Page 52 of That’s My Orc, Tusk Off

Instead, I opened my tablet, loading the school curriculum document. We’d finished a section of it this afternoon, but I still needed to think about safety and how best to communicate with the parents. Liability issues.

Work that needed doing.

I stared at the screen, but the words wouldn’t organize themselves into anything useful.

I closed that document and opened the facility maintenance schedule, everything color-coded by priority level. Green for routine. Yellow for attention needed. Red for urgent.

All green this week.

I changed three entries to yellow and closed the document.

My office felt too large. Too empty. I spoke to the silence.

“She kissed me.”

My voice sounded wrong, too loud and raw.

I kept talking anyway.

“She put her hands on my shoulders when she kissed me.” I scrubbed my face with my palms. “Had she thought about doing it before she reached out?”

It had felt spontaneous. Maybe she regretted it already.

“When she pulled away, she smiled.”

I stopped and listened to my own breathing.

The admission hung in the air, filling the space I usually kept organized and controlled.

Sliding open my desk drawer, I stared at the sealed envelope. The crest stared back at me. I closed the drawer.

I was stuck between the application I should process and the letter I couldn’t open and the woman I wanted to call but wouldn’t because what would I say?

I’m scared I’ve been wrong about everything.

That wasn’t the kind of thing I admitted. Not out loud or in documents or even to myself.

Except I just had.

When I finally left my office, I found the break room empty. I heated water for tea, found some leftover vrindal in the refrigerator, and sat at the table.

Empty chairs all around me. Like the second one in my cottage.

Now I couldn’t stop imagining Willa sitting across from me with a plate of cookies between us and her hair tucked behind her left ear.

My tablet chimed. A notification from the break room coffee maker. Low supplies. Willa had set up automatic alerts last week. She’d programmed them to come to my tablet because she’d noticed I was always the first one in.

She’d been paying attention to me.

I added coffee supplies to tomorrow’s order list and tried not to think about what it meant that she’d been noticing me the same way I’d been noticing her.

I ate the vrindal without tasting it. Drank the tea cold because I’d forgotten it was there. Finished, I cleaned the dishes, put them away, and went back to my office. The adoption application was still waiting. I read through it again and made notes in the margins, rechecking the family’s property specifications with Rue’s needs.

Everything matched.

My hands were steady now. This was familiar territory. I could do this part.

What I couldn’t do was decide.