I nod slowly. “Yeah. I was under the weather,” I lie, surprised at how easily it comes out.
Omar just observes me for a moment, like he’s trying to peel back the layers to reach the truth. “You had students here waiting for you.”
Fuck.
“I forgot to send an email cancelling,” I say.
But he clearly doesn’t buy it.
“One of your students, Damian MacLeod, was particularly upset,” Omar continues.
Fuck.
Damian is barely passing, and I warned him he needed to make use of tutors, review sessions, and office hours. Even though I fucking hate office hours with every fibre of my being, and it takes everything in me to stay sober through them each week as I sit here while they ask the same question five different ways, hoping I’ll magically say something different than I did in lecture. But I was hoping Damian would show. Because Iknowwith a bit more help, he can do the work and get it right.
“This is the last week of the semester before exams, and you have one lecture left tomorrow,” Omar says firmly. “You’re scheduled for office hours Friday, and again next week before finals begin. I fully expect you to show up for all of them.”
My jaw tightens as I stare at him, heat rising within me. But he doesn’t give me time to respond.
“And you haven’t submitted your exam for printing yet.”
My eyes narrow. “You’re checking up on me?”
He huffs with a shake of his head. “Well, Cade… it would appear I have to.”
“Why, Omar?” I ask. “Because I’m human and missed a day of office hours?”
His glare cuts right through the tension between us. “You and I both know it’s much more than that,” he says, his tone strippedof all patience now. “I’ve tried to be kind and understanding, to meet you where you are, and offer help. And you’ve done nothing but shut me, and everyone else, down. And now, it’s impacting your students. I’m not going to walk on eggshells while they fall through the cracks. This is where I stop tiptoeing and demand answers and action.”
Pressure builds in my chest as I glare across the desk at him, and I grind my teeth to keep from saying something I shouldn’t. “And what answers are those?”
“Do you want to be a professor here, Cade?”
My heart thumps as I stare back at him. I have a tenure-track contract. He can’t just walk in here and fire me…
But Omar holds my gaze, waiting for my answer.
“Yes,” I say, even though I’m not sure how true that really is.
Idowant to be a professor here. I want to stay buried in my research, to follow the threads no one else notices, and chase answers so narrow they lose everyone else. I want to keep tracing the movement of particles that only exist when observed, flipping open the rules of quantum mechanics like pages in a book no one else gets to read.
I want to stand on the side of science where mystery still lives. Where nothing is ever fully known and every breakthrough leads to another impossible question.
That still stirs something inside me. That still feels like mine.
And… I used to like teaching.
I used to enjoy standing in front of a full lecture hall, watching students latch onto something I’d thrown to them. And I used to enjoy meeting with honours students and supervising grad research, and I used to feel the spark of possibility in their questions.
But over the past year or so… their faces just started to blur together. Eager questions piss me off, and the repetition of it all as I hold students’ hands through the same thing year after yearbuilds until all I want is silence, and to drink until I can’t hear another voice.
And I’m not even sure why.
Omar nods slowly. “Then I need to see it.”
Easier said than done.
He sighs, and for a brief moment, his hard exterior cracks, and some of his care seeps through as he studies me. But then he slides the mask back in place, like he’s rehearsed this moment and knows what he’s supposed to do.
