Giving feedback to students' writing was a lengthy process. Sometimes Alex wondered if he was spending more time writing out his feedback to them than they were writing their assignments in the first place. He doubted some of them even read through anything he jotted down. But some of them did, he was sure, and he liked to think that his compliments to their writing motivated them and that his constructive criticism helped them improve.

He was in the middle of a stack of creative non-fiction pieces they'd turned in last week when he spied Isabel's paper at the bottom of the pile. She'd turned it in late, of course, and it was significantly shorter than almost everyone else's. Her assignments were always the hardest for him to grade, because he'd read her writing back when it had been so much better.

"Knock, knock," a familiar voice rang out. He looked up as Liz Parker let herself into his office.

"Hey," he said, happy to see her.

"Hey." She was still wearing the black shirt and khaki pants she wore as a work uniform, so she must have just been swinging by. "Brought someone to see you." She stepped aside, holding her daughter's hand as she waddled into his office. "Go say hi to Uncle Alex, Scarlet," she urged.

Alex moved his chair to the side of his desk, bending down with his arms open. "Come here, kiddo," he said.

Scarlet let go of her mom's hand and scuttled towards him. She tripped on her own feet right in front of him but got herself back up and reached up towards him.

"Oh, look at you." He lifted her into his lap, bouncing her up and down on his knee. As usual, Liz had her daughter dressed up. She was wearing a beige dress and matching lace headband this time. Scarlet always looked like one of those calendar babies. She sure was cute enough to be one.

"Say hi," Liz urged her little girl.

Scarlet smiled up at him and babbled a little nonsense, but he pinpointed "hi" in there somewhere.

"I heard it."

"Oh, you should've heard her this morning. I was setting out some doughnuts, and she looked at it and said, 'Mine.'"

"Oh." He looked at the little girl with wide eyes. "Demanding little thing, aren't you?"

"She loves doughnuts," Liz said. "Actually, she loves all sweets."

"Good thing you can bake then."

"Yeah, good thing," Liz agreed, reaching down to fiddle with Scarlet's headband. She always wanted her looking perfect. "Anyway, I had class after work today, but that got done early, so I swung by the daycare to pick up Scarlet, and I figured we'd just swing by here and say hi to you before we head home."

"Hi!" Scarlet said loudly.

"Hi," Alex returned, squeezing her pudgy little side gently. "Good job."

"I hope we're not interrupting anything," Liz said, glancing at the papers littering his desk.

"Oh, no, you're fine," he assured her.

"Looks like you've got a lot to grade."

"Yeah. Can you believe it? We're only in the fourth week of the semester, and already I'm behind. But I'm never too busy to see my favorite girl." He tapped Scarlet's soft little nose, then nuzzled it with his own.

Just then, Leanna stepped into the office, clearing her throat. "And here I thought your wife would be your favorite," she said.

"Let's just call it a tie," he suggested.

"Hmm." Leanna then looked over at Liz. "Hi, Liz," she said.

"Hey, Leanna," Liz returned. "How are you?"

"Good."

"How's work? I heard you were teaching a yoga class now."

"And Zumba," Leanna added. "The yoga class is full, but Zumba enrollment's a little low."

"Oh, well, I'm sure it'll pick up," Liz said positively.

"Hopefully." Leanna returned her focus to Alex then, giving him an impatient look. "Do you have a minute?" she asked.

"Uh . . ." He looked down at Scarlet, then up at both her and Liz. Suddenly that small office felt even smaller. It was like everyone wanted his attention.

"We're gonna go," Liz said, lifting her daughter up off his lap. "Say bye-bye, Scarlet. Say bye-bye."

"Bye-bye," she cooed, giving him a little wave.

"Bye, Scarlet." He smiled and watched them leave.

Once they were gone, Leanna shut the door and came forward to sit on his lap, kissing him deeply. "Mmm," she moaned. "How often do you hang out with them?"

"We weren't hanging out. They just stopped by."

"Well, whatever," she dismissed, threading her hands through her blonde hair. "Now that they're gone, maybe you can spend some time with me. For once."

"For once?" He frowned. Yeah, things had been hectic since they'd tied the knot this summer, but he carved out as much time as he possibly could for her.

"When can you leave?" she asked him.

"Not until 5:00."

"What?" She pouted.

"I have office hours."

"Alex, no students are here," she pointed out.

"But what if somebody comes by? It'd look really bad if I wasn't even here."

"No one's gonna come by," she persisted. "Just come home."

"I can't. I have to stay." He wasn't just a student at this university anymore; he was a teacher. He had obligations now he hadn't had before.

