PATRICK
When Phil Williams of John Hill Academy in San Francisco found my contact information and reached out to me in desperate need of rehabilitation, never in my wildest dreams, did I expect to run into Emily here? Even when I saw her name on the Staff and Faculty roster I had the option to interview, it never dawned on me that it could be her. Sure the name was familiar, but it didn’t really spark any sort of recognition. I spent the years we were together calling her Emily, I pretty much forgot what her actual name was.
Seeing her now brought on memories I had long forgotten and affected me more than I thought it would have. I believed that her presence and closeness no longer had any power over me like it used to because a lot has changed since we split. Months after our split, I moved to Los Angeles to start a marketing firm with my fraternity brother, Sean. We spent the past couple of years setting up the infrastructure and carefully grew the business to where it was now. A few months ago, we landed a big account with a national hotel chain and had been growing warp speed ever since.
My partner, Sean, moved to Chicago recently to build up our second office location to make it easier when we worked on projects for what was our most significant account while I stayed in Los Angeles to take care of our existing clients. Every month or so we took turns visiting the other to catch up in more detail about what was taking place at our respective office locations. It was the only way we were going to keep things going as well as they have been so far. Skyping could only do so much.
Sean asked me a few weeks ago if I would ever consider moving SP & Associates to Chicago completely, making it our new headquarters. I haven’t given him an answer yet because it was a hard decision to make. There were so many moving parts to think about beyond me changing my life, we had employees to think about.
I mean, I would and could move at the drop of a hat, but I doubted any of our employees could do the same. Some of them had children, relatives and established lives that would be impacted by a decision to move over two thousand miles away.
The other worry I had that Sean didn’t think about was that we didn’t know how long the hotel chain would remain our client nor how long they would be happy with the work we were doing for them. It didn’t matter if the person in charge of the continuation of our business relationship was the boss and friend of Sean’s girlfriend, Bridgette. We still had to be prepared for the day the client who controlled 70% of our revenue may not want to continue working with us one day.
The idea worried me, and I kept trying to identify different sources of new clients to balance out portfolio when I was contacted to assist John Hill Academy in their pursuit of revitalization to bring more of the students they identified for long-term sustainability.
It wasn’t very common for schools like John Hill to contact a firm like ours for assistance with rehabilitation and revitalization. Educational institutions had to go through various hoops and approvals to even hire a company like us to do the type of work that wasn’t quite common but I was grateful for whatever work I was able to find and hopefully they could become a continued client of ours. The steadier the clients I brought in, the less power the hotel chain had over Sean, the company we built and me.
These were the types of problems I’ve grown accustomed to handling but running into Emily today was something else altogether. Never in a million years did I ever expect to see her here and if I knew she’d be here, then there was a strong chance I wouldn’t have accepted this client. As much as SP & Associates needed to obtain a stronger foothold by diversifying a steady stream of clients, I wasn’t sure if it was that important if it meant running into her again.
I shook my head to dilute the thoughts that were coming close to the surface after putting it behind me a long time ago. Once I crossed that line, there was no going back, and I would have to get over Emily all over again. I wasn’t willing to go there again.
After a few minutes of preparing myself, I made my way into the Administration Office where Emily said I could find Phil Williams. I pushed open the wooden door into the modernized office space. I tapped the bell on the front counter, and within seconds, I heard squeaky footsteps across the mint-colored floor. It had specks of white matching the mint gum I rolled around in my mouth. It was a nervous habit I was trying to break.
Muffled conversations grew more vibrant as each second passed, “We could definitely consider that, but I think our objective today is to finish up the last round of counseling appointments and sift through their secondary plans.”
“Yes, Mr. Williams. I’ll get right on it.” a stern-faced woman confirmed. She looked serious, the kind of woman you didn’t want to mess with. She reminded me of my old Dean, Dr. Sherry, during my old college days. The entire student body feared her, and we even dubbed her ‘Scary Sherry.’
“Thank you, Mary. Oh, hello there! You must be Mr. Mitchell.”
“How’d you guess?” I laughed in amazement.
“A wild guess and the fact that I didn’t have the slightest clue who you were. I know all of the parents, so I figured you were either a prospective parent or were from SP & Associates.” the burly man shook my hand before patting me on the back. “I’d like to thank you again for taking the time to be here. We are forever grateful for your assistance. John Hill has needed a complete reorganization for a long time.”
“I do what I can, but I assure you once I complete all of the faculty and staff interviews, sit in some of the classes and assess various minor things I’ll be able to generate a report of the recommendations needed to be implemented. It’s hard to say at this point what the solution is without getting a full picture of what is happening internally.” I added.
“Well, shall we get to it then?” Mr. Williams gestured towards what must have led to his office.
“Certainly.” I smiled and followed him down the mini hallway.
A few hours later after going through the in-person interviews with a small handful of faculty and staff, I took a lunch break to ponder over the information I gathered thus far. After skimming through everything, there were some comments made by the faculty that alerted me to some areas of concern that I wanted to address down the road, but I still needed to sit in on some of the classes. I also had a few miscellaneous things to go over to decipher if it was a personal belief that they had or it was a comment they made with objectivity.
