24 | Free Falling

JEN FOUND A NOTE on her desk when she arrived to work on Monday morning. For half a second, she thought it might be something from Robert, but no, it couldn't be – he wouldn't risk leaving something in plain sight like that, and the lines of script on the sticky note were much neater than his.

Come to my office once you're here.

Thanks

-N

Nora. Jen wasn't exactly dying to see her first thing on a Monday, but it appeared she had no choice. Trepidation flickered up in her chest like a spark—she hadn't been caught, had she? It wasn't very characteristic of Nora to request a one-on-one audience with her. She'd finally mustered the courage to start applying for jobs again, but that didn't mean she had anything to fall back on yet if something happened with this one.

She softly shook her head, trying to snap herself out of it. She and Robert were being inconspicuous enough. And as far as she was aware, her work performance was good, and even if she was lacking somehow without realizing it, there was no conceivable way her performance was so abysmal that she'd be let go a month and a half before she was due to leave, anyway. She just needed to smile and nod her way through this meeting and then all would be well.

Play nice, she instructed herself as she made the walk of shame to the principal's office. And don't say anything stupid.

The door was cracked, leaving her in the somewhat awkward position of needing to decide if she should just walk in or knock to indicate her arrival. She ultimately decided on the latter – better to be unnecessarily polite than look rude – waiting to slowly open the door until she had lightly rapped on it to signal that she was there.

Nora's head was bent over a stack of forms, her flaxen hair neatly clipped back on each side with little shiny barrettes to prevent it from tumbling down in front of her face. Jen noticed a bulky stack of shrink-wrapped booklets of some sort sitting on the floor by the desk and suspected that they were connected to this meeting somehow.

"'Morning, Jen," Nora said, and her voice was a little softer around the edges than usual, as if she was trying not to be abrasive so early in the day. "Did you have a good weekend?"

Jen just nodded—there was no way she was going to attempt describing what she did this weekend while omitting who she did it with. Much better to avoid it entirely. "You?"

She wasn't the only one who had to walk on eggshells. Nora was silent for a moment before she gave a diplomatically vague response. "I didn't do all that much, but sometimes that's for the best."

She tapped the stack of papers on the desk to align the edges. "Have a seat, though I don't think this will take long. SAT testing is coming up in a couple of weeks, so I'll need you to distribute these info packets to the teachers." She nodded to the pile of them that Jen had already spotted. "I thought I'd briefly go over the test calendar with you here in case they come to you with any questions about it."

As much as she didn't want to walk around to classrooms handing out booklets or be given the responsibility to answer questions that really should have been going to Nora or Elliot, she could muster a little appreciation that she was at the very least being given enough information that she (hopefully) wouldn't have to awkwardly fumble her way through any conversations that might occur while she was passing them out. Nora briefly reviewed the handout that Jen would be giving to the teachers along with the pamphlets, pointing out what the most significant changes to the regular school schedule would be.

Her arms were very full when she left the office, and she was still going to have to make a second trip to pick up the remainder of the booklets. But on her way back to the front desk, she came across Robert on the way to his classroom, and she had to resist the urge to smile at him as freely as she wanted to. His hair was almost completely dry, but not quite, and she could see a tiny red spot on his jaw where he must have nicked himself shaving.

"Oh, good," he observed, an edge of laughter creeping into his voice when he saw his girlfriend hauling around the massive pile of testing materials. "I thought our secretary disappeared."

"We certainly wouldn't want that," she said, lifting her eyes to his. "Your lives would all be messes without me."

"That they would."

"Would you perchance like to be the proud owner of an SAT Guide for Teachers?"

The corner of his mouth curled upward in amusement. "Am I allowed to say no?" he asked. "What would you do?"

"Tell you to suck it up and deal with it," she said. "And that I suspect you have something to give to me in return. Trade?"

At that, he did smile a little bit, though he quickly forced it away as he discreetly pulled out today's letter for her. When she thrust one of the booklets into his hands in return, he looked at it a little gloomily.

"Have fun with that," she told him in her best singsong, chipper voice (which was not very good at all).

"I'll try."