She frowned, clearly upset. "Ever since we got married, it's like you have no time for me," she complained. "You're always busy with things like . . . teaching."

"It's my job, Leanna."

"And taking your own classes," she went on, "and being Liz Parker's best friend. And being Uncle Alex." She rolled her eyes.

"Honey, I'm sorry if you feel neglected," he apologized. "I'll leave here right at 5:00, be home by 5:15. I won't even bring any papers to grade, so we'll have the whole night to ourselves." He rubbed his hands up and down her back, hoping her body would start to lose some of its tension. "How's that sound?"

She sighed dramatically. "Fine, I guess."

"Okay." He tried to kiss her on the lips, but she turned her head to the side at last second, and he got her cheek instead.

...

Liz talked to Scarlet as she carried her from the English department to the parking lot across the street. "You're just the prettiest little girl, you know that?" she squealed. "The prettiest little girl." She tickled her sides, eliciting a bubbling giggle out of her daughter. "Yes, you are!"

She was almost back to her car when she saw an all too familiar figure striding through the parking lot. Baggy jeans, t-shirt he'd probably slept in last night, uncombed curly brown hair . . . it could only be her ex-boyfriend, Sean, who she'd thankfully managed to avoid running into since they'd ended things at the beginning of summer.

Even though she tried to duck behind a big minivan, he saw her and scurried towards her right away. "Liz, hey!"

"Hey." She put on her best happy face. Seeing Sean wasn't really a bad thing; it was just . . . awkward. All sorts of awkward. When they'd split, it had become blatantly apparent that his feelings for her were much stronger than hers had ever been for him, and she felt guilty about that.

"Wow," he said, motioning to Scarlet. "She got bigger."

"Yeah, she grows fast."

"Hey, Scarlet," he said, but she didn't pay any attention to him, so instead of trying to get her attention, he asked Liz, "How are things goin'? Seems like the bakery's still doin' well."

"Yeah, it is," she agreed. She'd successfully passed the one year mark of owning her own business now, and she felt good about the direction it was going. Still, she wasn't looking to stand there and talk to Sean about it.

"I've stopped in a few times," he admitted, "but you haven't been there."

"Yeah, I have a couple people who work for me now."

"That's cool."

"Yeah." She smiled pleasantly, not sure what else to say. Awkward, awkward, awkward . . .

"Are you takin' classes now, too?" he asked.

"One. A business class," she replied. "Are you?" She'd never known him to venture onto campus unless it was for a frat party.

"Yeah, I'm taking Zumba," he informed her.

"Oh." She cringed. Yeah, this was more like the immature Sean she remembered. "I meant, like, an educational class."

"Oh, no, not that," he said flippantly. "Not yet. Figured I'd ease myself into it. So . . . Zumba. At the rec center. It's surprisingly exhausting."

"Are you taking it with Leanna?" she asked him. Leanna was a fitness buff; she'd been a track star before graduating last year, so her Zumba class was probably more like Zumba on steroids.

"Yeah, you know Leanna?"

"Yeah, she's, uh, Alex's wife, actually."

"Alex?" he echoed. "Oh, yeah, that's where I'd seen her before. Huh." He nodded and shrugged. "Dude didn't do too bad for himself."

"No." Leanna was . . . very pretty.

"So I guess that means you two aren't knockin' boots then," he concluded.

"What? Sean . . ." What a way to word it.

"Well, I always thought that's why you broke up with me, so you could be with him."

She sighed, rehashing it for his own benefit. "Alex is my best friend, Sean. We dated for, like, a couple months when I was nineteen. Nothing serious."

"Sorta like us, huh?"

"Sean . . ." She should have known he was going to try to make her feel bad about putting an end to things, but she had no regrets. "You weren't ready to be with me, to be a father figure for Scarlet. We've been through this." Thing was, Sean was actually a really nice guy. He had a big heart, but he didn't always use his brain. When they'd been together, he'd just gone to a few too many parties and come to her house drunk a few too many times afterward. He was like a big kid.

"Yeah, I know," he grumbled, "we've been through this. But if Alex and Leanna are married, and you're not seeing anyone . . . who knows? Maybe we could-"

"No, Sean," she cut him off.

"Are you seeing someone else?"

"That's really none of your business."

He stuffed his hands in his pockets, and his shoulders slumped forward dejectedly. "Alright, well . . . it was worth a shot," he muttered.

"I'm sorry."

"No, I should've known it wouldn't work." He started backing away, meeting her gaze disappointedly. "I'm not him." He managed a smile, the kind meant to conceal hurt feelings, and turned, mumbling, "See ya, Liz," as he walked away.

