Week One

Children and computers, Joel thought to himself, were obviously put on earth to torment men like him. To be fair, Sarah had tried her best to be patient with him and she was a hell of a good teacher, but his brain stubbornly refused to remember how to complete the simplest tasks in the new accounting software he'd bought for the company, and after the seventeenth phone call where he'd begged her to tell him (again) how to set up a new account, she'd sent him a community college brochure with a big red circle around the FastBooks for Dummies continuing education course.

And that was how he found himself, at the age of fifty-five, sitting in a damn classroom surrounded mostly by snot-nosed kids who were barely old enough to drink legally, missing Monday night football and scowling at the computer screen in front of him while his fellow students chatted on Facebook or the Tumblrs or whatever crazy goddamn website kids were socializing on these days.

He wished for approximately the fiftieth time that day that Sarah hadn't taken that job in San Jose, and then, as always, felt immediately guilty. She was thrilled to be in Silicon Valley, she loved her job, and she was making a hell of a lot more money out there as the CFO of a tech startup than she ever would have here, even with the supplemental salary he was able to pay her as head (and only) bookkeeper for Miller Brothers Construction.

"Dad," she'd said when he'd called her about one of her Excel spreadsheets, the exasperation plain in her voice, "...you can't keep calling me every time you run into an accounting problem! You need to hire a new bookkeeper!"

And he'd hemmed and hawed, but the truth was that he couldn't bear to hire a bookkeeper to replace Sarah. It was his business, his and Tommy's, and he didn't want anybody outside the family to be handling the money. So he'd done a bunch of reading and research and sunk what felt like an egregious amount of money into this new software, which was supposed to be idiot proof, but apparently the people who created it hadn't counted on one Joel Miller.

The icon sat on the desktop before him, a red dollar sign on a yellow background, smugly mocking him. God, how he hated that fucking program! None of it made sense to him. He suspected that Sarah only made him take this class to force him to admit he'd bitten off more than he could chew, but she should know by now how stubborn her old man was.

The instructor was late. It was five minutes after class was supposed to start, and he was nowhere to be seen. A redheaded woman slouched through the classroom door with an enormous cup of coffee and Joel thought sourly that he should have taken the time to stop for coffee like this young lady had, since their instructor obviously didn't care about being punctual. She paused at the front of the room, like she was having trouble finding a seat, and then she set her coffee down on the instructor's desk. All around him, people were straightening up in their seats and closing chat windows and browsers. Slowly, Joel realized what his fellow students already had: the young woman with the coffee, wearing jeans and a simple, tailored white button-down shirt, was their instructor, and she was waiting for everyone to quiet down and pay attention.

"Hi everybody, welcome to FastBooks 101. I'm Ellie Williams, and I'll be your instructor for the next four weeks." She smiled and leaned against the desk, taking a sip of her coffee. "I promise I won't be late again. If I am, I'll bring coffee for everyone." There was a wave of laughter and a general murmur of approval.

Hmph. She was easy on the eyes, he'd give her that, but she couldn't be more than twenty-two or twenty-three. No matter how cute this girl was, this wasn't worth missing Monday night football for.

When she asked them all to log into the program and Joel's computer instantly crashed to the blue screen of death, he knew he was in for a long night.

Week Two

Ellie was leaning over his shoulder during a class lab, trying to help him untangle the hopeless mess he'd made of the practice. "What did you do?" she asked.

He threw his hands up in the air. "I got no notion! I put the numbers in here and…"

"You put...you entered the expenses in as assets?" She closed her green eyes briefly and Joel's stomach sank. "Okay. Just...just give me a second. I can fix this." Ellie took the mouse from him and he watched with burning ears while she undid his mistakes with a few clicks of the mouse. Fuck. This was the third time she'd had to come help him tonight. He was a fucking disaster. Before she moved off to help anyone else, she leaned down and murmured in his ear, "Stick around when we're done. I'd like to talk to you after class."

