Seen, page 19
“I still can’t believe you took him in,” Steve muttered. “He creates an art exhibit that doxes the lot of you, and you all shrug and make him the student government reporter?”
Ryan laughed. “He had a year of intense immersion into student government, including three terms of Davis’ leadership course,” Ryan pointed out. “Can’t let all that insider knowledge go to waste. Besides, after all that indoctrination, he still went home that night while his friends and a Student Development advisor set out to beat the shit out of me.”
Steve nodded. “I’m impressed too,” he admitted. “I would have been more impressed if he’d told someone what they were planning, but you’re right. He didn’t go along with it.”
Ryan looked out the window for a bit. He didn’t like reminders of that night and its aftermath. His fractured memories were still a problem. Resolutely, he focused on Steve’s problem instead of his own.
“Why don’t you turn it over to Cinder and the Student Senate? Have them draft you a job description,” he suggested.
Steve considered that for a while. “I could pull some examples from other institutions for her,” he said slowly.
Ryan shook his head. “No,” he said firmly. “See? You’re trying to direct it. Don’t do that.”
“Is that how you’re advising Cinder and Will on the Gender Identity Symposium? Toss them in, sink or swim?” he demanded.
McShane had decided last summer that students needed to understand gender identity better. Actually, he decided Steve needed to understand it better, and that Ryan should coach Cinder, as president of Student Senate, and Will, as EIC of EWN, through building such a symposium. Ryan protested, why should he do it? His protests did no good — they never did — and in two weeks, there would be the Gender Identity Symposium. He was looking forward to it — especially after the conversion therapy camp they’d broken up last month. Resolutely, he stopped thinking about that, too. He didn’t want to throw up. This was his car they were in.
“Pretty much,” Ryan admitted. “We had a long afternoon talk about what it might look like and why was it needed. And then I said if they had any questions to find me.”
“And did they?”
Ryan nodded. “Logistics mostly,” he said. “Asked for names I thought might work for a couple of topics. We had a meeting first of the month to go over everything and make sure we were on track. I listened and told them they were doing a good job. Reminded them not to forget the coffee and snacks. Sent them to McShane for funds for it.”
Steve grinned at that. “And that’s it?”
“Why would I do any more? They know what students know and don’t know. And the conversion therapy camp was an eye-opening experience. They’re going to have Carroll Gilligan as a keynote speaker to talk about that.”
“Isn’t Carroll the one who said God is a hermaphrodite?”
Ryan grinned. “Carroll did. Scripturally sound, too. God created man and woman in his own image, right?”
Steve blinked a bit at that. “Carroll was out at the camp?”
Ryan nodded. “That’s why they asked Carroll to speak,” he said. “And Carroll has been in touch with a lot of the survivors. Carroll’s scared to do it, but I’ve been pushing them. And they finally said yes. Some of the other survivors are going to help.”
Steve thought about that. “And you? Are you speaking? McShane called your lecture to me that night ‘a master class’ in homophobia on campus.”
Ryan shook his head. He resumed looking out the window. “No,” he said quietly. “I’m not a good example of identity, Steve. My identity was fractured by abuse and stitched together again by a psychopathic hypnotherapist. I’m not sure I have a sexual identity.”
Ryan got control of his emotions. “Except I am in love with Teresa Valdez and always will be,” he said with a laugh. “And I promised her monogamy and that’s my identity these days.”
Steve nodded and changed the subject back. “So you think I should just tell Cinder I need the Senate to draft a job description and wait for questions?”
“Give them a deadline,” Ryan amended. “That helps.”
“Interesting,” Steve said. They were silent the rest of the way into Portland.
Steve put the car in park in front of his condo and turned to Ryan. “What I was leading up to was asking you if you wanted the position,” he said. “Would you take it?”
“Interim director of Student Development?” Ryan said startled. “Steve, that is so not a good fit. First, I’m already an interim something, and the two are a conflict of interest. And if I went there, I couldn’t come back to EWN — my credibility within EWN would be finished. Second, those bastards tried to kill me just a few months ago! And three? I have no background in Student Development and no interest in it. You are desperate, aren’t you?”
“You could do it,” Steve insisted. “Do you plan to spend a career being a half-time advisor to EWN?”
“No,” Ryan said. “I plan to go get a PhD and raise the kids while Teresa becomes a renowned professor in bilingual education. Look, I consider Student Affairs a vipers’ pit — and not just because Benjamin Davis was a psychotic racist asshole. I’m not getting near it. Find a sacrificial lamb elsewhere!”
Ryan laughed and shook his head. He got out and came around to the driver’s side. “If I think of someone, I’ll tell you,” he promised. “But it’s not me. Thank you for going with me today to rescue my staff, though.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “And I do like the notion of having Cinder and her Senate draft the job description.”
Ryan laughed all the way home to the house in Portland Heights about becoming an interim director of Student Development. But, well, it did bring up the sensitive topic of exactly what did he want to do when he grew up?
Not that, he thought firmly. That’s two things down. Not Student Affairs, not law no matter what Sue Briggs thought. Oh, three. Not an ombudsman as Abigail McShane had suggested. At this rate he’d eliminate all the possibilities, he thought a bit glumly.
