Taj POV

"Hey, Faye!"

"Um, Taj right?" Faye sat at her desk, typing away on her laptop, glancing up at him for a moment.

"Yeah, Jossie wanted us to work together on some of the waitlist students." He set his bag across the desk from hers and took a seat at the desk directly facing her. It was the student assistant desk, which he shared with other students whenever they were in. Faye had a permanent desk.

"No problem kid, you want to pull up their files."

Did she just call him a kid? The hell? He was twenty-one, he was in no way, shape, or form a kid. She may be a graduate student, but she could not be that much older than him.

"I'm twenty-one."

She was barely listening to him. "Huh, excuse me?"

"I said, I'm twenty-one. I just wanted to let you know I'm a man, not a kid."

"Oh, that's nice."

Again, why was she ignoring him and brushing him off? He let it slide and went to work, pulling up the files from their system and looking them over.

"Waitlist students are always fun," she finally said after they worked in silence for a while. "We're not at capacity here, they can start whenever they like, but now it gets tricky finding them enough scholarships and whatnot so they can start."

"Yeah, doesn't look like any of these students are trust fund kids."

"Jossie said we're at the limit this semester for the Minority Student Leadership scholarship so that eliminates most of the minority students. We can still see what we can do to help out some of these students."

"It's nearly the third week of school, they might as well wait till next semester."

"If we can get them in by the fourth week, they can make up any classwork." Faye looked over her computer. "Housing is tricky, but I know some people there."

He frowned at her. "This is your first year here, how do you already know-"

"Some other graduate students. Damn kiddo, I know people."

"Again, I'm not a kid."

She smiled, tilted her head, and looked him over. "I don't make the rules. If you're hella younger than me, you're a kid to me."

"Wait...how old are you?"

"And this kiddo asks me my age! Thuh! Boy hasn't your mother ever told you-"

"Never ask a woman her age. My bad." He grinned, giving her his best sexy glare. "Whatever your age, you look good."

"Young player trying to be the mack."

He wanted to ask again her age, but he knew better. She would tell him when she wanted to. He did not care what the number was, he was interested. He would have to try a different approach with her. If she was not interested in him asking her out, he had to develop a friendship with her first.

"Okay sorry, my bad, just shooting the shit. I know we have a lot of work to do, so I will let you do yours, and I'll get to mine."

She gave him a nice glare before she nodded her head and turned back to her computer. He smirked, content with leaving things at that. They finished all the work they had for the day and Faye told him she planned on taking her first recruitment trip in two weeks.

He wished he could go, but he knew he would be deep in the membership intake process. Besides, some of the other student workers would love to go. It was two days away, Friday and Saturday, going to high schools and college fairs. It was a chance to speak to juniors and seniors in high school and convince them to attend Illinois State University.

If he could go, that would mean more time with Faye, and on a more personal and intimate level. Typically on the recruitment trips, they took a church van so that they could fit several student workers and even volunteers. Typically Jossie, a grad student and two to three student workers and sometimes two to three volunteers. Sometimes it could be a day trip, early Saturday morning and back late Saturday, depending on the recruitment city. Sometimes they did overnights.

He checked his calendar. Even while pledging the new guys, they could have weekends off, so maybe he could go.

"Where are we recruiting first? And is it a day trip?"

"Uh, Jossie wants to show me how it's done so we're doing an overnight, only taking two students. Why, do you want to be added on? You have seniority."

"I think I need to sit this one out but count me in the next one."

"Why, your girlfriend will miss you too much?"

Did she just ask if he had a girlfriend? What did that mean? Was she simply asking or was she asking because she wanted to make sure the slot was open? He better not put too much into it. And he better slow down with his feelings, he did not want to end up hurt again.

"No, no girlfriend, just busy with school stuff." He did not feel the need to get into fraternity happenings, not that they were planning on hazing or anything.

"Well go 'head, study hard Mr. Senior, I'm Not a Kid."

He had to work up his nerve to get her to warm up to him.

After his classes for the day, they had interviews with their two applicants. Judging by how their applicants were immaculate, bar if they screw up in the interview, they were in. He liked both their candidates, though he did not know them at all. They were both sophomores so that was good, they would be here next year. That meant he had to be extra hard on them to know his fraternity inside and out.

They held the interviews in the Student Union in a reserved meeting space. There was nothing that particularly stood out with the two guys. They were roommates, which would help them. They had each other to lean on.

Back at his place, he decided to dig a little deeper into Faye to see if he could feel her out better. Nowadays, everyone had a footprint on the internet. He Googled her name and several things popped up.

She had a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and Instagram. He saved all the pages and then started going through them. She was from Chicago, that was interesting. Big city, lots of suburbs. She was not from the southside like him. She went to undergrad at Purdue, nice. There were not a lot of selfies or pictures, just thoughtful words of wisdom and such, and some travel pics of what she did over the summer.

Further down her Facebook page, she mentioned she had a kid. She had a kid? A daughter. But there were no pictures, just wishing her daughter a happy fourth birthday. That was two years ago.

She had a six-year-old? How old was she?

Of course, that was not on her page. After he went through her Facebook page, on Instagram, the pictures there were some travel pics, a beach, some monuments, the food. She liked to travel, and he liked that. None of her daughter. Why was that?

No IG stories either. He turned to Twitter. Jackpot! She seemed to prefer Twitter over the other, seeing as she tweeted several times a day. Most of it was about her daughter and being a mom. Still no pictures, but she talked about her more.

Where was the father? Now he was curious. Maybe she was involved with someone and he should fall back. She seemed out of his league. Older, a single mother, that was a lot. He was not ready for all that.

Well, maybe he would not pursue her after all.

A/N: I'm reaching with this storyline, I have no idea where this will go. Most of my stories in this series are based off true events, I could not think of one for Taj, so hopefully this storyline pans out.