He stood silently in front of her desk waiting for the other students to file out while she shuffled papers and avoided eye contact.

"Joel," she said finally, after everyone else had left, "I'm a little concerned. I just don't think you're getting much out of this class. This software assumes a basic comfort level with double-entry accounting, and, well…" She made an eloquent gesture with her hands. He looked down at the desk, not able to meet her eyes. She continued, not unkindly. "I'll sign a drop form if you like. If you take it into the registration office before the end of the day Wednesday, you'll get a full refund of your tuition."

"Miss Williams...Ellie," he said, then fell silent again, his jaw working. She meant well, but he was angry, and he was trying hard to keep his temper reined in. "I can calculate in my head how many boards I need to build a six-foot privacy fence of any length, and I can do it three different ways because some people like the look of the three-inch boards better than the three-and-a-half inch or the four-inch. I can even factor in the average number of returns we have to make because of flawed materials. I can look at an architectural drawing and calculate within a ten percent margin of error how much lumber I'll need to frame the structure, how much wire I'll need for the electrical, and how much concrete I'll need to pour the slab. Do you think double-entry accounting is harder than any of that?"

Her eyes were wide. "No."

"All right, then." He nodded at her. "I'll see you Wednesday night." He shouldered his backpack and headed for the door.

"Wait!" Her voice stopped him halfway out the door. "You know the coffee shop on Manchaca, just north of Stassney?"

He turned back to her. There was an intensity on her face he wasn't expecting. "Yeah."

She scribbled something on a sheet of her notebook, tore it out, and handed it to him. "Buy that book. And meet me at the coffee shop an hour before class. You buy me a coffee, and I'll give you a crash course."

Joel hesitated. He hated asking for help, but God knew he needed it. He took the sheet of paper from her, nodded once, and left.

Week Three

"This is a t-account. Learn to love it," Ellie said. She'd drawn a cross in her notebook and was labeling the left side "Debit" and the right side "Credit."

"Okay," Joel said. He thought he remembered this kind of diagram from Sarah's college papers.

"Equal and opposite. That's the first thing you have to remember about double-entry accounting. For every debit, you have an equal credit somewhere else. So say you spent a thousand dollars on materials," she wrote a number under the debit column and wrote "Materials" above the account, "...where would the credit go?"

Joel stared at the paper. They were only just getting started, and already he was stumped. He should have listened to Sarah and hired a new bookkeeper.

"Come on, Joel," she said gently, her pen hovering over the paper. "You buy a thousand dollars worth of materials. Where does that money come from?"

Joel sat back in his chair in frustration. "My wallet! My credit card! My...my fucking bank account, I don't know!"

"Fuck, yes!" she said, leaning forward over the notebook. She drew three new t-accounts and labeled them Cash, Visa, and Checking. "Any of those things can be right. Let's say you pay with cash. Then the credit goes here, in your cash account, which is an asset, and reduces the amount of cash you have on hand. Or you pay with your credit card, and the credit goes here," she stabbed the pen at the second t-account, "...in the Visa account. A credit card is like a loan, so paying that way increases your liability. Or you pay out of your checking account, and the credit goes in this last t-account, reducing the amount of cash in your checking account."

Joel stared at the paper and said slowly, "So...a credit reduces an asset, and increases a liability?" He felt like the language Sarah had been speaking to him for the last fifteen years had suddenly taken on new nuance and meaning. It was all actually making sense.

"Yep." Ellie smiled and Joel's heart caught in his chest. God damn, she was pretty. Her slender hips were encased in form-fitting denim and she was wearing another one of those crisp white button-down shirts that was tailored to hug her slim curves. It set off her creamy, freckled skin and red hair beautifully.

