones in — because she wasn’t a terrible neighbor — listening to Luther and Prince and Tina and Aretha, trying to tire herself out enough to sleep for a few hours at a time. She’d also taken to slinking into her office, so she didn’t have to see any of her colleagues. And she didn’t look anyone in the eye when she ran into them in the hallway. She’d even pretended to be sick to miss a faculty meeting because her brain had conjured a truly ridiculous scenario where someone would pull her aside and out themselves as the person who’d almost certainly heard her and Alejandro’s mutual masturbation session.
But she couldn’t avoid everything forever and she needed to sleep. After almost three weeks, she was burnt out — even more burnt out than normal — and she didn’t have a concealer opaque enough to hide the dark circles under her eyes anymore. She was up most of last night cleaning before she conked out at three, slept fitfully for about four hours, then got up to clean some more. She was so busy that she didn’t immediately hear the alarm on her phone blaring at her to get in the shower before Alejandro arrived. By the time she heard it, she was behind schedule and had to rush to get ready in time.
She’d just swiped on her best red lipstick when her apartment’s intercom rent the silence in her apartment. She jumped and smeared some of the lipstick on the tip of her chin. “Shit,” she muttered to herself. She grabbed a tissue from the box on her bedside table and dabbed carefully at her chin, trying not to dislodge the foundation underneath. She didn’t have time to redo her entire face.
The buzzer blared again, and she jogged toward her front door.
“I’m up,” she accidentally screamed into the speaker. “Sorry.”
Alejandro’s laughter greeted her once she took her finger off the button to speak. “You ready?” he asked. “Or do you need me to come inside?”
Deja shook her head with a smile. She knew what he was insinuating, and if her stomach wasn’t tied tight with knots, she might have let him, but she really couldn’t do her makeup again, and they had an appointment to keep.
“No, you freak,” she laughed. “Give me a minute to grab my bag.”
“I’ll show you freak...” he mumbled into the intercom.
Deja laughed as she walked to her office to collect her things for work, her steps already so much lighter.
***
“Wait here,” Alejandro said after he put his car in park in the faculty parking lot closest to Mark Hall and the administrative building. He placed his hand on Deja’s knee, turning to look at her to cement the point, and waited until she smiled and nodded.
He pushed his own door open and stepped out into the still cool air. It was almost spring, but it had just snowed a few days ago and there were still icy, dirty chunks of it in the gutters and in between the parked cars. He walked carefully around the back of his car, taking the time to compose himself. Deja was so nervous she’d looked near tears when he’d picked her up this morning. Actually, every time he’d seen her in the past few weeks, it had seemed like some small part of her — some tiny thing he loved — was slowly eroding.
He rounded the car to the passenger side and immediately met Deja’s eyes in the side mirror. She smiled at him, and he smiled back, hoping that after today, things would be different.
Alejandro pulled Deja’s door open and offered her his hand.
“I can get out of a car on my own,” she said, squinting up at him.
“I’ll remember that,” he said, still holding his hand out to her.
She sighed before finally letting him help her from the car. They pulled their bags from his backseat and Alejandro held his hand out to Deja.
Her eyes widened. “We can’t,” she hissed.
“Yeah. We can.”
Being able to hold Deja’s hand on campus was the entire reason they were both on campus today even though Deja didn’t teach, and Alejandro didn’t have to teach his graduate course until this evening. If they hadn’t taken this nine o’clock appointment with Human Resources, they’d have had to wait until mid- or late April, and while Alejandro hadn’t wanted to push Deja, he had.
She’d been so terrified after they’d heard that door slam that her eyes filled with tears and she'd started shaking in his arms. He’d watched as the fear of being discovered caused her to fall completely apart in his arms.
When the hallway was quiet, Alejandro had jumped into action. He’d cleaned them both up with a bottle of water and paper towels from her desk and rushed her to his car and his apartment and then he held her until she cried herself to sleep, mumbling that her career was over until she passed out.
Toni’s voice was a faint echo in his head the entire night. He hadn’t doubted her, not necessarily, but he realized that night that she’d been absolutely right. Deja was one of the smartest people he’d ever met — on a campus full of smart people. She was also stronger and more resilient, and if she was this on edge all the time... He couldn’t fathom it. So, he’d pushed her to take the earlier meeting with HR. It wouldn’t fix all the problems, but it would at least take the fear that they’d be discovered off her plate. Something was better than nothing.
He held out his hand to her because he wanted to remind her that they were in this together, and because he just wanted to hold her hand. It could be as simple as that.
She ducked her head to hide her smile and slid her small hand into his and they resumed walking toward the administrative building.
“See,” he said to her, “this isn’t so bad.”
“Shut up,” Deja laughed.
***
Two hours later and Deja felt as if she’d stepped into a brand-new world, on a brand-new campus.
“That’s it?” she asked Alejandro for the third time since they’d stepped onto the elevator after leaving the HR office.
“That’s it.”
“But like... how?”
He turned to her with bunched eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“I thought they would like... interrogate us or something. Ask for documentation? Something more than make us sign a bunch of paperwork.”
“Is HR the CIA now?” he asked, laughing.
“Shut up,” she said. “That can’t be it. Right?”
“Do you want an answer, or am I still shutting up?” he asked playfully.
“Don’t make me go right back up there and tell them we’ve already broken up.”
Alejandro burst into laughter. He released her hand to wrap his arm around her shoulders. “That’s it. There’s nothing else we need to do. As far as the university’s concerned, they aren’t liable for any mess we make of this relationship. All we have to do is stop getting each other off in your office,” he said, whispering that last sentence into her ear.
Deja shivered, in good and bad ways, but for the first time in weeks, she didn’t break out in a cold sweat thinking about that door closing.
“No more,” she said resolutely. “No kissing on campus, either.”
“What?” Alejandro stopped in his tracks and turned her toward him.
Deja started laughing. “No one wants to see us making out in Brews! Chill.”
“Okay, I’m not saying we should make out, but I can, like, kiss you hi or goodbye, right?”
“No. Use your words.”
“Deja,” he started.
“What’s up, friends!” Mike called from across the Oval.
They turned to see him walking toward them alongside Toni and Marie.
“Is this a lover’s spat?” Toni yelled.
“Jesus. We should get new friends,” Alejandro breathed to Deja.
“Very much agree.”
“What’s up?” Marie said when they were closer. “Did you meet with HR?”
Deja nodded.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“It’s just paperwork,” she shrieked.
Alejandro groaned, shaking his head. “Here we go again.”
“This is cute,” Toni said, gesturing between them. “I expect more of this to ease the pain of student papers.”
“We’re not dancing monkeys,” Alejandro said.
“Sure, about that?” Toni asked. “Anyway, come on, we’re heading to the Provost’s faculty town hall. We’re gonna sit in the back and act like undergrads, but we’re hitting up Brews! first.”
“You two are coming, right?” Mike asked.
“Yeah,” Deja said, slipping her right hand into Alejandro’s left.
He smiled down at her and squeezed.
“Oye, Profé’s got a girlfriend,” someone yelled from elsewhere on the Oval.
“Is everybody and their mama out here today?” Deja mumbled, trying to hide her face behind Alejandro’s arm.
Mike and Marie laughed and started following Toni toward the Union.
“Mind your business, Tomás,” Alejandro yelled at a cluster of students he recognized from the LSU.
They laughed in return.
Deja pushed him to follow their friends. “This is why there’s no kissing on campus.”
He smiled, “We can discuss it later.”
She rolled her eyes at him with a smile. She wasn’t exactly back to normal, but in that moment, she felt more like herself than she had in days, especially with him by her side.