She let out a heavy exhale, wishing there was a way to let Sean down without hurting his feelings in the process. But there never had been. He was an emotional guy.

But he was right about one thing: He wasn't him.

...

Despite the vast array of attempting aromas circulating throughout YellowBrix Restaurant, Michael couldn't even concentrate on food. His mind was only on one thing.

"I wonder what Shango's doing right now," he mused.

Sarah put down her menu and gave him an incredulous look. "Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, probably sleeping," she supposed, "barking, pooping . . . chewing my shoes."

He immediately jumped to the defense of his new canine companion. "Okay, that wasn't his fault. He thought it was one of his toys."

"Well, that's because you bought him, like, five-thousand toys, so now he thinks everything is one of his toys."

He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. "You know, I can't help but feel like you were more excited about getting a puppy before we actually got one."

"Oh, no, don't get me wrong, I love Shango," she clarified, "and I think he's one of the cutest puppies ever. But he's a lot of work. I don't think he's gonna be all that easy to train."

"Don't worry about it," Michael told her, leaning back in his chair. "I'm a professional dog-trainer."

She gave him a bewildered look and remarked, "You're a freak. That's what you are," before glancing down at the menu again.

He laughed lightly, choosing not to dispute that. As much as he would have loved to keep talking about his dog, he had to ask her about something else, so he changed the subject. "Hey, so do you wanna tag along with me to Roswell for the weekend, stay at my mom's house?"

She looked back up at him curiously. "Why?"

"Well, so we can show off Shango, of course."

She rolled her eyes.

"And . . . I think I need to kinda, you know, lay down the law with Teenie." He twisted his fist against his palm, exaggerating how tough he'd be on her. "Crack down."

"Is she still acting out?"

"Yeah. I think my mom's kind of at a loss for what to do with her. And I kinda wanna run into Nicholas and just intimidate the shit outta him."

She cringed. "Yeah, I kinda wish she wasn't still dating him. Isn't he in ninth grade now?"

"Yep." Michael didn't like it. Didn't like it one bit.

"Yeah, no eighth grade girl should be dating a high school boy. That's . . ." She trailed off and shuddered.

"Yeah, so I kinda wanna spend some time with her, talk to her," he said, "just make sure her head's on straight." The last thing he wanted was for his little sister to start making the same mistakes he'd made, go down the same path he had. It was like . . . counseling. He wanted to counsel his little sister.

"Yeah, we can go," she said. "I'll get off work."

"Okay. Thanks." These little weekends at home were always more bearable when she went along with him.

"Ugh," she groaned, picking up her menu again. "I don't know what to get."

"Rib eye," he suggested. That was what he always got at this restaurant. "You like to eat, right?"

She smiled sweetly. "You remember. Our first date."

"Yeah." Hell, that date was hard to forget.

...

Michael closed his menu and told the waiter, "I'll have the rib eye steak meal."

"And how do you take your steak?" the waiter inquired.

"Uh, medium rare."

"You know, that sounds good," Sarah said, closing her menu, too. "I'll have the same, but well-done."

"Alright, we'll get that out to you," the waiter said, taking back their menus.

"Thank you," Sarah chirped politely as he left the table.

Michael stared at her in astonishment, thinking she couldn't possibly know how big the rib eye meal was.

"What?" she said as if she could see what he was thinking. "I like to eat."

He shrugged. No harm in that; so did he. Plus, a girl who ate to her heart's content was always more attractive than a girl who claimed to be full after eating two peas.

"So," she said, resting her elbow on the table, "root beer, huh?"

"What?" He looked down at his drink, which was already nearly empty. "Oh, yeah." His damn favorite.

"Tess told me you were more of a beer guy."

"Well, I was," he confessed, "back in the day." He hadn't drunk alcohol for a long time, though. Not all summer. Not once during these first two and a half months of college. And he didn't intend to start back up again, not until he was sure he could handle it, drink without getting out of control.

"What else did Tess tell you?" he asked her, a little wary of the fact that the person who had set up this first date between them was someone who, at various stages of knowing him, had vowed to rip his head off if he pissed her off too much.

"Well, she said you're athletic," Sarah revealed.

"True."

"And that you're good-looking,"

"Very true."

"And that you have a lot of unresolved emotional baggage you're dealing with."

He tensed. Yeah, that was true, too, but . . . he sure as hell didn't wanna talk about it. "And you still agreed to go out with me, huh?"

"Well, she also said that, deep down, you're a really good guy," Sarah added, "and that lately she's been impressed with you."