She was also fifteen years younger than his daughter, for fuck's sake, and that meant he was, in strictly biological terms, old enough to be her grandfather. He'd been thirty-three when this girl was born, already the father of a teenaged daughter. Probably best to let this particular fancy bite the dust. Not that he couldn't enjoy the sight of her youthful beauty, just that he couldn't expect…

"Earth to Joel! Are you still with me?" Her voice startled him out of his thoughts.

"Fuck, sorry, Ellie. I was just…I was just thinkin' that my daughter would like you," he said, thinking fast. "She's been tryin' to beat this stuff into my head, and you managed to make it make sense in less than twenty minutes."

Ellie's annoyed expression softened. "Okay. Well, just as long as I'm not wasting my fucking time."

Joel smiled. She swore like a tiny little sailor when she wasn't in the classroom, and he found it utterly charming. "No, ma'am."

She rolled her eyes. "Don't call me ma'am. It makes me think you're talking to my mom. Now, I've got a bunch more stuff to go over so you understand what's happening in class tonight, so shut the fuck up and listen."

"Will do, boss."

She snorted and took a big gulp of coffee. "Now that's more like it."

She only had to come help him out once during class that night, and that was only because the program itself had hung up, not because of anything he did. When she finished fixing the problem (something about services hanging and having to restart them, Joel didn't really follow it), she squeezed his shoulder, and he thought her hand lingered there slightly longer than was necessary for a friendly pat.

Joel put his books away slowly after class, dawdling while his fellow students filed out in groups of two or threes, just so he could have Ellie to himself one more time before he went home. He approached her desk, the accounting book she'd had him buy still in his hand, and said, "So…which chapters should I be lookin' at for next week?"

She pursed her lips and then said, "There's a lot. I think maybe it would be better if we met every weeknight until the course is over. If you can manage it, that is." She shrugged her shoulders.

Seeing Ellie every night? It was everything Joel could do to keep himself from grinning like a fool. She was only being kind, he told himself severely. He schooled his face into a frown and said, "I can't take up so much of your time without payin' you. You're already goin' above and beyond for me."

She arched one eyebrow at him. "You obviously have no idea how much coffee I can drink. I'll see you tomorrow?"

Joel smiled and nodded. "Yeah. I'll be there." He was supposed to be supervising the crew putting in the electrical at the Wright house tomorrow, but he'd get Tommy to cover for him so he could leave early. Lord knows he'd done it often enough for Tommy when his little brother had a date to get to. Not that this meeting with Ellie at the coffee shop was a date.

"One thing, though…" She glanced a little anxiously out the door to make sure they were alone. "Let's keep this arrangement between us. I don't have time to tutor everyone, and I don't want anyone to think there's anything...improper...going on. Everybody else in this class is miles ahead of you. You're not totally hopeless, but you're close."

She was smiling when she said it, but it was still like a dash of cold water to the face. "Sure," he said. Definitely not a date.

Week Four

"Your coffee, Professor Williams." He'd bought her the free-trade Columbian roast in the biggest cup the shop had, and doctored it with three packets of raw sugar, a splash of whole milk, and a tiny dash of cinnamon. He set it down on the table with a flourish next to his small cup of plain black house blend.

"Mmmm. Thanks." She grinned. "And that's Adjunct Professor Williams to you." She took a big sip from the cup and smiled again. "Perfect."

Joel found himself trying to make her smile a lot these days. "You keep drinkin' so much coffee, teach, and your heart's liable to explode on you."

"Oooh, 'teach'! I like that one. You can keep using that," she said magnanimously. "Besides, Joel…" she held up her cup, "...it's the best part of waking up, don't you know. Are the commercials lying to me?"

He snorted. "It's four o'clock in the afternoon. If you're just wakin' up now, I'm definitely in the wrong line of work."

She nodded at him solemnly, her green eyes gleaming with humor. "Oh, but we accounting professionals need our beauty rest, Joel. Especially on days after bad dates."

A tiny thrill ran through him. Joel had been itching to ask her about her date, but he hadn't wanted to bring it up himself. "That's right! So, that guy from didn't work out, huh?"

