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"Oh, I guess that makes sense."
"But it's okay," I say quickly. "I'm glad to go to this volunteering event with you. I don't really know much about literacy organizations or anything, but…"
"You're just going to read with them, and write, and listen, and provide feedback," she explains. "Trust me when I say it's not that hard."
"Okay, I believe you. You're so brilliant. You might be the best teacher ever."
"I don't know that I would say that."
I chuckle as we make a right.
"Did you have a good week?" I ask her in an attempt to make small talk. She looks at me with an upturned nose and narrows her eyes.
"Is that a joke, Mr. Chase?"
"I'm guessing that your boss was kind of hard on you this week."
"My boss was a jerk with capital J, and a capital E, and a capital R, and a capital K." She sings and I laugh.
"Is this what I'm expected to do once I get to volunteering? Sing my sentences?"
"No, but you can if you want to, if you find that works for you."
"We'll see. Seriously though, do you think I'm too hard on you at work or?—"
"It's fine," she says. "If you treat me the same way you treat most of your employees." She pauses. "Wait. I mean, your assistants don't seem to last very long, so maybe you shouldn't treat me the way you normally treated the others." I stare at her for a couple of seconds to see if she's serious and then she giggles lightly. "It's fine. You're not that horrible. At least you're not Remington."
"Oh? What's wrong with Remington?"
"Let's just say he does not seem to respect Juniper. Did you hear he had her order a whole bunch of roses for a whole bunch of different women?"
"Wait, that is not acceptable."
"If you ever did that to me, I would tell you where to stuff those roses.” She sniffs as if she’s smelling something distasteful. I debate sending her roses to see what she’d do with them. I think she’d love them.
"Oh, so are you saying you want me to date several women and send them roses?” I tease her, wanting to see the fire in her eyes.
"All I'm saying is that you're not sending me roses."
"I didn't know we were dating…" I say, and she stops dead in her tracks. Her mouth pulls into a thin line and her eyes look down for a second before she glances back at me with a wide smile that appears to be quite fake.
"True, we're not dating, so I guess I am the only one that's not getting roses."
"No one's getting roses," I say softly. "I'm not dating anyone." Though, the more time I spend with her outside of the office, the more time I feel like we are actually going on dates and doing ourselves a disservice by calling it something else. We continue walking in companionable silence for about ten minutes before stopping to grab two coffees and two bagels.
"Oh my gosh, this is so good," she says as she bites down into the buttery crisp bagel. "I love street food."
"So do I," I say. I take a bite of my bagel and we continue on the way until we stop outside of a small building.
"Come on, let's go in," she says, turning to me. I notice immediately that her shoulders seem to be stronger and she strides with more purpose as she walks inside.
"Hey. Morning, Skye," an older woman with gray hair says.
"Morning, Patricia. How are you today?"
"Great. We were wondering if you were going to show up today."
"Yeah, of course. You know I'm here every Saturday."
