Office Hours

Savannah flung Gayle's office door open, barely flinching when the door stopper made its obnoxious spring at the force, declaring. "Why would you do this to me?"

Gayle, who had been duteously working through the peaceful quiet of the night, cried out in fright. Her body attempted to leap up in fear, but her knees painfully collided with the underside of her desk, causing her large coffee to spill its contents onto the table and drench the papers that littered its surface. Gayle let out a resounding and eloquent, "Fuck!" and attempted to use her discarded sweater to soak up the coffee, but it was too late to salvage her work. She swung her bloodshot eyes toward Savannah in enraged disbelief. "What the fuck? Do you know what time it is? Do you not know how to knock?"

Savannah met Gayle's glare with a glare of her own. "You wrote, 'come see me in my office.' So here I am."

Savannah watched as Gayle's face pulled into a fierce sneer. "During my office hours, Savannah. You can't just show up at someone's office in the middle of the night."

Savannah tossed her hair over her shoulder, unimpressed. "You should have specified."

Gayle hums. "You call me an old hag and nearly kill my niece. You're right; you so deserve my favour." She says dryly.

Gayle ignored Savannah who continued rambling angrily, instead leaning back in her chair to survey the state of her desk. She groaned in obvious despair, ripping off her glasses and throwing them aimlessly on the table before letting her face fall into her hands. Savannah stood by the doorframe, a prickle of guilt slowly blossoming in her chest. Maybe that was a tad dramatic.

After a painfully long minute, Gayle responded, face still covered by her hands and words muffled. "Did you at least read my comments that explained in detail why I gave you an unsatisfactory?"

Savannah blanched. She had completely forgotten about the red ink that filled the margins of her assignment, too hopped up on the fact it existed in the first place. Savannah's eyes scanned Gayle's desk. The coffee-soaked papers were the writing assignments of her classmates. Her eyes flittered across Gayle's meticulous comments that she had hand-written on their papers. Gayle's responses were undoubtedly detailed, kind, and helpful—an unfortunately unusual combination, as most teachers did not have the time or patience to help their students so thoroughly. Savannah shrank in on herself. It must have taken Gayle hours to grade these assignments, and now they were ruined.

"I...I'm..." Her apology got caught in her throat. Savannah struggled with apologies. It's not that she was too narcissistic to see her faults (unlike what her ex form highschool thought, that great big bag of dicks) or failed to recognize when she was in the wrong. Savannah knew she was in the wrong here. She was too upset at her grade to remember that Gayle had left detailed comments on her assignment. Savannah had even gone so far as to complain to the Dean of all people, and when that failed, she had aggressively confronted Gayle in the middle of the night and was the singular reason Gayle's hard work was now ruined. The blame solely fell on Savannah's shoulders, and she knew it.

Which was personally devastating.

An adolescence of incessant apologizing from her  haunted her ability to apologize now- overuse of her tongue forcing it to knot in on itself the moment accountability striked which was a genuine epidemic.

Growing up as the only daughter of an elite man in New York for a good portion of her life, perfection was expected from her. And when she did not achieve that perfection, she was taught to take the blame rather than criticize the unreasonable standards that were unfairly placed on her. Younger Savannah found herself apologizing for things that were not her fault. And the more she apologized, the more it was reinforced in her mind that she was doing something wrong—that she deserved the guilt and her toxic self-blame. Which, in turn, destroyed her confidence.

And when she became this powerhouse in junior year of high school—strong, beautiful, fierce, and independent it just became harder and harder for her to apologize. She did not ever want to feel that pathetic, that vulnerable, ever again. She had strength now, something she never had before, and she was not going to apologize simply because it was expected of her to do so—simply because it was expected for women to take the blame for the shortcomings of the patriarchal society that they lived in.

So as Savannah stood witness to the series of her wrongdoings that had culminated in wrecking Gayle's hard work, she desperately wanted to apologize, but her childhood trauma, daddy issues and sizeable ego froze the words in her throat.