She rolled her eyes. "Ugh. No. God, he was a douche. He didn't ask me a single question about myself all night, so when the check came I made him pay the asshole tax and didn't chip in. And then he had the gall to act like I fucking owed him sex because he'd paid my half of a fifty-dollar tab. That motherfucker tried to kiss me and grab my boob after he walked me to my car."

"What did you do?" With difficulty, Joel tamped down the angry beast that wanted to go punch the fuck out of any man stupid enough to treat her that way.

She shrugged modestly. "I told him that if he wanted to pay for sex he should just hire a hooker. And then when he tried to grab me again I put him in an elbow lock and made him cry like a little baby and apologize before I let him go."

Joel was delighted. "Get the fuck out."

"I don't tell guys I have a black belt in Aikido until at least the third date. It helps me weed out the undesirables." She laughed, and Joel felt his stomach give a curious lurch.

He was definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, falling for this girl. It was the stupidest thing he'd done in a long, long while, but it felt too good to stop. He opened his mouth to reply, but just at that moment his phone rang.

It was the Halican Drops hit "Dance With Me," which meant Sarah was calling. She'd be mortified to find out he was using a song from her preteen crush boy-band as her ring tone, but he'd heard this damn song so many times coming from her bedroom that it was indelibly connected with her in his mind. And you had to admit, it was pretty catchy. "Sorry, I gotta take this," he said to Ellie, smiling apologetically.

She nodded. "Sure."

Joel answered the call. "Hey, baby girl."

Sarah's voice rang out from the other end of the call. "Dad? Is everything okay?"

Joel frowned. "Yeah, everything's fine. Why?"

He heard her breathe a sigh of relief. "Because you haven't called me in over a week! And when I called your work phone this afternoon, Uncle Tommy picked up and told me you'd left early, and that's so unlike you I got worried."

"No, Sarah, everything's fine. I'm sorry I haven't called, things just got real busy here. I guess I forgot." His ears reddened and he didn't add that he'd forgotten because he'd been busy thinking about his cute teacher. "I been gettin' extra tutoring for that FastBooks class I'm takin'." He studiously avoided looking at Ellie.

"Oh? How's that going?"

"It's goin' good. Real good." He looked up and smiled at Ellie. "I got a great teacher."

"Oh! Well...that's great, Dad." Sarah sounded a little surprised. "Well, if you have any questions for me about it, or about the books I set up for the company, you'd better ask now. Tess and I are going away to Big Sur for a couple weeks, and we're leaving tomorrow. I don't think I'll have much access to email or phone service. Plus Tess told me if I brought any work with me she'd divorce me."

Joel laughed. Sarah's wife, Tess, was an orthopedic surgeon, a firecracker of a woman who worked even crazier hours than Sarah did. Joel liked her immensely. "Well, you can't risk that! Who's gonna take care of my hip replacement surgery if you and Tess get divorced?"

Sarah laughed. "Is that why you were always telling me to marry a doctor?"

"All part of my master plan, baby girl. You give Tess a big kiss from me and have a good time. I reckon I'll muddle through."

"Okay, Dad. I love you."

"You too, Sarah." He pressed the End button and looked up to find Ellie staring at him strangely. "Sorry about that, didn't mean to be rude, but it was my daughter…" He trailed off. "What?"

"Sarah Miller…is your daughter?" she asked.

"Yeah…" he said slowly. "Why, you know her?"

Ellie looked flustered. "I...not really. She spoke at my high school graduation, and I was really impressed. She's half the reason I decided to get my master's degree in business." Ellie's cheeks were red now, but she plowed ahead. "There was that profile on her a couple months ago in Business Monthly, and it talked about her and her wife...which I think is totally cool by the way…and I couldn't help overhearing…" She snapped her mouth shut like she realized she'd been babbling.

