About this ebook
One month. No feelings. They've totally got this fake dating thing under control...
Bisexual ex-barista Oliver is finally a high school math teacher, and it's everything he ever wanted. Until he stumbles across the mysterious customer he crushed on back when he worked at Knockdown Coffee... and kinda sorta accidentally tells his Vice Principal that he's dating her. Maybe his emotional baggage from his student teaching position isn't as neatly stowed as he thought, or he wouldn't have panicked and lied. Now what?
Octavia, a bi programmer, didn't expect to run into the cute blue-haired barista again. Certainly not while volunteering at a local arts high school. He's much too young and much too nice for her—but when she discovers he's told people they're dating, it's a stroke of luck. She needs a temporary fake relationship to stick it to her professional nemesis, and Oliver's the perfect fit.
The assignment is simple: he helps her out, she covers for him. Just one month of a convincing charade, and then after Octavia's company gala, everything between them is absolutely and completely over.
Sometimes, however, the homework is harder than you expect.
CHECK YOUR WORK is a slow burn to high heat, age gap, bi4bi queer M/F romance novel that pairs a misanthropic older heroine and a cinnamon roll hero, with a guaranteed HEA.
- Content warnings are available in the book's front matter and on the author's website. -
Skye Kilaen
Skye Kilaen is a bi author who writes queer romance across the rainbow, both contemporary and science fiction, that's sometimes about polyamorous relationships. She also loves comics, Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah. She currently lives in Austin, Texas because it has so many libraries and breakfast tacos.
Other titles in Check Your Work Series (4)
Knock Me Down: Love at Knockdown, #0.5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGet It Right: Love at Knockdown, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShake Things Up: Love at Knockdown, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCheck Your Work: Love at Knockdown, #3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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Titles in the series (4)
Knock Me Down: Love at Knockdown, #0.5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGet It Right: Love at Knockdown, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShake Things Up: Love at Knockdown, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCheck Your Work: Love at Knockdown, #3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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Check Your Work - Skye Kilaen
CHAPTER ONE
Mr. Kimble?
Winona asked. When are we ever going to use differential equations in real life?
Oliver Kimble had wanted to be a math teacher since his own high school days. He’d gotten to October in his first year of living his dream before one of his students had finally asked this question. He’d been waiting. He was ready.
Shark attack,
he said, somehow managing to keep a straight face. It’ll save your life.
Winona snickered, their hazel eyes sparkling with amusement. Guess I should do the homework, then.
If they’d been asking seriously, Oliver would have given a serious answer. He wanted students to feel welcome to ask questions, or even challenge him if he said something that seemed wrong. How else were they all supposed to learn, him included?
With that settled,
he said to the class, does everyone understand tonight’s homework and which questions they personally need to do?
Some students learned better doing a few problems, really thinking them through and explaining all their steps, rather than being forced to find the answers to a whole page’s worth.
It’s all in the e-classroom,
Miguel pointed out, because Miguel adored the e-classroom. Oliver didn’t put much credence in astrology but that kid was a serious Virgo.
Yeah,
Leslie said with an eyeroll, but how many of y’all already looked at the assignment so you could be ready to ask questions now, and how many of y’all are going to be messaging Mr. K at ten o’clock tonight all confused while he’s trying to dust his calculator collection?
Oliver couldn’t help laughing along with the class. I’m happy to answer homework questions in between calculators,
he said. Any time before midnight is okay. If you’re stuck after that, we can look at it together tomorrow.
Although he often did check his work email after midnight. This was his first year at The Moore School. He’d been extraordinarily lucky to land a position at a gloriously diverse private arts high school which supported at least half the students with need-based scholarships. He didn’t want to give the administration one single reason to regret taking a chance on him. Not after how his student teaching had gone, as a queer man at a school with an unexpectedly homophobic interim principal.
After hearing murmurs of assent about the homework situation and glancing at the big clock over the door, he released the class. Leslie and another student scurried over to the back wall to further decorate a whiteboard that had become a collaborative mural over the past few weeks. Students from various classes were adding buildings, streets, and extremely artistic stick figures to a fantasy city. Oliver had intended to use that board for students to work in pairs, but he’d changed his plans after seeing how much fun they were having. The other kids packed up and headed out into the hall.
Bliss Reyes, who taught Spanish and Arabic next door, stuck her head in once the crowd had exited. You still okay to take my study hall last period?
Looking forward to it!
He didn’t have an eighth period on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and he’d always cover for one of his fellow teachers if at all possible. It was… collegial. He had colleagues now. Oliver did his best to smile an appropriately professional smile instead of the dizzy grin he’d end up with if he thought too much more about that.