The sky was a deep indigo color, dotted with stars like little flecks of white paint. It slid in and out of Jen's view as she kicked her legs, swinging back and forth like a pendulum. The wind rushed past her ears, whipping her hair around her face and carrying to her the faint, sweet and floral scent of the jasmine shampoo she had used the night before. Each time she came to the back end of her swing, she felt Robert's fingers, warm and steady, splayed across her back as he pushed her.

No one else was at the park—it was already past 9 p.m., well past the time when the kids who used this playground would be back home and tucked into their beds. The metal apparatus was rusty and creaky and gave off the impression of being somewhat abandoned, but she didn't allow herself to become too picky when it came to finding places to spend alone time with him.

"We really do pick the most romantic locations, you know that?" she said, her voice catching in the wind.

His breath was a warm flutter above her shoulder when she swung back to him. "I like to think we're very creative people."

Jen was smiling, gazing up at the great wide universe as it was presented in front of her. The light pollution levels here in the city meant that the views were a little more subdued than they were back in Woods Crossing, where some nights the whole Milky Way felt within reach of her fingertips, but it was a beautiful sight nonetheless. "I bet you never went on such awesome dates with any of your past girlfriends," she teased.

"Oh yeah, all those girlfriends I had," he chuckled.

The end of his laugh got lost in the air as she was propelled upward and away from him again, but Jen started kicking her legs more slowly. Her eyebrows knitted together.

"You mean you never dated anyone else?" she asked him incredulously. "I can't have been your first kiss."

She wasn't the most experienced in the kissing department, but what she did know for certain was that he'd kissed her that night on her doorstep with much more confidence than someone who had never done it before.

"Well, no," he agreed, nudging her forwards a little more playfully this time. "But there was never anything this serious."

The sound of the wind in her ears mingling with the noise of cars rushing down the adjacent street made Jen feel like she was soaring much higher in the air than she truly was, like she was temporarily invincible and untouchable to anyone besides him. Despite knowing that she was being silly, she felt her lips curve into a pleased smirk. "Oooh, we're serious."

"Do you not think we are?" His tone remained light, yet an edge of concern had weaseled its way into his words. Through the thin fabric of her shirt, she could feel each of his fingertips land on her back and press down surprisingly delicately as he pushed her again.

"Of course I do," she promised him. "It's just fun, that's all. I never expected to end up here."

"You mean dating your coworker?"

"Yeah."

"Well, listen," he said, and there was enough hesitancy in his voice that she stopped kicking her legs. He kept talking as she began to slowly but surely lose speed. "While we're on the topic of being serious...I know we're trying to keep this private, but I found out this morning that my sister is coming into town this weekend and wants to meet me for dinner..."

Jen's eyes widened. She dug her toes into the mulch to stop herself entirely, coming to a wobbly halt. "You want me to meet your sister?" she asked in surprise.

Meeting his family felt...big. She struggled to even imagine what they would be like. Though he talked about them sometimes, they always felt to her like this group of faraway, intangible people who existed in thoughts and memories but not in reality. When she tried to conjure up a vision of what his sister might look like or sound like or behave like, all she came up with were immensely vague images of a girl with dark hair like his.

"I mean, you don't have to," he reassured her hastily as she looked over her shoulder at him. "But I only see her a few times a year..."

"...So this is your best chance to introduce me to her," Jen concluded.

He nodded softly, and even though she couldn't see him that well in the dim light that seeped from the windows of neighboring storefronts and gleamed off of passing cars, she could see that this was important to him.

"Okay," she nodded back. "I'll come. But you can't tell her how we met yet."

The metal chains on the swing rattled as he abruptly pulled them back to catch hold of her and give her a kiss on the cheek. She giggled and closed her eyes in bliss as his lips, warm and soft and reassuring, brushed along her skin. "Thank you. You don't even have to like her. She doesn't even like me sometimes."

Jen gave him an exasperated look, though it would have been extremely difficult to actually be annoyed with him even if she tried to be. "Setting the bar this low isn't going to give me a lot of confidence."

He bowed his head and kissed her shoulder, on the spot where the neckline of her shirt met bare skin. "You'll be great," he murmured affectionately. "I know it."

She tilted her face towards his. "How?"

He reached for where her hand was gripping onto the chain, twining his fingers through hers. "Because," he told her. "You're not capable of being anything less."

____________________

A/N:

dedicating this chapter to the wonderful @smidorii because it's her birthday <3 everyone go read her books if you haven't already!