Blaze

Thirty; Blaise

As the weeks go by, the Admissions office quickly becomes my favorite place on campus. College is more chaotic than I thought it would be. Campus is brimming with energy and activity, and while it can be exciting, it's also exhausting and overwhelming. The office is a refuge. It's calm and orderly and blessedly quiet in the evenings while I work in solitude. I'm usually tasked with making phone calls to prospective students and scheduling campus tours, but since the rest of the interns took the week off for midterms, I'm suddenly solely responsible for stuffing the hundreds of envelopes on the table before me.

There's a light knock on the doorframe, and James sticks his head in and smiles. He hesitates at the door, as if he's waiting for my permission to enter.

"It's your office. You don't have to knock."

"I didn't want to startle you." He slides into the chair across from me and pulls a paper mug from behind his back. "It's a cinnamon latte. Martha said it was your favorite."

I take the plastic lid off and raise it to my face.  I tip the cup back and take a cautious sip. A small involuntary moan spills from my lips the moment the coffee hits my tongue. Damn that's good. I open my eyes to see him staring at my mouth. "Thanks a latte."

"It's the least I can do. I appreciate you working this week. The rest of the staff is at the financial aid office for the enrollment management meeting, but I don't present for another hour, so I thought I'd help." He sits down and rolls his sleeves up to his elbows. 

I realize now that we're the only two in the building, and the entire atmosphere shifts. James must feel it too; he looks at me with an intensity that I've seen only a few times before, on a bench outside a coffee shop, on another bench in the shadows behind a lecture hall, in a dark basement. It happens anytime I'm alone with him.

He clears his throat. "There are two different communications here. We need to separate the open house invitations from the application deadline notices. Then, unfortunately, we need to stuff all the envelopes."

I look at the daunting stacks littered across the table. "You should consider postcards."

"Trust me, we do. And emails. And texts. And Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter notifications. We even got on Tik-Tok. You have to practically harass students to get them to follow through these days. This generation," he teases with a dramatic eye roll.

"Hey, watch it, Mister. I'm this generation. Don't underestimate the amount of stress we're under our senior year. Some of us, especially first generation college students like me, had no idea how to apply for college, where to apply, what to do. And there's not really anyone there to guide us."

He places his hand over his heart, acting like he's wounded. "No guidance? Isn't that my whole job?"

"Yes, but your job is to guide us here. But the students you are recruiting are being recruited by lots of schools. It's a lot to sort out. Especially if you're the first in your family to apply to college. And my high school guidance counselors tried, but there were over a thousand kids in my graduating class. They were spread thin. I would have paid good money for someone to help me through the process."

He nods and sits silently for a moment. "That's an interesting perspective. I haven't thought about it that way." He grins. "Insightful, Ms. Evans. I knew there was a reason I hired you."

"You didn't hire me. Charlie and Miranda did." I playfully hit him on the forearm, but my touch lingers. He tenses, the hairs on his arm standing on end. I pull my hand back but my heart rate accelerates as he holds my gaze. His eyes flick to my mouth, lingering.

He clears his throat. "Let's sort into piles, then you work on the invitations while I work on the notices?"

"Sounds good." The words come out as barely a whisper.