"Huh," he grunted, not sure why she would be. Lately, he sure as hell hadn't felt . . . impressive. Sure, he was doing alright with his classes, but . . . he wasn't doing much else. It was pretty much just go to class, eat, study, sleep; then wake up and repeat the same thing all over again.

"So how do you know Tess?" he asked. All Tess had told him was that she knew a really nice, smart, pretty girl named Sarah who she wanted him to go out with. And somehow, she'd gotten him to agree to it.

"I work at Chancellor Rehabilitation," she explained, "where Kyle's going for physical therapy."

"Oh." Well . . . that was one way to meet.

"Seeing him go through all that seems to be kind of tough on Tess, so sometimes while he's working on stuff, she'll come spend time with me, and we'll talk and try to get her mind on something else."

He nodded, knowing firsthand how difficult Kyle's injury had been for Tess to deal with. She'd quit cheerleading so she could help take care of him more. Her senior year of high school wasn't much of a senior year anymore. She was missing out on a lot of things she enjoyed.

"They seem really nice," Sarah said. "I haven't gotten to interact with Kyle much, but I remember seeing his injury online and on Sports Center and all those shows."

"Yeah." It wasn't exactly the Sports Center coverage Kyle had had in mind during his first and only college football game.

"You guys went to Alabama, right?" she asked.

"For a little while, yeah."

"So why'd you come back to New Mexico?"

He sighed, remembering how hard it had been for Kyle to have to make that decision, how he'd agonized over it and dreaded it. "Well, without football, there was really no reason for Kyle to stay out there. It just made more sense for him to come back home, be closer to his dad. But he came to Carlsbad because it's closer to the treatment center."

"So that's why Kyle came back," she recapped, "but what about you?"

He shrugged. In contrast, the decision to leave Alabama hadn't been a tough decision for him. "Well, I gotta stay with Kyle," he said simply. "He's my best friend. He's always looked out for me. Now . . . it's my turn to repay the favor, I guess."

"Hmm." She smiled softly. "That means you're a really good friend."

"Well . . ." He was the dead weight Kyle had dragged around for eighteen years; nothing more. "I don't know if I'd go that far."

"No, you are," she insisted. "I wish I had a friend like that, but we moved around too much growing up for me to really stop and get to know people."

"Where's your family live now?" he asked. It was sort of driving him crazy, because he couldn't quite put a finger on it. She definitely had some Asian in her; that much was obvious. China, maybe? Japan? Hell if he knew.

"My mom and dad and little brother live in Las Cruces," she told him. "But before that we lived in Tucson, Phoenix, Albuquerque."

He tensed briefly. Albuquerque. He'd driven up there once this past summer looking for . . .

"So . . ." He cleared his throat, trying not to let his thoughts drift. "Where are your parents from?"

"Well, they're from Phoenix, but technically, if you wanna trace it back further, my family's from South Korea."

"Really?" Well, there was the answer to his burning question. He frowned, trying to make sense of it. He had an image of that place in his mind that just didn't jive with who Sarah Nguyen seemed to be. "You ever been there?"

"Yeah, my grandparents still live over there, so I've visited them. It's nice."

"It is?" Then why the hell were they always talking crap about it on the news? "I thought it was all cut off from the rest of the world, like the dictator and no cell phones and shit."

"That's North Korea," she informed him.

"Yeah, but same thing, right?"

"It's an entirely different country." She tilted her head to the side, giving him a skeptical look.

"Oh." Oops, he thought. Strike one. "Well, what do you do in South Korea?"

"Well . . ." she replied, "we do our homework for fun. We all grow up wanting to work at Samsung. And every other night, we eat dogs."

His mouth dropped open in horror. "Fuck, are you serious?"

"No, those are stereotypes," she assured him. "You can't believe any of that."

"Oh, thank God." He breathed a sigh of relief. "The dog thing was a deal-breaker. I know some of your people eat it, but-"

"Your people?" she cut him off in horror. "Okay, Michael, I'm sorry, but you sound so ignorant right now."

"I am," he openly admitted. No point in hiding it. He'd never given a damn about learning about other countries or other cultures. Never would.

She half-groaned, half-sighed. "Okay, well . . ." Suddenly she started looking around the restaurant, like she was looking for the easiest escape route.

Uh-oh. Strike two, he thought. This was going south fast. The only way he could think of to salvage it was to just be completely honest with her. "Look, Sarah, I'm not a perfect guy," he informed her. "So if that's what you're looking for, it's not me. I say stupid shit, like I did just now. I do stupid things. I make mistakes. I screw up; I mess things up all the time."