Bliss stepped into his classroom. "Thank you so much. I will totally swap you back sometime."
The artists at the board finished their contributions and gathered up their things to leave. The thriving community on the whiteboard now had two more parks, multi-family housing, and a central plaza with outdoor performance space. Oliver approved.
Did you hear?
Bliss asked once they were gone. They’re supposed to be done with the roof in the theater by Friday. I can’t believe they’re donating all that work. I was afraid we’d have buckets on the stage during dress rehearsals again this fall.
That didn’t sound like fun. How many times did they get kicked over?
Bliss let out an aggrieved sigh. There were hoop skirts involved, you have no idea. Sebastián saved my life by taking over and promoting Tabby to have her tackle some of this. It’s about time somebody started getting resources in the door before the place falls down around our ears.
Principal Sebastián Rosado was new this year. Tabitha Lowry had been the guidance counselor and was now the vice principal. Oliver hadn’t asked anyone why the leadership team had changed a week before the start of his orientation. When he’d gotten the email about it, he’d had to go splash water on his face, remembering showing up to his student teaching to find out things there had changed with no warning. Luckily, the situation at Moore had so far proved a zillion times more accepting than his old school.
He did have to agree, however, that the former church building had seen better days.
Is fundraising difficult?
he asked, hoping it didn’t sound rude.
Bliss shrugged. Principal Worley is going to be far better as a teacher trainer than he ever was an administrator, and our vice principal last year looked good on paper but was totally useless. Here’s hoping we’re back to heading in the right direction.
At least Principal Rosado didn’t look faintly disgusted every time he saw Oliver. He pushed those memories away and turned to wipe diagrams and equations from the whiteboard that wasn’t currently a community art project.
I heard Tabby found someone to get the grade system sorted out, too,
he said. MooreScore had been Worley’s big project—the last straw, possibly—and Oliver knew from hearing other teachers chat that disliking it was a popular topic. I could probably have put something better together in a weekend with a few online tutorials.
I bet I could have made something better with materials from the art studio,
Bliss agreed, and Oliver felt a little burst of happiness that he’d succeeded at colleague bonding. Come over as soon as you’re ready and I’ll get you set up for the study hall.
She waved and headed back next door. Oliver sipped from his water bottle as his students filtered in. Algebra. Ninth graders. A small group clustered around someone’s phone in the last couple of minutes before class started, breaking into fits of giggles about whatever they were watching.
That dog!
one of them finally howled. With the hat, oh my GOD!
Oliver’s heart swelled with joy.
He loved ninth graders.
He loved his job.
Study hall ran half an hour long while Oliver helped two students stuck on chemistry. It took the textbook, his memories of college chem, and buying the PDF of a manga guide to the subject to work through the trouble spots, but he left feeling satisfied everyone was on the right track.
He was also starving, and he’d forgotten to pick up a new jar of cashews to throw in his desk drawer. There were two drive-throughs within a few blocks of the school. Or, he could see if there were any cookies left from the batch one of the vocal teachers had brought in that morning.
The building was laid out like a rabbit warren, with two different hallways wrapping around the main classroom block to the cramped teachers’ lounge before heading off elsewhere. Oliver chose the south option. When he turned the final corner, he saw Tabby and the treasurer of the board of trustees standing a few doors down from the lounge, conferring about something.
Oliver doubled back before they could notice him. Tabby wasn’t the problem. He liked his vice principal so far. She was about his mother’s age, with shoulder-length brown hair starting to show strands of silver. Tabby had hosted him and the other new teacher for brunch in her office the day before orientation to reassure them about the coming year. Her sweet disposition was at least half of why Oliver had been able to calm down and focus on setting up his classroom, which he now loved.
Board treasurer Helen Van Horn, on the other hand, was intimidating. She came to the school often, and Oliver had never seen her in less than a suit, full makeup, and an unmissable collection of expensive jewelry. Or maybe the jewelry was fake, but the massive Cadillac SUV she drove was real.
Around her, Oliver always felt self-conscious about his clothes and almost grateful he hadn’t dyed his hair back to blue or tried wearing any jewelry to school beyond the clear retainer for his labret piercing. He’d only put a Progress pride flag on his door after seeing two returning teachers do the same, and he’d gone with a smaller one even though he knew his being bi wasn’t an issue here. Still, something about Van Horn’s vibe made him uneasy.
He didn’t even know why she was around so much. His mom was on the board of a cat rescue nonprofit, and she wasn’t at the animal shelter twice a week. Maybe Van Horn was involved with the donations Tabby was organizing?
