Office Hours (The Curriculum #2)

1. Consultation

ONE

CONSULTATION

NAILAH

Malik's birthday dinner was at that place on Edgewood he'd been talking about for three weeks. Exposed brick. Cocktails that cost way too fucking much. Twenty-six people at a long communal table, and I still found myself a corner.

I put myself there. Intentionally. Out of sight, out of mind.

Tonight I wore the safe dress: black, midi, high neck.

The kind that covered everything but couldn't help tracing every curve it was supposed to be hiding.

That's the problem with a body built the way mine is.

Even modesty is loud. The fabric draped over my hips should have been a sin, but the dress said what I needed it to say: I'm here, but I'm not trying to be seen.

I never liked the attention on my curvy frame.

36DD. Thirty-inch waist. Fifty-two-inch hip.

The kind of body that made men lose their manners before I'd even learned what that kind of attention meant.

Grown men at the gas station. Boys my own age in the hallway.

Men old enough to be my father, slowing down at the bus stop, looking at me the way you look at something you intend to take.

I was twelve. Thirteen. Wearing basketball shorts and oversized tees because while my mama raised me to be a girly girl, I dressed as a tomboy to hide from being seen.

The attention was uncomfortable.

So yes, I wanted to be hidden, and I liked it that way. Liked being invisible. Liked being the quiet one no one clocked. But this body didn't care what I liked. It announced me before I ever opened my mouth.

I knew I was sexy as fuck. I'm not delusional. But I didn't want to be. I wanted to be smart and unnoticed and left alone with my books and my silence. I wanted to leave rooms early and never feel someone's eyes trailing down to my ass.

So I learned to disappear on purpose. Covered.

High necklines to conceal my cleavage. Dark colors to slim my frame.

Nothing fitted, nothing low, nothing that invited a gaze I hadn't offered.

Because that's the thing: if I'm not offering it, I don't want it.

I never wanted it. I thrived in the quiet, in the hidden, in the corners where nobody looked twice. And I built my whole life there.

Which is funny, if you look at me. Full lips.

Button nose. Almond-shaped honey brown eyes that people always said were "too pretty to keep looking at the floor.

" And my hair, a tapered pixie cut, because I knew I was the shit.

I just didn't care for the attention that came with knowing it.

The short hair was deliberate. No curtain to hide behind.

No long waves to soften the frame. Just my face, all of it, a dare I made with myself: You can be beautiful and still refuse to perform it.

Malik stood at the head of the table with a glass of Hennessy and gave a speech about being thirty and "finally becoming the man I was built to be," which made everyone clap and me roll my eyes with love. My brother. Always performing. Always taking up the room I refused to.

Dinner was loud. Somebody knocked over a candle. Trey's girlfriend got too drunk and started crying about something. I ate my salmon, smiled when people talked to me, and counted the minutes until I could go home and take off my bra.

Then Malik got a call.

"Yo, I gotta go handle this," he said, kissing my forehead. "You good getting home?"

"I'm twenty-seven, Malik."

"That's not what I asked."

"I'm good.” I rolled my eyes. He was always so protective over me.

He squeezed my shoulder, then left. Most of the table had thinned out by then. Trey left with his crying girlfriend. A few people moved to the patio to smoke. And somehow, like the universe had choreographed it just to test me, the only person left at the bar was Jarvis Reed.

With an empty stool beside him.

You could just leave. Uber can be here in three minutes.

I sat down

"Nailah Cross." He said my name like he was reading it off a gallery wall. Turned on the stool to face me fully, one elbow on the bar. "I don't think we've had a conversation that lasted more than four sentences since you were nineteen."

"That's because you and Malik are always in your own world."

"Nah." He took a sip of whatever amber thing was in his glass. "That's because you disappear. Intentionally."

I blinked. "I don’t..”

"You do though.” No malice in it. Just observation. The way someone speaks when they've been watching.

The bartender came. I ordered a gin and tonic because I didn't know what else to say. Jarvis watched me order curiously.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing. Just didn't picture you as a gin girl."

"What did you picture?"

He smiled. “Something darker."

I should have changed the subject. Should have asked about his business, about how Malik was doing from his perspective, about anything safe and surface level. Instead, I said nothing and let the silence sit between us.

He let it sit too.

The bartender brought my drink. I took a sip that burned the roof of my mouth because I'd forgotten to breathe.

"So what do you do for yourself?" he asked. Not what do you do for work. Not what do you do for fun. For yourself.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean,” He leaned forward. Not into my space. Into the question. "Your brother lives his life out loud. Everything he does is for an audience. You're the opposite. Everything you do is small and quiet." He paused. Looked at me, trying to figure something out.

"But you're beautiful, Nailah. Genuinely.

And I'm not saying that to be smooth. You're sitting here in this dress looking the way you look, beautiful face on display, yet you're still trying to blend into the wallpaper.

" He shook his head. "Why don't you step out? Why don't you want people to see you?"

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

Because I didn't have an answer. I had my morning gym sessions with Josh.

I had my marketing job at Nine Body Co., where I typed words like empowerment and aligned and radical selfcare into captions for body oils and things that smelled like heaven.

I had Saturday mornings at the farmer's market where I bought things I forgot to cook.