Joel wasn't stupid. That Business Monthly article had listed every damn detail about Sarah: her birthplace, the names of her dogs, her schooling and employment history, her wife's name...and her age, thirty-eight. He could see the wheels in Ellie's head turning, doing the math. His stomach felt like it was full of rocks as he said, "I had her when I was sixteen."

"Oh! That was...that's really...I mean, you were really young." The slightly panicked look in her eyes was like a knife to Joel's chest, and he realized that she hadn't known until now just how old he was. Perhaps, like many young people, she was a poor judge of other people's age. But now she had a concrete number, and he could see it made her uncomfortable. As it should, Joel thought bitterly. Thirty-three years is too fucking much, and I'm a goddamn fool to have thought differently, even for a second. A man with a daughter close to forty has no business falling in love with a girl in her mid-twenties.

"Well…" she smiled brightly, but Joel could see she was still embarrassed. "...why don't we get started on amortization and depreciation." She opened the accounting book, all business again, the flirtatious ease they'd developed over the past three weeks evaporated in an instant.

He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced at the bitter taste. "Yeah. Okay."

That night when he got home, Joel sat at his kitchen table, opened a new bottle of Canadian Mist whiskey, and proceeded to get drunker than he'd been in years.

He almost didn't go to his final class on Wednesday, the following night. He'd woken up late, Tommy's insistent ringtone jangling near his ear, to find that he'd passed out at some point and slept right there at the kitchen table. His head was splitting and his mouth tasted like a small fuzzy creature had crawled inside and died there.

He pushed the Answer button and held the phone gingerly a few inches from his ear. "Yeah?"

Tommy's voice bored into his skull. "Joel! Where the fuck are you? We got a framing crew in east Austin with no goddamn supervisor, and they're sittin' around with their thumbs up their asses waitin' for you to show up!"

Joel looked at the phone. Shit! It was ten o'clock? He stood up and sat back down abruptly, overcome by a wave of dizziness. The bottle of Canadian Mist was at his elbow, more than half empty. Joel groaned and said, "I ain't feelin' so good, Tommy. Send Murch down. Hell, his Spanish is better than mine anyway."

Tommy exploded. "Damn it, Joel! I need Murchison here! He's the only guy we have-besides you-who's licensed to wire up the solar panels. Jesus, brother. I don't know where your head's been the last few weeks, but I need you back in the game. You know I hate bein' the responsible one."

Shit. He couldn't supervise a damn knitting circle in this condition, much less a framing crew. He could barely stand up straight right now. "Tommy, I...I can't go down. I need today off."

There was a moment of silence, during which Joel could practically hear Tommy fuming at him. Finally his brother said, "God damn it. Fine. I'll go down and supervise myself. But you owe me one." He hung up without waiting for Joel's reply.

Joel exhaled deeply and hid his face in his hands. He felt like shit. With exaggerated care, he stood up, carried the bottle of whiskey to the sink, and poured its remaining contents down the drain. "Chip off the old block, eh, Pop?" he muttered. Only difference was, John Miller would have drunk the whole bottle.

He stood bracing himself above the cool metal, his stomach rolling queasily as he filled a plastic cup with water and drank it down, then did it again. After the third cup of water, his mouth felt slightly less fuzzy, and his stomach was more settled. "I'm too goddamn old for this," he said. He shuffled off to his bedroom, pulled the blackout curtains tight, and fell into his bed.

He woke up at four o'clock, his usual meeting time with Ellie. His hangover was mostly gone, except for a pounding headache, but that was to be expected. Shit! His eyes widened. Tonight was the last night of class, and that would be it; he'd probably never see her again. He hated the thought of her sitting there waiting for him, and he wished he had her phone number just to let her know he wouldn't be at the coffee shop. Although after yesterday, maybe she wouldn't show up either, who knew. Joel scrubbed his face with his hands, then picked up his phone and scrolled through his email until he found the registration confirmation for the class, which had Ellie's college email address on it.