Oliver considered simply getting his stuff and heading home, but it was a long drive. It was probably worth checking the main office at the other end of the building before he gave up and succumbed to the lure of drive-through fries. Tabby often had snacks out. Maybe she understood the burden of student loans.
He headed down the other hall towards the office, a big square meeting room that had been subdivided into a central open area with a few chairs, a couple of desks, and several perimeter offices. Principal Rosado had the big office to the right. He was on a call, but he waved through the open blinds in his glass window. Vincent, the school’s admin, had the office next to his, but he wasn’t at his desk. Tabby’s office was straight ahead with a dog gate in the doorway for her fluffy little brown and white Papillon-Chihuahua mix, Ginger, who’d never met a person she didn’t like. To the left of that office was—
What the...?
Sitting in the small conference room, typing on a laptop with geeky and bi pride stickers Oliver had memorized, was the gorgeous blond white woman who used to come to Knockdown Coffee two afternoons a week and sit at the red corner table. In the year and a half he’d happily worked at Knockdown while he was in school, he’d served her approximately one hundred and forty blueberry, banana, and pineapple smoothies, and he’d never seen a single thing about her that he didn’t find wonderful. Her long, wavy hair, which always had a few colored streaks in it. (Today they were pink, though faded.) Her serious expression while she was working. Her quiet thanks whenever he handed her a drink.
Oliver felt a touch light-headed. His friend Allie, whose sister co-owned Knockdown, had told him that this woman still came by occasionally, but he’d never seen her. He didn’t even know her name, since she’d used many different ones for her drink orders. Leia, Aeryn, Shane. Honestly, even the pronoun was an assumption because she always picked female characters. Between the names and her laptop stickers, he’d ended up online reading about Farscape, The X-Files, The Expanse, Space: Above and Beyond, and quite a few others. Oliver was more of a fantasy and mystery reader than a science fiction watcher, but he’d just… wanted to know more about her.
Now she was right here, wearing a dress instead of her usual Knockdown attire of jeans and a t-shirt. She hadn’t seen him yet because she was absorbed in whatever she was working on, like always. Oliver tried to get ready to speak. They knew each other, right? At least on sight? And this might be his chance to finally talk to her.
He opened his mouth… and he couldn’t do it. He knew her on sight. But for all he knew, she wouldn’t recognize him at all.
Oliver slipped back out of the main office and retreated towards safety. Two dance students sped by him, probably late to a practice and moving as fast as he was. He swung the door to his classroom firmly closed before he fumbled his phone out of his pocket.
Oliver: SHE IS HERE
He put his back against the classroom wall and waited for Allie to respond. Hopefully she wasn’t stuck in a meeting, in which case Oliver would hear back from her in an hour or two and by then she’d be pretending she was going to kill half her coworkers.
Allie: SHE WHO
Her response was reassuring, since he’d done his best to persuade her that he was not still hung up on this woman. He just hadn’t thought it was working.
Allie: Oh fuck, you mean HER?
Apparently it hadn’t been working after all.
Allie: WHAT IS SHE DOING AT YOUR SCHOOL?
He had no fucking idea. He’d have heard about a new staff member already.
Oliver: i don’t know
Oliver: she was alone so probably not enrolling her kid
Oliver: wait maybe the volunteer program
Allie: What would she be doing as a volunteer?
Oliver: i don’t know?? she had her laptop and she was in the conference room
He didn’t have a clue what the woman did for a living. She’d never talked to anyone beyond placing her order and thanking him when she retrieved it, and she’d barely looked him in the eye while doing so. Which was fine. Some people weren’t into eye contact for any of a number of reasons. But without any opening for casual conversation, he’d never managed to find out anything about her. The most substantive thing he knew was that she never acted impatient if her order took longer than normal.
Allie: Oliver listen to me very carefully.
Allie: THIS IS YOUR CHANCE!!!
Allie: Talk to her. Talk to her right now. You can ask her what project she’s working on.
Right. He was a teacher here. Oliver Kimble, math teacher. That gave him a legitimate professional reason to start a conversation beyond asking if she needed anything else with her drink and giving her a total for her order.
He took a deep breath and tried to imagine it, but someone else making the first move was almost the only way he’d ever successfully dated, in either the romantic or the casual sex meaning of dated. He had zero nerves anymore in front of a classroom, but talking to someone he thought was pretty and intriguing? That was a recipe for stammering and blushing, which a significant number of people did not find terribly appealing. Serving her drinks for a year and a half had been way more comfortable than that alternative.