But definitely not Student Affairs.
He parked in the garage and headed down the elevator to his house. Rafael came running to greet him with a hug, and Teresa stuck her head out of the kitchen. “Good,” she said. “You made it home in time for dinner. And look! I’m still here.”
He laughed and enveloped her in his arms — no small feat, she was a small woman, but pregnancy had made reaching around her difficult. Not something he was going to mention. No, he’d learned his lesson the first time.
He just held her for a moment, enjoying the feel of her. “So what are we eating?” he teased and released her.
She laughed.
Chapter 21
7 P.M., SATURDAY, OCT. 9, 2021, a downtown Seattle hotel — Corey made it back down for dinner. He’d already checked — recorded versions of all the sessions would be available, so he didn’t even feel remorse about missing the afternoon sessions. But he was hungry.
And he was glad he made it. Mark Trahant, executive editor of Indian Country Today, was there to speak. Corey hadn’t heard about what they were doing in partnership with Arizona State University. That was amazing. He wondered if he could arrange a field trip down there? He made a note in his phone to ask Ryan about that.
And here was another amazing man who had been in journalism a long time. Corey wondered if Ben even knew there was a Native American Journalists Association? He sent Ben a text — Do you know him? If you don’t, go meet him after dinner.
Ben looked at him and nodded.
For that matter, he hadn’t known about the National Association for Black Journalists either. They needed to get more involved, he thought. Didn’t they? Were there benefits to it for them?
There might be, he decided. If for no other reason, than to know there were other journalists of color out there. He looked around the room and rolled his eyes. If you looked at this room, you might not know there were. Maybe he should be heartened to know that the police had actually found 10 people of color here to take into custody.
He glanced over at the table where the assholes from last night were sitting. Blair had sent him a text with the scoop. Trust her to find out. He wondered what kind of story Kari was writing about all this. He winced. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone to sleep — as if he had any effect on those two. Add in Bianca? Please.
Apparently, the three guys were Washington State University students — and they were sitting at the WSU table now — but they grew up in Seattle. So they came home for the conference, and they know the bar. He hadn’t been sure why. Maybe they knew all the bars in downtown Seattle. They seemed the type. So the police had talked to them this afternoon, but they didn’t press charges. The women didn’t want to file complaints. Neither did any of the guys who had spent the night in custody. So they got a warning, and a copy of it was going to their VP for Student Affairs — Steve Planck’s suggestion.
Corey had grinned at that. Ryan and Planck had headed back to Portland already — another text waiting for him when he woke up. Ryan was really worried he’d miss out on his baby’s arrival. It was kind of cute.
So Corey was interested in that WSU table, oh yes. And he couldn’t see that the three of them had any remorse. Having a pretty good time as a matter of fact. Didn’t that figure?
Kari was sitting next to him. “Let’s go for a walk,” she said as dinner wrapped up. “I need to get out of here for a bit. And I don’t think the bar is a good destination.”
“God, no,” Corey said with feeling. “Where do you want to go?”
“I want to see Pike Place Market,” she said. “I’m not going to go home and say we were within a mile of it and never got to see it.”
“Just us?” Corey asked, smiling at her.
She nodded firmly. “Just you and me.” Then she laughed. “And probably a million tourists. But I don’t care. I want to see them throw a salmon.”
They walked down to the Market, holding hands, not in any hurry. He liked walking with Kari. She was tall enough that he didn’t have to shorten his stride too much. He loved his brother Gregory’s wife, Bianica, but she was short! And Sunday afternoon walks were aggravating.
Walking with Kari was easy. It was like she fit. She pointed out something, and he laughed. And then he put his arm around her and when they started walking again, he kept it there. She slid her arm around his waist.
And that was easy too.
Pike Place was fun. A lot of the vendors were closed this late, but they saw the brass pigs, and wandered through the vendor stalls. They bought a small poster from the magic shop. And chocolates from Indi Chocolate. He had to pull Kari away from the used bookstore or they would have still been there at closing.
He had a special spot in his heart for a girl who could get lost in a bookstore like that.
They window-shopped as the worked their way to the northern end of the building. It was so huge that calling it a building seemed wrong. They came back out into the fresh air — he had to admit, even though there was no one throwing salmon tonight, the place still smelled like they did — and Kari said she wanted to keep walking.
“To the Space Needle?” she asked. “Have you ever seen the Space Needle?”
He hadn’t, he admitted. And yes, it would be a crime to not see it. Actually, you could probably see the Space Needle from the hotel better than you could up close. But he was fine walking with Kari wherever she wanted to go.
He was right about not being able to see much of the Space Needle and neither of them could afford the prices to go up the elevator to the top, although he bet the views would be wonderful at night. It was 9 p.m. and the sun had set a long time ago. He didn’t know if the streets were safe at night. He frowned.
Turned out there was a wonderful park at the Space Needle though. There was a Museum of Pop Culture that looked really cool although it was closed. The Museum of Glass was closed too, but part of the exhibit was a garden and it had Chihuly glass they could see as they walked around.