He tapped out a brief message: "Something came up, sorry. See you in class tonight," and sent it. Then he shook two aspirin out of the bottle on the nightstand and swallowed them dry. If he hurried, he could just make it to south Austin before class started.

He beat her there, but she was five minutes late, and she came in carrying a gallon container of coffee and a bag of cups and fixings. "Sorry I'm late, everyone." She looked directly at Joel. "My scheduled meeting never showed up, and I lost track of time. So here's that coffee I promised you." She looked away from him pointedly.

Shit. She hadn't gotten the email, obviously, and she was just as obviously pissed off at him. He tried to catch her eye during class, trying to apologize, but she was always looking at someone else, avoiding eye contact with him.

Joel waited at the end of class, awkwardly shifting from one foot to the other while she said goodbye to his fellow students. She ignored him until he was the only one left in the room, and when she finally looked at him, her eyes were snapping with anger.

"Well?" She crossed her arms over her chest.

"I sent you an email…" he said.

"I saw it." She didn't offer any other comment.

"So...we're good?" he ventured.

"Yeah, Joel, we're just dandy." Her jaw was twitching.

"'Cause...I, uh, it don't seem like we're good."

He didn't think his heart could fall any lower until she said, "Oh, we're good unless something fucking comes up, Joel." She started throwing her books into her messenger bag. "You know, I was waiting there for almost forty-five minutes before I thought to check my work email? 'Something came up, sorry?' That's fucking weak, Joel. Why don't you just admit it?"

He blinked, startled. "Admit what?"

"Admit that you were avoiding me! I'm young, but I'm not stupid. We had something good going, and you know it. I wasn't going to act on it until this fucking class was over, and yeah, it threw me for a loop last night when I figured out how old you are, but you didn't even give me a chance to process it, you just fucking shut down on me! What are you so afraid of?"

Joel's face hardened. Who the hell did she think she was, talking to him like that? He'd been trying to protect her from himself and his inappropriate feelings for her because God knew thirty-three years was an insurmountable age gap. The fact that she was admitting to having feelings for him now just proved how naive she was, and made it easier for him to say, "You're right. You are young. And this is the part where we go our separate ways."

She stared at him in shock as the anger drained out of her face, and when he turned to go she didn't speak a single word.

Two Weeks Later

Joel looked at his garage and nodded in satisfaction. The space, which Sarah had always called his personal disaster area, was swept, organized, and neat as a pin. It had taken him the better part of three nights, but every tool was either placed in a labeled drawer or hung on new pegboard, and every nail, screw, nut, bolt, and washer was separated into neat rows of labeled jars. And organized by size. He blew his breath out between his lips. Well. There was nothing left to do. He took out his phone and snapped a picture of it and sent it to Sarah with the message "Don't have a heart attack."

There. Now he was done.

It had been hard, transitioning back to normal life so abruptly. For the the first week, he drove by their coffee shop every day, never going in, just looking for her little blue Fiat in the parking lot. She still went every day, but that was probably her habit before he started meeting her there. He played out elaborate fantasies in his mind where he'd casually drop in to buy a coffee and run into her, and he'd say, "Oh, I just had a job in this neck of the woods. Didn't realize I'd bump into you here!" and they'd chat awkwardly for a few minutes until one of them said something that made the other laugh, and then everything would be forgotten and go back to the way it was before. He never went in, never even stopped his truck. He still missed the daily interactions with her, missed her dry wit and her sailor's mouth and hearing her laugh. Missed making her laugh. Mostly he missed their unlikely friendship, something he hadn't even realized he'd needed before he met her.

He'd finally taken Sarah's advice and hired a bookkeeper for the company. He placed the ad the day after his first and only foray into doing the company payroll; while he actually understood what he was doing, it took him an entire day to prepare all the checks and deposits, and he finally realized that his time was better spent doing what he did best, scheduling and getting his hands dirty, which was probably what Sarah had been trying to tell him all along. When he placed the ad, he was half hoping Ellie would answer it, but the guy he'd hired, Ned, seemed like a decent enough sort, and he knew his stuff.

