Advice

Christopher

Leila returned, taking her seat and the offered coffee. There was a weird awkwardness between us that I didn’t like. I realized the misunderstanding was on my end. She had no involvement in me being exposed. I had taken it out on her and it wasn’t right. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you the benefit of the doubt. I jumped to some very wrong conclusions. It wasn’t at all fair to you.”

She smiled. “It’s okay. I’m sure it didn’t look good from your side of things. I thought for sure you told the dean who I was. I thought that was why you weren’t answering my calls.”

“I would never do that to you,” I told her. “Never.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you either. I love my job, but I do understand loyalty.”

I chuckled, shaking my head. “I guess we’ll need to work on our communication skills.”

“Definitely. I should have tried harder to talk to you and clear things up.”

“I promise to be more open-minded and not automatically assume the worst,” I promised.

“Me too.”

“I hate that there was a lot