"Almost Mine

Lines we cross

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Chapter 8 – Lines We Cross

I didn’t look back after I left her office.

If I had, I would’ve stayed.

The hallway outside the faculty wing was nearly empty. My footsteps echoed off the tile floors, but all I could hear was her voice—shaken, controlled, trying to hold back everything I’d just exposed.

I wasn’t proud of ambushing her like that. But I couldn’t keep waiting for a sign. The way she looked at me when I said I was transferring out… it was the closest thing to honesty we’d ever shared.

I needed that honesty more than I needed her approval.

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Three days earlier, I stood outside the registrar’s office with the transfer form in my hand. It felt like betrayal—of her, of myself. Dropping her class was like ripping away the only thread that still connected us. But I knew I couldn’t sit there week after week, pretending I didn’t want more.

The woman behind the desk raised an eyebrow. “Switching out of Professor Hart’s course? She’s one of the best.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

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Back in my apartment, I dropped onto my bed, staring at the ceiling. My roommate was gone for the weekend—thank God. I wasn’t in the mood to pretend everything was fine.

I reached for the old leather-bound notebook I hadn’t touched since my mom died. It used to be hers—a place for grocery lists, thoughts, poems she never finished. I’d turned it into something else: a place to talk when no one else would listen.

Entry 42

She looked at me like I was breaking her. Like she wanted to stop me and couldn’t. I wonder if she knows she breaks me, too.

I transferred out. I thought it would fix things. But it just makes the silence louder.

I want her to say I’m wrong. That I’m just a kid with a crush. I want her to say it so I can move on.

But she didn’t.

And that scares me more than anything.

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The next morning, I walked into a new lecture hall. Different professor, different syllabus. No Elena Hart.

But her ghost followed me anyway—in the way I scanned every corner of the campus hoping to see her, in the way I hesitated before opening messages, half-expecting one from her that would never come.

Later that night, I sat on the edge of my bed, phone in hand.

One message. Just one.

But I didn’t send it.

Instead, I stared at her contact name—Elena Hart—and wondered if I’d ever be more than just a student she almost loved.

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