None of that was mine. None of that was for me.

"I don't know," I admitted.

Jarvis didn't pity me. Didn't offer a platitude. He just nodded like I'd confirmed something he already suspected.

"I had a client last month," he said, swirling his glass.

"First time shoot. She was so scared she cried in the bathroom before we started.

Wouldn't make eye contact with the camera.

Kept crossing her arms over her stomach.

" He paused. "By the end of the session, she was standing in the middle of my studio with her chin up, looking at herself in the monitor like she'd never seen her own face before.

Said she felt like the most powerful woman alive. "

My gin was sweating in my hand. "What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything." He looked at me. Directly. The way most people don't. "I just gave her a space where nobody was telling her to be less. And then she figured out what she actually looked like without the apology."

The bass from the restaurant's speakers hummed through the floor and into the soles of my feet. I could feel my heartbeat in my ears. In my wrists. In places I wasn't going to name while sitting next to my brother's best friend.

"What do you actually do in that studio?" I asked. My voice came out lower than I intended.

Jarvis set his glass down. Turned the ring on his finger once. "I show women what they look like when they are comfortable in their own skin.”

Something behind my ribs cracked open. A fissure of light getting in where it hadn't been before.

I finished my drink too fast. Talked about nothing for another fifteen minutes. He walked me to my Uber, opened the door, and said, "Get home safe, Nailah." Like it was simple. Like he hadn't just rearranged something inside me.

I said, "Thanks for tonight."

He said, "You don't have to thank people for seeing you."

The car pulled away, and I did not look back.

I couldn't sleep.

I tried. I showered. Put on the oversized t-shirt I slept in. Turned off the lights. Lay in my bed in my apartment in Kirkwood with the ceiling fan clicking overhead and the neighbor's dog barking three houses down and my body absolutely vibrating.

I show women what they look like when they are comfortable in their own skin.

I turned over. Pressed my face into the pillow.

What they look like.

What did I look like? When I wasn't performing smallness, when I wasn't being "fine with whatever you guys pick," when I wasn't writing someone else's version of empowerment for a brand that sold overpriced bath salts to women?

I didn't know. That was the terrifying part. As I said, I knew I was the shit, but I allowed the actions of others to make me feel small and insecure. I was the thick girl to men and the fat girl to women, and that did something to my mental.

My phone was on the nightstand. The screen glowed every few minutes with birthday messages in the group chat. Malik had sent a blurry selfie from wherever he'd gone. Trey sent a string of emojis. Normal. All normal.

I opened my texts. Found Jarvis's name. We hadn't texted directly in years. The last message was from 2024: Hey this is Jarvis, Malik gave me your number in case of emergency. That was it. Emergency contact for his best friend.

I typed. Deleted. Typed again. Deleted again.

This is insane. Go to sleep.

I stared at the ceiling. The fan made one full rotation. Two. Seven.

At 2:07 AM, I sent it.

Can I see the studio?

I put the phone face-down on the nightstand so fast I almost knocked over my water. Then I lay there with my heart slamming against my mattress, half-praying he was asleep, half-praying he wasn't.

The phone buzzed eleven seconds later.

I didn't flip it over for a full minute. Sixty seconds of my pulse in my throat, of the ceiling fan clicking like a metronome, of the neighbor's dog finally going quiet as if even he knew something was about to change.

I picked it up.

One word. No punctuation. No emoji.

Tomorrow

I put the phone back down.

Stared at the ceiling.

And for the first time in years, I didn't feel invisible.

I felt hungry.

And that hunger wouldn’t let me sleep.

It sat in my stomach. A second pulse. In the cradle of my hips like warm water rising.

I pressed my thighs together under the sheets and told myself to go to sleep.

Told myself this was nothing. Told myself I was not lying in the dark thinking about sexy ass Jarvis Reed, his forearms, and the way they would look flexing, as his hands gripped my thighs.

Go to sleep, Nailah.

I lasted twenty minutes.

Then my hand moved. A sweet surrender. My fingers slid beneath the waistband of my underwear and found what I already knew was there: soaked.

Swollen. My body had made its choice hours ago at that bar, the moment he leaned forward and asked me what I did for myself, and my mind was what he could do for me.

I didn't let myself think. Didn't let myself build a fantasy or construct a narrative or do any of the careful, controlled things I usually did when I touched myself. I just pressed my fingers between my slick folds and let the night do the rest.

I came embarrassingly fast. My breath caught in my throat like a hiccup and my hips lifted off the mattress and I pressed my face into the pillow and…

“Oh fuck, Jarvis!”

The sound of it in my own voice, in my own dark, in my own bed where no one could hear me want something this badly.

It wasn't enough.

My orgasm rolled through me and left me more awake than before. More hungry. More aware of every nerve ending in my body screaming for something my fingers couldn't give it.

I pulled my hand free. Pressed my wet fingers against my stomach. Stared at the ceiling fan turning slow and lazy above me.

What will I actually do in that studio tomorrow?

I closed my eyes. Pressed my thighs together so tight my muscles ached.

Tomorrow, I was going to walk into that man's studio and find exactly what I was looking for. I felt it.

And I was terrified.

And I was already wet again thinking about it.