Balancing Acts

Chapter 3: The Return of Him

            It was my first official day as the permanent chair of the English department, and I was already in love with the position. I not only got to move into a much bigger office, I was also given an assistant. However, the biggest perk was that the office came with its own personal adjacent bathroom! I no longer had to use the raggedy staff bathroom on the first floor with the flickering lights and barely working toilets. Needless to say, I felt like royalty. Leave it to my bigheaded ass to let something as simple as a personal bathroom boost my ego.

            My assistant was a student named Caiden Rhodes and he was there as a part of the student work-study program. He was taller than me, around five-foot-ten, and had a caramel colored complexion. I could tell just by looking at him that he was a student athlete because of how toned and lean his body was. His hair looked like it had just been cut that morning and he had deep waves on the top. He brought me a grande white chocolate mocha and a raspberry scone from Starbucks when he entered the office, so I was instantly impressed by him.

            "I hope you're a lot nicer than Mr. Wiley," he said to me.

            I laughed a little and told him, "I'm a million times nicer than him. I'm not a cranky old white man." He laughed when I said that. "So, what year are you and are you an English major?"

            "I'm a junior and I'm majoring in both education and English. I want to be a high school teacher."

            "Wow, I was initially going to be a high school teacher but decided to become a professor because there aren't as many limits to what I can teach in college." I stared at him for a little while before asking, "Are you on any of the Cougar teams?"

            "Yeah, I run track."

            "I knew it had to be something. You have that look."

            "Professor Prescott, I'm actually excited that I get to work for you. I've admired you for a long time."

            "Really?"

            "Yes. We talk about you a lot in Cougar Pride."

            "Cougar Pride? Caiden, you're gay?"

            "Yeah."

            "Wow um...times really have changed."

            "What do you mean?"

            "When I was in college, no one on the track team at Howard was openly gay. I was actually one of maybe fifty students who were openly gay on the Howard campus."

            "Dang, I can't even imagine how hard it must've been back then."

            "It was an up and down rollercoaster. However, I met my husband there and that made whatever seemed bad at the time worth it."

            "If you don't mind me asking, was your husband DL when you met him in college?"

            "Yes. He was pledging Kappa Alpha Psi when we met and he was in the closet."

            "See, this is why I got so excited when I learned I'd be working for you now. I'm in this current situation with a guy on the football team and I really think that..."

            He continued talking but my mind zoned out and suddenly I was thinking about him. I honestly hadn't thought about him in a very, very long time. Just like that, he was on my mind and all of the memories began to come back to me. It took me a few seconds, but I was able to snap back into reality just as Caiden was finishing what he had to say.