Running for Home - 37. December 23, 2021

December 23 2021

Emma called me to her office for a brief meeting today. For some reason I was expecting Sean to be there but it was just the two of us. I guess he’s already back in Ireland to celebrate the holidays and fit in some father-daughter time with Theresa while visiting some of their extended family. The whole idea of father-daughter time when you are talking about people in their mid-30s and late-50s respectively is just awkward to me. Maybe that’s because I don’t really have something to compare it to, since I have no idea where my stupid parents are or even if they are still alive. Who the fuck cares about that, right?

Anyway, I went into the meeting not really knowing what to expect. It was pretty informal, though. She wanted to catch up with me on how I felt I was doing with the whole teaching thing now that a third of the school year passed. I told her I wasn’t really the one to be spontaneously reflective in a meeting with my boss. She laughed and told me she knew that I was doing fine, but she wanted to know how I felt about it. It didn’t have to be anything complicated or technical. We talked a bit about some hurdles I felt I was having getting some types of concepts through to my slower students. She shared that there were lots of techniques I could try, but not to take it personally if they failed to glean much in the way of results. A lot of this stuff is too particular to the individual student and at the end of the day if the student is not cooperative and does not meet you halfway the likelihood of failure is high despite your best efforts. That was a bit frustrating to hear, but at least it takes some of the pressure off me. I don’t know what I would be able to implement before the students have their winter exams in the last week of January, but I guess maybe I can try a few things as we move into the review days the week before.

As the discussion continued, things started moving away from me and on to how I was handling some of the more ‘difficult’ students - Julian Keller and Kevin Ford both making that list, of course. When Emma mentioned Julian’s name I just wiped my hand over my face and muttered something about just trying to forget it ever happened. Emma frowned and started to chastise me, but I stopped her and rephrased it to what I really meant: I’m trying to not keep beating myself up over that mistake. It happened. I fucked up. Both Julian and I learned something from that encounter. It won’t happen again, so move on. She seemed satisfied with that.

It felt like we were wrapping things up when I noticed her glance down at this manila envelope on her desk for the umpteenth time since our meeting began. She pursed her lips by the very slightest amount, as if she was deciding something. I asked her if there was something we needed to discuss in the envelope. She looked at me for a second with this penetrating gaze. She was sizing me up, in one way or another. After a moment she sighed and shook her head. I hate it when people do that. It means there definitely was something of relevance to me in that envelope, in one way or another. My mind was scrambling to come up with a logical answer because I knew it was going to bug me forever if I didn’t find out. Was she being subpoena’d by Dom over this goddamn palimony suit?

I was about to corner her on that, but there was a knock at her door and her expression changed completely to one of happiness. She stood, telling whoever was there to come in. I stood as well. Part of me wishes I hadn’t because into the room walked one gobsmackingly hot piece of man. He was tall, blonde, athletically built and dressed incredibly well. The moment I caught his icy blue eyes I realized that this must be Emma’s older brother Christian. I don’t usually go for men much older or younger than me, but for him I would make an exception. I would, but he’d dated Jean-Paul at one point and it hadn’t ended particularly well - something about Christian not really being able to handle his partner leaving all the time to do something that could end with him dead. From what Emma had told me about the hell Christian and his first love were put through by Emma’s father, I guess I could see why. Emma’s father disapproved of Christian being gay and stripped away more and more of his privileges until he was essentially disinherited. Of course, to a rich psychopath like Daddy Frost, that wasn’t nearly enough so he greased the wheels to have Dante deported on falsified charges and suffer an ‘accidental’ death in Cuba. He then had Christian committed to an institution and threw away the key. Christian was there for over a decade until Emma was able to do a hostile takeover of that institution’s holding company and she had it shut down.

I guess Emma and I have shitty parents in common, too. I just escaped by getting beaten up one too many times, and she escaped by paying her own way through college and then slowly destroying every last piece of her father’s corporate empire. Oh yeah, remind me never to piss Emma off… Oi. Anyway, things wrapped up after a bit of small talk and maybe a little bit of flirting on mine and Christian’s part - not anything that will ever going anywhere, mind you, but it was a bit of fun watching Emma roll her eyes at us. They were heading off to Emma’s summer estate up in Canada somewhere. Apparently it’s actually pretty rustic - a true getaway from her rich-bitch life.

There’s part of me that wishes I was getting away somewhere right now. I guess if I’d been smart I could have done something, but I didn’t. Going off somewhere by myself didn’t really feel all that appealing, and I didn’t want to piggyback around with anyone and interrupt their family time. And maybe I just wanted to be here.

This is home, now, after all.