Office Hours |h.s|

thirty nine

Harry

I can't help but smile as I reach the end of Maude's paper, thoroughly impressed with the arguments she put together. The way her brain works is just fascinating. She doesn't go for the obvious answer when it comes to arguing these cases I assign studies on, but the arguments she makes are concrete and blow my mind most of the time.

Even if she wasn't my girlfriend, I'd be fascinated by her thoughts and would obviously give her amazing grades. It almost makes me wish Lance cared about his education when he was my student, because I'm sure this is just a result of their exposure to the law profession from a young age. She is going to be such an amazing criminal defense lawyer when it's her turn, and I'd be honored to watch her thrive every step of the way.

Maude is everything I could ever want. When I'm with her I genuinely feel like I'm complete and understood. I've never felt like that with someone before, like I'm home. Like I'm loved. I just want to reciprocate that for her, I want her to feel loved. She deserves that. I want nothing more than to be with her for the rest of my life. It's almost hard to believe how quickly she has become my other half, and I hope she feels the same about me.

Tonight I'm gonna be honest about how I feel. She makes me feel so safe while I'm being honest with her. She doesn't brush me off or put her emotions before me, she listens and shows me never ending love and affection when she knows I'm feeling down. She's not afraid to be the big spoon which is definitely needed from time to time.

Typing out a few comments on her paper into an email, I can't help but smile, thinking of her surprise when she sees my email about her paper. I'm obviously keeping everything super PG since if the admin board ever got suspicious they could pull up all of our emails since they're on the school's server. In a way, I'm just doing this extra step to make her smile, since I really don't have to give that many comments when it comes to her work.

After reading over my email, double checking that it doesn't sound flirty or that I didn't slip up and call her babe which I thankfully didn't, I press send. It's gonna be fun getting to talk to her about all this tonight over dinner, and I know once I get her talking we'll be in that conversation for hours on end. I love the way her eyes light up when she's passionate about explaining something to me.

As I'm typing out an announcement to the course page about the topic of the next few classes being sexual harrassment and to email me if anyone feels uncomfortable staying in the room while we discuss that, there's a knock on the door. "Come in!" I call, focused on the computer screen. I always send out that announcement because I don't want to trigger anyone who's had to deal with that, and I don't want them to feel like they'll be penalized if they don't show up to class.

"Hey H, just wanted to make sure you got these." Juliet says, holding up printouts of the papers she helped me grade. I press send on the announcement before sitting back with a sigh, "Thanks, Jules. You're the best."

I motion for her to come sit down and take the papers to look through them as she sits. "Hope they didn't melt your brain too badly. I know this isn't your expertise." I glance over at her with a smile before looking at the grades, making a mental note to do a once over of these and make sure I feel good to sign off on them and send them to students tomorrow.

"It wasn't horrible. You know, crim law is definitely interesting. I just don't think I could teach it half as well as you." She teases and we both laugh. Setting the papers down to my side on the desk, I look at her with a smile.

"Well, don't knock it till you try it. But you're probably right anyway." I joke back, winking. With a quick glance to my phone I make sure Maude hasn't texted me before focusing back on Juliet. "How was your weekend?"