Joel looked around the space, flexing his hands absently. And as usual, as soon as he was done working, his mind wandered to Ellie. Damn it. He'd tried drinking (that hadn't worked out so well), working, cleaning, reading, exercising...but nothing made his traitor mind stop thinking about her as soon as it had a free moment. Joel sighed. Talking was the only thing he hadn't tried.

He pulled out his phone again and called Tommy. "Little brother, can you come over? I need some company."

Once Tommy got over his shock, he agreed to come over right away.

One Month Later

Joel knocked on the red door of the neat little south Austin house, and a couple of dogs inside started howling. Damn it, Tommy was supposed to ask if the owners had pets. He'd put that rule in place after a Chow took a chunk out of his calf while he'd been trying to replace siding on a house in Cedar Park. He was frowning down at his clipboard when the door finally opened, and he launched into his spiel. "Hi, Joel from Miller Brothers. I'm lookin' for Anna Haskell…" He finally looked up.

Ellie was standing in the doorway, an uncertain smile on her face. "Hi," she said softly. Two big dogs, a golden retriever and a chocolate lab, sat behind her, wagging their tails and whining in anticipation of meeting a new friend.

Joel looked down at his work order again, as if the name on it would magically change. "Anna Haskell…?"

"...is my mother," Ellie finished. "This is her house. And her dogs, Samson and Delilah." At the sound of their names, the dogs launched themselves at Joel's knees, licking his hands and wagging their tails so hard they both looked like they were going to fall over.

Joel laughed and knelt to pet the enthusiastically friendly animals, laughing when they both flopped over onto their backs for belly rubs. "Hey there, guys."

Ellie said, "Mom, ah, when she told me that she needed her fence replaced I told her I knew a good construction company. No job's too small, right?"

"Yeah." Joel laughed. "Right. It's good to see you." I missed you, he added silently. He stood up, and the dogs, who had apparently decided he was now part of the family, trotted off to the interior of the house, their jobs as greeters complete.

She smiled, and it lit up her whole face. "You too."

Joel felt a tug at his heart, strong as before but tempered by his regret. He wanted to ask her what she'd been doing, how she'd been, if she'd been on any more dates, if she missed him, but instead he said, "Well, why don't you show me that fence."

"Of course," she murmured, her smile falling. "It's out back."

Joel took his time measuring the fence, taking notes. It was sweltering in Austin that day, a freak November heatwave pushing the temperatures up past ninety degrees, the air heavy and humid and still. He was streaming with sweat by the time he was done in the backyard and knocked on the back door again.

Ellie met him with a glass of iced tea in her hand, so freshly poured the condensation hadn't started gathering on the outside of the glass. Joel took it gratefully and drank, pulling his damp t-shirt away from his sticky chest. The dogs swarmed him, licking his sweaty hands and wagging their tails in doggy ecstasy as he squatted down to pet them both again.

"Sorry it's so hot today," she said, smiling crookedly.

That smile was like a skewer through his chest. Damn it. Until he'd seen her standing there in the doorway, he would have bet money that he was thoroughly, one hundred percent over her. It wasn't like he still thought about her every day. But she put a lie to his hard-won calm with just one little half-smile. Jesus. He caught himself, realized he hadn't answered. "It ain't like you can control the weather, Ellie." He couldn't help chuckling. At her. At himself. God, what a fool he was.

"Not yet, anyway." She grinned, and the full force of her smile made his breath catch in his throat.

The silence stretched and their smiles faded as their eyes held each other. Joel was the first to look away, saying, "Ellie, I…"

"Joel, I have to tell you…" she said at the same time. She smiled and shook her head. "You first."