Gayle took a deep breath in before slowly exhaling into her hands. It appeared that she was not going to acknowledge Savannah's presence. Savannah felt more and more choked by the silence. "I...I thought you were punishing me." Savannah stammered out.

She winces at the admission, loud in her ears.

Gayle lifted her head from her hands to give Savannah an exasperated look. "What does that even mean?"

Savannah gave a weak shrug, "Well, I almost killed your niece and you've been ignoring me since forever, so, I thought..." she trailed off. Gayle looked at her in exhaustion before returning her head into her hands. Savannah suddenly felt...her physical age. A brash barely-adult who threw a fit because they didn't get what they wanted. And from the look Gayle had just given her—her face slightly older than Savannah's, more mature, wiser—she felt that Gayle was thinking the same.

Gayle lifted her head again, rubbing her temples before running her hands through her hair. "I'm not avoiding you, Savannah. And my thick-skulled blood can handle being tossed on her ass. But...I'm not going out of my way to seek you out, either. I'm your teacher. You're my junior student. You're- what, in your early twenties? And I'm thirty-one in...less than an hour."

Savannah's eyes snapped to the calendar on Gayle's wall: today was September 26th. Tomorrow was Gayle's birthday, and she had spent the night before staying up late to grade assignments Savannah then ruined. "I'm just trying to be conscientious of the optics. It would look...weird, to say the least, for us to hang out on and around campus." Something passes in her expression, dazedly dropping her eyes to do a toe-to-head sweep. Clears her throat. "Especially considering. We have appearances to keep up. Roles to play. And I take my job very seriously. So, if you've come to my office at...11:17 PM to harass me, you know where the door is and you can see yourself out. But if you've come to ask for help, then say it. You obviously have my attention now." Gayle finished bitterly.

Savannah cringed. The past five minutes did not go how she expected them to. Why was Gayle always catching her at her worst? Is it your worst, or is it your normal and for once someone is not putting up with your shit? She hated asking for help. She liked to do things on her own. Being alone and independent meant that she had total control over herself. And asking for help required surrendering some of that control to someone else—Gayle, in this case. She didn't want to give Gayle any more control over herself than she already had as her professor. And she didn't want the other woman to perceive her as weak or incapable.

But...she could see that Gayle genuinely cared about the success and happiness of her students. And while Gayle might be a sassy asshole sometimes, she was kind. Savannah shut her eyes and took a large breath before quietly funnelling the words out on the exhale, "I'm sorry. Can you help me with my assignment?"

Gayle waited to look Savannah's in the eye with an unreadable expression, and Savannah felt like she was being dissected alive under her gaze. Finally, Gayle sighed, her lips quirking into a tired smile. "Was that so hard?"

Savannah threw her a self-deprecating grimace. "More so than I could ever begin to express."

Gayle took a final glance at her desk before pushing her chair back and standing up to pull on her leather jacket. Savannah stared at her in disbelief. "I've just done the incredibly uncomfortable task of apologizing and asking you, of all people, for help, and you're...leaving?"

Gayle shot Savannah a mischievous look, responding, "It's after office hours." Gayle grabbed her motorcycle helmet, continuing, "I appreciate you finally admitting you need help. But I'm not going to help you now." shooting Savannah an impish smile.

Savannah stood in shock. The growl of frustration that was bubbling in her chest turned into a laugh at the pure absurdity of the situation. Gayle tossed her a grin in response before she ducked to reach under her desk to retrieve a red motorcycle helmet. Gayle stood and turned off her office lights, and as she brushed past Savannah on her way out, she shoved the red helmet into Savannah's chest. She looked at Gayle in confusion, but Gayle just jerked her head toward the empty hallway.

"C'mon, I know a place. And you owe me big time."

Here's the full story!

https://www.wattpad.com/1070326669-ms-no-strings-attached-wlw-lesbian-chapter-1