"What did you mess up?" she questioned.

No, he thought. Don't ask me that.

For a split-second, he was back there in his head, reliving the horrible memory. A broken bridge on a rainy night. A frightened scream. A fall.

He snapped back to the present, where there was only a beautiful girl and a restaurant, and a semi-concerned look on her face as she quietly prompted, "Michael?"

Say something else, he told himself. There were just some things he couldn't talk about yet, maybe not ever. But there were plenty of other things he'd screwed up that would satisfy her curiosity. "I cheated on this girl named Isabel," he blurted. "Twice."

Her eyebrows shot up. "What?"

"Yeah. Then she made porn, and now she's at Princeton." He sighed in resignation, knowing that that had more than likely been strike three. "That's probably not the kind of thing I should tell a girl on a first date, huh?"

Sarah leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms over her chest, looking completely closed off to him. "No. Probably not."

Damn. He should have known he wasn't ready to get back out on the dating scene again. It was still too soon. Maybe it always would be. This was now just another thing in a long line of things he'd managed to screw up just by being himself.

...

Michael nudged his girlfriend's foot beneath the table, getting a kick out of how pissed she'd been at him by the end of that date. She'd barely eaten anything and asked for a box for leftovers halfway through the meal, claiming that she was feeling sick. But he knew she hadn't been sick at all; she'd just been ready to leave.

"North Korea, South Korea," he reminded her.

"Oh god," she rolled her eyes. "You're lucky you got a second date."

He knew he was. By the end of that first one, he'd felt certain he wouldn't get another chance.

...

"Sorry you're not feelin' well."

"Yeah." Sarah cringed. "Too bad."

He wasn't an idiot; he knew she was relieved it was ending and probably wanted to put this whole disastrous date behind her. "That was bad, wasn't it?" he said, stopping with her outside the door to her dorm room. "That was a bad date."

"No," she said unconvincingly. "It was . . ." She looked like she was trying to think of a polite way to say it, but finally she just blurted, "Okay, yeah, it was bad."

"I felt like I was doin' okay until I started talkin' about North Korea."

"Yeah, that was definitely a turning point."

He sighed, bummed that he'd blown it. Sarah was a hot girl, and he'd been hoping that, at the very least, they could maybe be a casual thing for a couple of weeks. That was all he was looking for right now. Casual.

But then again . . . Sarah seemed pretty cool. Smart. Nice. Way too good for someone like him. She deserved someone who could offer her something more than casual. Someone who could offer her his whole heart instead of a heart that had already shattered into a million pieces.

"Well, thanks," he said.

She looked up at him confusedly. "For what?"

"Just . . . for goin' out with me. It's been a while since I went on a date with a girl, so . . ." He shrugged. Yeah, it had been a while. His last date had involved a coffee shop and open mic night. Looking back . . . he wished he'd never gone on that date.

"You're not horrible company," she informed him. "You're just . . ."

"Immature?" he filled in. "Rude? Irresponsible?" Yeah, he'd heard it all before.

"No," she said. "You're just . . . you."

Too bad, he thought. Sometimes it would've been a lot easier to be someone else. "Well, thanks for not hating me," he told her in all sincerity, "and for putting up with me. And for not making me pay for your rib eye steak. That was really expensive."

She laughed lightly, and for a second, it seemed like she was warming up to him again, but still, she said, "I'm sorry. I just don't think we . . ."

"It's fine," he assured her, then parroting what had once been said to him. "Maybe if things were different."

Were things ever going to be different for him?

She tilted her head to the side and looked up at him with . . . intrigue? Was she seeing something, some expression on his face or in his eyes that hinted at all the hurt he was still feeling, all the loneliness he kept trying to hold inside? Whatever she saw, it softened her, and when he tried to walk away, she said his name quietly to bring him back. "Michael."

He turned around slowly, not sure why she wouldn't just let him go.

She smiled just slightly and said, "You can call me."

He stared at her in utter disbelief. Had he really just scraped a second date out of this? Was she seriously willing to give it another shot, even after he'd offended her and stereotyped her and owned up to all sorts of horrible personality traits? Why would she want him? He was a mess.

But then again . . . maybe he didn't have to stay that way.

...

"I love you," Michael told his girlfriend, not sure if he said that enough. Nearly two years ago, she'd given him a second chance, and he was so grateful for it.

"I love you, too," she reciprocated right away, with no need to question why he was saying it.

Thank God they'd had a second date, because that had been a good one, enough to get them past their first date. They were well past that now. They were past all of it.