The two of them stopped and stared at the glass — bright colored, fantastical shapes, some spires rising high above their heads. Corey grinned, and he looked down to see Kari was staring in wonder too, her lips parted.
He kissed her. He moved slow, so that she could tell him no, but there was no hesitancy there from her. Thank God.
He’d gotten a late start with sex. Being a preacher’s kid meant he had dozens of extra grannies and aunties and uncles watching him. He’d kissed a girl one night in the choir dressing room, and his father had already heard about it when he walked home to the parsonage — and it was next door to the church no less. Most dates at the church involved sitting together in the evening service or going to one of many teen parties the church held.
He’d had a girlfriend his freshman year at PSU who had introduced him to sex. It didn’t work out, but they’d parted friends. He was grateful to her. Since then he found that there were a lot of girls who were attracted to his braids and bling, as one girl had termed it. He smiled. His perch in the Geek Cave had given him a ringside seat to the shenanigans of EWN staff over the last three years. And he watched Ryan carefully as he seduced girls, and then he flirted with the girls he met. It worked well. A smile, a dimple, and then letting the girl move on him? Score.
Not in EWN. He kept his flirting separate from the newsroom. And he thought he knew a lot about sex until he moved into the loft. But he didn’t.
He snorted.
The loft might be a wealth of knowledge but no one was going to play with the kids, as Kevin had termed it, referring to him and Miguel. And Corey had seen enough by then he didn’t even protest.
So he kissed Kari gently, and when her lips parted, he deepened the kiss, running his tongue along her lips, sliding inside her mouth, tasting her. He smiled against her lips. She tasted like chocolate.
“What?” she asked, pulling back a bit.
“You taste like chocolate,” he told her.
She smiled. “You taste like Corey,” she said softly, and he kissed her again.
He glanced around, wondering if there was a more secluded place where he could kiss her, and hold her closer. She looked around too, then shook her head. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go back to the hotel. We’ll take Ben and Bianca’s room.”
He looked at her, a bit surprised. “Kari?” he said. “Be clear here? I want you. I want to hold you, and kiss you, and yes, make love with you. Is that what you’re saying? Or do you just want to go back to the hotel where we have privacy and we can talk? Because that’s OK too. But I need to know what you want.”
Kari had a half-smile on her face as if he’d said something special. But Corey was more nervous than anything else. What if he did something she didn’t want? What if he fumbled around making love to her. They would still have to work together. Still be around each other.
And he didn’t have any condoms! This wasn’t something he’d planned on.
Wished for, maybe, he acknowledged to himself, but planned?
“I want you,” she said simply. “I want to make love with you. We can explore and see what we like as we go, Corey.”
The she grinned mischievously. “And I already got some condoms and the key from Bianca.”
Corey laughed. The anxiousness went away, and he grabbed her hand. “Then let’s move it, girl,” he ordered teasingly. “What are we wasting time for?”
The other nice thing about walking with Kari was she could move as fast as he did. He liked the way she moved. She was wearing blue jeans tucked into knee-high boots, but they had a chunky heel so she could walk in them. She was tall, probably 5-foot-9, and she was ... well, he wasn’t sure how to describe her. He’d heard Bianca say she was built like Wonder Woman not like some thin model type. He liked that description.
Wonder Woman. Strong, broad shoulders, long legs — right now she was using those long legs to take long strides that ate up the distance back to the hotel. She had dark hair that fell below her shoulders. And she had heavy dark eyebrows.
Yes, Wonder Woman, he thought. She’s gorgeous, and she wants me. He sighed happily. Yes, he liked her. She was smart, aggressive about getting the story, and she was funny. But right now? He had to admit he was more focused on those breasts of hers and what it would feel like to kiss them.
What it would feel like to kiss her all over.
He’d wanted her since she first walked into the newsroom. Everyone noticed that he was interested. But damned if he knew how to move on a woman when everyone was watching. Rooting for him, he thought, but still. The audience was damned intimidating.
And everyone would know here too, he realized. They were booting Bianca and Ben out?
The more he thought about it the more nervous he became. By the time they were in the elevator, he was practically bouncing with nerves. And impatience, he thought. Let’s not forget that.
Kari opened up the room and turned on the light next to the unused bed farthest from the door. Corey closed the door and just watched her.
“You going to watch me strip for you?” she asked laughing.
“I’m good with that,” he said with a grin. “I’ve been wanting to see you naked since the day you walked into the newsroom.”
She smiled at him. “You’re not the shy preacher’s kid everyone thinks you are, are you?” she said. She pulled her sweater over her head, then bent down to unzip her boots and pull them off. He watched her breasts as they almost surged out of her bra as she bent over. He felt his eyelids lower with pleasure. Why did eyes do that, he wondered. I want eyes wide open so I can see!
“Not anymore,” he agreed. He toed off his own shoes, took off his jacket, and found a place on the dresser for his rings, earrings, and necklaces. “But EWN had two of my older brothers working there. I decided to play elsewhere.”
“And now?” she asked. She watched him walk closer, still standing there in her snug blue jeans and her white bra against her olive-brown skin.
