She’s still here. That’s all that matters.
She takes a long drink before setting her glass on the sofa table and ripping open a small bag of candy corn. “More for me, you big weirdo.” She dumps the contents in her mouth and I force myself to pull my eyes away.
I grab the remote and flick the TV on, scrolling until I find some random horror movie I know nothing about because I don’t watch them, but it seems fitting since it’s Halloween. I turn the volume down low, only meaning for it to be background noise to our conversation.
Her nose scrunches adorably but she doesn’t say anything.
“Not a fan?” I hand her the remote.
“Meh.” She tosses it to the side instead of switching to something else, then turns her body to face me more directly, pointedly ignoring the screen.
I make a mental note for future reference and shift the topic of conversation. “Finished your paper?”
She snorts. “Yeah, I submitted it last night.”
I don’t tell her that I know she did, or that I’ve already read it in its entirety. “Is it really that bad?”
“Can’t say I’ve had worse.” She tears open a mini Snickers and pops it in her mouth before reaching for her glass again.
I genuinely don’t understand why she feels so negatively about my class, especially not after reading her work. She’s brilliant. “The offer still stands if you need to talk anything out.”
“Offering your nanny preferential treatment?”
I give her an uneven smile. “I would offer help to any of my students who expressed the need.” I probably wouldn’t.
She downs the rest of her wine. “And how many of them express the need?”
I don’t answer right away, allowing the silence to stretch between us while I finish my own drink and dig through the pile of candy for some Twizzlers.
“Really?” She raises her eyebrows. “And candy corn is bad?”
I bite down and rip off a small piece from the end using my front teeth, then offer the rest to her. She surprises me by biting a piece off too, and I feel like an adolescent because all I can think of is the fact that our mouths just touched the same place.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Quinn says. I was hoping she’d forget.
“Sometimes,” I admit, though that might be stretching the truth and the thought crosses my mind that maybe what she said before is true; that my students don’t approach me simply because they think I’m an ass.
I know that I am brusk with them, but it’s not because I am the jerk they think I am or because I mean to be dismissive. I just have my hands full with Sienna outside of office hours, but physically cannot leave an email unanswered or an assignment ungraded. Life work balance is definitely something I need to work on. It’s a problem for me.
She picks at the end of her hair, avoiding eye contact. “So what you’re saying is it’s just me.”
“That is not what I said.” I huff a laugh. “But I have found that most of the time the issues students have with my class typically come from outside stressors.” I give her an opening to talk to me if she needs to. I know she has her own friends and family she could open up to, but I desperately want to be that person for her.Anyperson she needs me to be. She seems fine for the most part, but with all she’s dealt with this semester alone…
“I’m not stressed,” she says, standing to pad back to the kitchen.
She returns with the rest of the bottle of wine and fills both our glasses again. If this is what she needs to relax for a few hours, that’s more than fine with me. I can’t drive her home if I drink the rest of the bottle with her… but I’m going to drink it regardless, so I guess she’ll just have to spend the night.
Something tells me she wouldn’t expect me to wake Sienna for the drive anyway.
A glass and a half of wine later, I discover that Quinn is more of a lightweight than I expected. Her cheeks are flushed and she’s staring at the TV, but I can tell she isn’t registering what’s happening on the screen. Her mind is somewhere else.
We’ve eaten a good portion of the candy; enough that I am reminded why Halloween happens only once a year. When her eyes fall shut, I sweep my arm across the couch, nudging both the leftover candy and empty wrappers back into the treat bucket.
“I wasn’t finished with that.” She releases a sleepy giggle, her eyes still closed.
I place the bucket on the floor and stand, staring down at her and debating what our sleeping arrangement should be for the night.
I grab a blanket and Sienna’s baby monitor from my room, stopping to peek in on her one last time for the night before bed. When I return Quinn is curled up in the fetal position sleeping more soundly than a person should be, being that she was just awake less than one minute prior.