“…and here we are at one of our fifth-grade classrooms taught by one of our newest yet more prized faculty members, Ms. Tucker.” Mr. Williams explained. “Come, I would like for you to meet her. She originally from the east coast so I think she would be such a great resource for you to get additional insight from technically an ‘outside observer.’ I’ll introduce you after the bell rings.”
“Sounds great.” It was almost like a movie in slow motion – red heels popped into view as we entered the vibrant classroom draped in the three primary colors. Red, Blue, and Yellow. Inch by inch as I stepped forward into the classroom, the more I realized it was nothing like how I imagined the environment was going to look like.
There she stood, no less than twenty feet away, towering over the children in her 5’4” frame. Even though she was dressed in what I imagined what she typically wore when she taught, she looked good and still took good care of herself physically. By the way, she carried herself, the confident way she spoke and the way the students responded to her, she was good at what she did.
She was also as attractive as she was the last time I saw her, if not more so. She still was the type of woman I was physically attracted to – dark hair, light eyes, average height, and a fit build but so wrong for me at this stage in my life. Although Sean and I always spent our lunchtimes critiquing the women we encountered, I wasn’t looking for someone to settle down with. I did have the occasional fling now, and then but ever since Sean moved to Chicago, I was far too busy to do anything but work these days, but if I ever came across a woman who was looking for nothing but sex with no strings attached, I’d be up for it.
When the bell finally rang, it alerted everyone that it was time for one of the scheduled break times the school gave the students throughout the day, “Alright kids, that’s the bell. Just leave your work on your desk, you’ll be able to continue working on it after the break.” Emily clapped.
Mr. Williams and I waited until all the students exited the classroom before we approached her, “Ms. Tucker, could you come here for a second?”
There was a slight dip in the smile she had for the children when she looked up towards our direction. It was subtle but noticeable. No doubt that it had to do with her deeply set feelings she had about me. I had no doubt that they weren’t good.
“Yes, Mr. Williams?” she asked when she stepped within a few feet of us.
“I wanted to introduce you to Patrick Mitchell, he’s here to conduct the observations we’ve spoken about.” he explained before turning toward me, “Patrick, I wanted to introduce you to Ms. Morgan Tucker, one of our most exceptional fifth-grade teachers at John Hill Academy.
“I wouldn’t say exceptional, but I do try.” she smiled.
“Ever so modest.”
“It’s very nice to meet you in person.” I shook her hand, continuing the façade of pretending to not know her. Her hand was soft, feminine yet firm and I held onto it a little longer than necessary. Just like how I remembered. I flipped through a few pages in my portfolio, and I pretended to mull over a few notes before I spoke again, “I wanted to thank you again for taking the time out of your day to interview with me last week and sit in and observe today.”
“You’re quite welcome.” Emily gave a quizzical look at first with one eyebrow raised before she finally caught on.
She probably thought I was still a stoic bastard, she called me that once. She said I didn’t seem like I had a compassionate bone in my body, but that was far from the truth. If only she knew.
“Mr. Williams, I think I’ll just merely observe Ms. Tucker for a couple of hours today while I jot a few notes down. Then we can move on to one more classroom and then continue tomorrow. Is that alright with you?”
“That’s perfectly fine, do whatever you have to do. If there’s anything you need, feel free and let us know. Right, Ms. Tucker?” he eyed her with a fake plastered grin for my benefit.
“Oh, yes. It’s perfectly fine with me. Anything you need or need to know, just ask.” she agreed.
“Okay, great. I guess we can start when the children return. When they do, please go ahead and proceed with your morning as you normally would. I’ll just out of your way and sit here in the back.”
“Sounds easy enough, I’ll just go back and continue reviewing the rest of today’s lesson until they return.”
“That’s fine, go ahead. Oh, wait. Can I get a copy of your lesson plans for the next two weeks?”
“Oh, I only have this week laid out.” she frowned.
“Oh, that’s fine I guess. Do you typically plan out only a week in advance?” I asked as I jotted a few reminders of things I wanted to accomplish before I finished up today.
“No, I typically am more organized than that, but this week has been terrible for me.” she sighed.
“Oh?” I looked up with piqued interest.
“Yeah, downright terrible and…” Emily started to explain before the bell rang, ruining the first moment she let her guard down around me since running into her this morning. She headed back towards her desk to prep for the children to start trickling back into the classroom with renewed vigor.
Morgan Emily Tucker. There were so many words and thoughts floating around in my head that I wanted to say to her, but I couldn’t quite grasp any specific ones to clearly describe what I was feeling right now. I couldn’t grasp any because I was afraid of what would come out and I refused to go back to that place where things were really heated, in both senses of the word.
I started the day like any other with meeting a client for the first day of a new project. I started the day not knowing that I’d run into her but looking at her sitting there right now focused on her lesson plan for the day, I didn’t know what to think. She certainly was as beautiful as she’d always been, I just couldn’t let her femininity get to me. I had a job to do.
I never imagined her looks would take precedent over my morality and sense of responsibility so easily. There was no way I could let that happen without regretting it, and I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.