Sweetest in the Gale - Olivia Dade

One

The first time Griff truly noticed Candy Albright, she was yelling about Frankenstein.

Well, maybe not yelling, per se. More issuing various pronouncements about Mary Shelley’s magnum opus at such a volume that witnesses at that faculty meeting would never, ever again confuse the story’s eponymous scientist with his vengeful, humanoid creation.

Over the course of five very loud, very entertaining minutes, she announced the various actions she’d taken to clarify the matter to the student body. Including—but by no means limited to—a planned puppet show. A goddamn puppet show, the apogee of her Frankenstein Is Not the Monster Initiative.

She was vibrating with passion, unabashedly herself, more alive than he’d felt in—

Well, that didn’t matter.

What did matter: It was the first time since his move to Marysburg that he’d smiled.

In various start-of-the-school-year English department meetings, he’d only vaguely registered her presence and her name. Which was both a mystery and a travesty, given the way she seemed to gather all the light in the room, only to expel it in a sort of didactic supernova.

Overlooking Candy was a mistake he didn’t intend to repeat.

For the rest of the school year, then, he made a point of observing her. Listening to her too, which wasn’t difficult, given her admirable lung capacity.

She never disappointed. She always snapped his attention into sharp focus.

Stalwart. Stubborn. Shrewish, some might say, but they’d be wrong.

Since that first Marysburg High School faculty meeting, almost a year ago, the sight of her marching down the hall, all martial intensity and unshakeable confidence, had heartened him, even on his worst days. She cared about so much. Students and colleagues and stories and language. She was a constant reminder that determination and belief still existed in his world.

Which was why, when he saw her shuffle into the faculty lounge the following August, he immediately straightened in alarm.

“Good morning,” Candy said, the words barely audible.

She’d spoken into Griff’s right ear, but that wasn’t the issue. His colleague’s voice, so gloriously booming and decisive, normally made her angle of approach irrelevant.

Not today. She’d murmured the standard greeting, rather than making it seem like an order—you will have a good morning, or else—and she did so without her usual direct eye contact. Instead, she’d kept her head down, her gaze on the memos she’d just removed from her staff mailbox, still facing that honeycombed wall of wooden slots.

It didn’t sound like a good morning. It didn’t look like one either.

Nevertheless, he echoed her words, studying his colleague as discreetly as possible as she flipped through her mail.

With her shoulders slumped, her head bowed, and her hair shorn, the pale nape of her neck seemed…vulnerable. Not a word he’d have ever imagined using to describe her. Even more alarmingly, her usual schoolmarm cosplay, as he liked to think of it, had vanished.

Instead, she was wearing stretchy black pants, an oversized, faded tee, and sneakers. Which made total sense for a returning teacher prepared to set up her classroom for the upcoming school year. He’d donned worn jeans and his own faded t-shirt for this day’s efforts, which would likely involve moving chairs, desks, and books between and within classrooms.

But Candy Albright didn’t let good sense get in the way of her convictions, and at some point she’d evidently become convinced she should clothe her solid frame in a blouse, cardigan, pearls, and a long skirt each and every day she appeared at work. That she should pull her ashy brown hair back into a bun with the assistance of a wide headband, her eyebrow-length fringe of bangs brushed to the side. That she should secure her horn-rimmed glasses with a chain around her neck, even though she always, always had them perched on the bridge of her aquiline nose.

Rain, shine, school day, teacher work day, faculty retreat…it didn’t matter. She altered not, as Shakespeare might have said.

Before this moment, then, he’d literally never seen her with her hair down. But sometime during the summer, she’d cut it too short for a bun. Instead, it framed her round face in smooth, jaw-length arcs. With her chin down, that swoop of hair swung forward, obscuring her expression from his sight.

The barrier bothered him more than it should.

It wasn’t his business. He shouldn’t inquire. The two of them were—and would remain—friendly colleagues, rather than friends. For so many reasons, his instincts had consistently guided him away from bridging that gap.

Still, he cleared his throat. Opened his mouth.

But before he said anything, she offered him a curt nod and trudged out