Oliver: i should just let this go
Oliver: i’m terrible at this. i always have been i don’t know why
Allie: at Knockdown you talked to people FOR A LIVING
Oliver: that’s totally different
Allie: Because you want to fuck her.
Oliver: NO
Well, yes, if she’d be into that. Oliver had proof points from his past that he could be romantically drawn to someone without sexual attraction too, but that was very much not the case here. He’d mostly kept a lid on any sexy imagining until after she’d disappeared from his life, but once she’d been a memory, it had seemed safe to use that memory as fantasy inspiration. Often. Mostly about going down on her, though there were other variations. Quite a few of them, actually, since Oliver had wide-ranging tastes.
Dammit, how could he have expected her to turn up at his workplace? Oliver thunked the back of his head against the wall.
Allie: Go ask what she’s doing. You were meant to get a second chance.
Allie: Okay, hundredth chance but who’s counting?
Oliver: i guarantee that she will tell me what she’s doing and then i won’t have the first clue what to say back
Allie: Oh stop. You can talk about how you used to see her at Knockdown. Talk about getting her number and taking her to dinner and then if it goes well you can talk about taking her enthusiastically on the floor of your living room.
Allie: Okay maybe not your living room because you live with dudebros. Maybe she doesn’t. Her living room would probably be nicer than yours anyway, she looks like she’s my age.
Now he was thinking about location options for sex. Not helpful.
Allie: I’m giving you 24 hours to figure this out and then I’m coming over there myself.
She wouldn’t. Would she? Oliver walked over to his desk and flopped down into his chair. Now that he was recovering from the surprise, he was starting to realize he was making too big of a deal about this.
Oliver: won’t work, you need a visitor pass to be in the building haha
Allie: I’ll sign up to volunteer if it means hooking you up with the geek love of your life.
Allie: I can take a PTO day tomorrow.
Oh fuck, she totally would. He shouldn’t have used all caps when he texted her.
Oliver had to start using his brain instead of a combination of lust and startled nerves. The mystery woman could be here for a one-time meeting. The thought took some of the pressure off, but he’d better not mention it or Allie would insist he go back immediately and no way in hell was that happening. If she wasn’t only here today, though… maybe it was being in his classroom that was giving him a dose of bravery, but he thought he might want to try.
Allie: Tomorrow I will meet you in the parking lot fifteen minutes before your first class with whatever drink she ordered most often. You will walk in there and give it to her, say you saw her in passing yesterday but she looked busy, and thanks for volunteering. I’ll even bring you two, so it doesn’t look suspicious like you made an extra trip.
Hand her a drink. That he could do. He’d done it hundreds of times before. If she wasn’t there, he could give it to Bliss.
Wait, back up. He could first verify with Vincent in the main office that she actually was volunteering, and if so, find out when she’d be back. If she was working in the afternoons only, Allie’s plan was a bust and he’d have to just go talk to her.
Surely it was worth at least one shot, after all this time.
Oliver: you’re giving strangely good advice for someone whose experience with actual dating only started in march of this year
Allie: I may not have romantically dated until Noelle, but I have always known how to get a woman’s attention.
Oliver: fair. wait until i text you to confirm
Allie: Noted
Allie: I have two geeks of my own. They are very cute when they burble about all their favorite geek things.
Allie: I believe you can get this geek, Oliver.
Allie: And you deserve this.
Oliver: at least I have a decent reason to ask her non-drink-related questions now
Allie: That’s the spirit!
It probably wouldn’t be a total disaster. He had approached cute people before, though not for several years because of how little free time he’d had around classes and his job. Worst case scenario, he’d stand there holding a smoothie that she didn’t want and find out that awkward small talk was the best either of them could offer the other. If she was volunteering at Moore, she probably wasn’t a Republican or something equally scary, but there were plenty of people who just didn’t click. Even as casual acquaintances.
Okay. Good. Assuming the woman was coming back to Moore, Oliver was going to do what he should have done a couple of years ago instead of building this up in his head for far too long. He was going to talk to his beautiful mystery customer.
Also, he was getting fries from P. Terry’s for his drive home.
CHAPTER TWO
Octavia Laughlin arrived for her second set of meetings at The Moore School wondering why she’d let her best friend sign her up for another volunteer gig. On-site meetings were a necessary evil for the first couple of days on most projects, but at least when they were job-related, sometimes there was paid travel. That was worth the tension headache she always had at the end of any day spent mostly talking to people instead of coding.
This volunteer project didn’t require travel. Instead, it came with epic disorganization of computer records and