"Are you okay to stand, pet?"She nodded and tried to slow her breathing further. "Pet?" he pressed."Yes," she finally managed, "yes, I can stand, sir...." Good girl," he replied, moving away. He retrieved a towel from the drawer and laid it on her chair. "There. That will keep your chair dry, my dripping pet."She almost resented how calm his voice sounded until he helped her sit back down on the now towel-covered chair. His soft lounge pants were tented, proving him not as unaffected as he. ‘Mom, I have to talk to you!’ he said, sounding urgent. She tried to head him off by saying: ‘Dale, I will go to the bank tomorrow, the mortgage will be fine, I can manage!’ (She wasn’t as confident as she sounded but wouldn’t let him know that.) ‘No, Mom, I just had a meeting with Dean Cherry at the school and someone has paid all my fees and has indicated that they will keep doing that.’ ‘What?’ she exclaimed, ‘But that’s crazy there must be some mistake.’ ‘No, no mistake,’ Dale said, still. It was my first year of teaching out of college. So I thought it was something I was doing or not doing. Turns out it wasn’t all my fault. It’s just a dry topic. That’s all. Since then, I’ve found some creative ways to teach the class. I think you’d like it now and wouldn’t be so inclined to want to nap.’ Steve could feel his stomach growl and grumble. Not wanting this conversation to end, ‘Miss Sanders,’ ‘Please, call me Erica.’ ‘Erica, I was going to go up to my room and shower then see about. He felt heavy on his feet, natural after a run, but he still resisted the urge to sit. After finishing his banana, he put the skin inside a veg bag he’d brought with him and skipped it back in his bum bag to take home for his compost bin. Before getting his phone out and putting his headphones in for his journey home, Jerome thought he’d enjoy this moment of life; watch the workers of the world go by. Stood arms folded in front of a north London coffee shop window, wearing an old baggy black.