Joel nodded. "I...I just…" He felt like he was teetering on the edge of a deep chasm. He took a deep breath and stepped off. "I ain't the easiest guy to live with, and I don't always do the right thing. Walkin' away from you that day is somethin' I've regretted every day since. I've written you about a thousand emails to apologize, but I never sent any of them, and I miss you way more than I got any right to. And if you ain't interested in me romantically, that's okay, but I hope we can get back around to friends one of these days…" He trailed off. He wasn't usually a man of many words, and this had him all talked out.

Ellie didn't answer right away, but stepped in to him, backing him up against the counter and putting her small hands flat on his chest.

"I'm all sweaty," he protested.

"I don't care," she said. She raised herself on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his.

He only hesitated for half a second before he kissed her back, the hungry beast he'd been keeping caged all this time roaring with approval in his chest. His mouth worked against hers with increasing need, lips partly open, the tips of their tongues touching against each other in a sensuous dance that made his heart pound.

When she finally pulled away, she bit her lip and smiled wickedly up at him. "I've been wanting to do that for eight weeks and three days."

He burst out laughing. "What?"

She giggled. "Ever since you gave me that speech about how you can calculate construction materials in your head. So fucking sexy."

He grinned. "Ah, teach." It felt like all his worries were falling away from him and his heart swelled with such happiness that all he could do was kiss her again.

He took his time, using his tongue to explore her mouth, and she reciprocated eagerly, tasting him the same way he was tasting her, using her small hands to pull his head down harder against her face. They were both panting when they came up for air.

"I have something to confess," she said breathlessly. "I asked for you specifically. To come over today for the quote. I talked to your brother, I think. He seemed to know a lot about me already."

"That little shit. What the hell did he say?" Joel couldn't decide whether to be angry or amused.

Ellie's eyes were dancing. "Oh, not much, really, but he did put 'Hot for Teacher' on in the background." She laughed. "I think that's when I knew for sure I hadn't been making it all up in my head."

He came down on amused, and laughed out loud. "I'll fuckin' kill him." Another thought sobered him. "I don't know what I'm gonna tell Sarah." What would his daughter say about him dating a girl so young?

Ellie smiled hugely. "Just tell her…" she kissed him, "...there's no…accounting...for taste." She punctuated each word with another kiss, so it took Joel a moment to realize what she'd said.

He groaned. "Ellie, did you just make an accounting joke? Is this gonna be a thing?"

She giggled. "You know, I used to be a banker, but I lost interest."

He frowned severely, but his body was shaking with laughter. "Stop that right now."

"I hear when you construction guys party, you really raise the roof." She was giggling so hard now that tears were leaking out the corners of her eyes.

Joel stopped her by kissing her again, and didn't stop kissing her until her laughter turned into exciting little sighs. He stopped, with no small regret, and said, "My idiot brother will only take playing Cupid so far. He's got me scheduled for three more quotes this afternoon. Can I...if you're free, I'd like to take you out tonight."

"Coffee?" She grinned, her eyes bright.

"I was thinkin' more like supper. A real date and all."

She pursed her lips. "Wow, a real date! All right, on one condition." She trailed her index finger down the clammy front of his chest, which made him shiver involuntarily. "You take me home with you afterwards." Her smile was utterly bewitching. "I think eight weeks and three days is plenty of time to wait, don't you?"

"Yes," he replied fervently.

Joel's good mood lasted all day, even when Tommy called him just to blast 'Hot for Teacher' over his phone speaker.

Author's Note

Part of the "Send me a ship and a number and I'll write a short fic" meme. Prompt #3, teacher/student AU, was requested by two anonymous prompters. Originally posted on Tumblr.

Although Joel and Ellie are slightly older in this story than they are in the game, it is set in the present day (mostly because I couldn't be bothered to speculate about the technological advances that might be made over the next thirty years in a CBI-free world). I borrowed the idea of Sarah and Tess being married from Incidental_Villainess and her work "Don't Tell Your Mother," which is posted on AO3.