Three
1879 Words
Wright:
I have made many mistakes in my thirty-two years of life.
But this one?
This is the kind of mistake that ruins careers, burns down futures, and keeps you awake at three a.m. staring at the ceiling wondering what the hell is wrong with you.
Emma.
Her name is Emma.
The girl with the flushed cheeks and the impulsive mouth and the laugh that cracked something open in me I didn’t know was still capable of breaking.
The girl I’d had in my arms. In my bed. In every part of me I didn’t let anyone near.
And now she’s sitting in the third row of English Lit 301, looking at me with wide, shocked eyes while I try to remember how to pronounce my own name.
Jesus Christ.
Last night, she had looked at me like she wanted trouble.
This morning, she looks at me like I am the trouble.
And she’s right.
I drop the marker. Smooth. Professional. Definitely not the behavior of a man who is absolutely losing his mind.
She nearly spits out her coffee.
The entire class stares at her.
I stare at the floor.
I am not a religious man, but in this moment I pray—for composure, for common sense, for some kind of cosmic reset button.
“I—uh—today we’re beginning our unit on narrative structure.”
I sound like I’m reading off a hostage note.
Her gaze flicks down, then back up at me, warm and nervous and completely unaware of what she does to me.
Last night, when I first saw her, I thought she was trouble in the best possible way.
Tonight, she’s trouble in every impossible way.
She turns her book upside down.
A laugh nearly slips out of me. A real one. The kind I haven’t felt in years.
I smother it.
If anyone notices her. If anyone notices me noticing her. If anyone connects any dots at all—
No. Not an option.
“Miss Hart,” I say, and the name tastes too familiar on my tongue. Too soft.
She startles, then reads the paragraph with the kind of shaky determination that hits me somewhere low in my spine.
I need to get it together.
I barely hear the rest of the class. My mind is a rapid-fire loop of last night:
Her hands in my hair.
Her breathless laugh when I kissed her neck.
Her whisper—Yes, I’m sure—said with drunken confidence and devastating sincerity.
The way she’d curled into me afterward without hesitation.
I shouldn’t have stayed.
I shouldn’t have touched her in the first place.
But when she’d pressed her forehead against mine, when she’d sighed my name like it meant something, I’d forgotten every rule I’d ever lived by.
Class ends.
Everyone leaves.
Except her.
And I tell myself not to say it. Not to look at her. Not to need—
“Miss Hart. A moment.”
Stupid.
She turns. Slowly. Carefully. Like she’s approaching a wild animal that might bite.
She’s right to be cautious.
I am dangerously close to losing control.
The classroom empties and the silence stretches out, thick and heavy and full of every damn thing we’re not allowed to say.
“Emma,” I manage, and it breaks something in me to speak her name like a reprimand instead of the way I said it last night. Whispered. Devoured.
She blurts, “I thought you were a sexy accountant.”
A laugh rips out of me before I can stop it. Sharp. Pained. Too honest.
“I didn’t know either,” I admit, because lying to her feels wrong. “If I had…”
If I had known?
If I’d known she was my student?
I still would’ve wanted her.
That’s the worst part.
“This can’t happen again,” I say, because it has to be said, even though it tastes like poison coming out.
She nods quickly. Too quickly. “Absolutely. Yes. Zero happening. Negative happening.”
Her rambling is going to kill me.
I try again. Firmer. “We forget it happened.”
“Right.”
“We move forward professionally.”
“Right.”
“We never talk about it again.”
“Right.”
Silence.
Her eyes lift to mine, big and warm and full of something I have no business noticing.
I feel it hit me low in the gut.
“Emma,” I say, voice hoarse, “stop looking at me like that.”
She blinks. “I’m not looking at you like anything.”
“You absolutely are,” I whisper.
I take a step back before I do something catastrophically stupid, like touch her again.
I grip the desk until the wood creaks.
“Go.”
Because if she doesn’t, if she stays another second, I’m not sure I’ll remember which part of me is supposed to be in charge—the professor or the man who had her in his bed last night.
She leaves.
The door clicks shut.
The room is too quiet.
Too empty.
Too cold without her in it.
I drop into the chair and press my fists against my eyes.
I should feel relief. I should feel disciplined. Responsible. Mature.
I don’t.
All I feel is the ghost of her mouth, the warmth of her breath, the space beside me in that hotel bed where she’d curled up like she belonged there.
This was supposed to be the end of it.
But as I sit there, pulse hammering, breath uneven, one truth hits me harder than all the rest:
I’m already in far too deep.
And I have no idea how to pull myself out.
Emma:
I do not walk back to my dorm.
I speed-waddle.
A panicked, sweaty, frantic little penguin on the verge of emotional collapse.
Every few steps I whisper, “Oh my God,” into the air like an apology to the universe.
By the time I reach my building, I’m breathing like I’ve run a marathon while being chased by tax collectors. My hands are shaking. My keys won’t work because they suddenly feel like foreign objects I’ve never seen before in my life.
I manage to unlock the door.
Then I collapse face-first onto my bed and scream into my pillow.
A long scream. A muffled scream. A scream that carries the weight of one-night stands, bad decisions, and the realization that the universe is, in fact, out to get me personally.
I flip onto my back.
Stare at the ceiling.
Lift my hands toward it like I’m praying to whatever deity handles academic disasters.
“What the HELL was that?”
I roll to the side.
Roll back.
Kick my blanket.
Kick it again for good measure.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. I flinch like it’s a bomb.
It’s a text from my best friend, Tessa.
Tessa:
How was your night?? Did u get laid??? Tell me everything 👀🔥
I throw my phone across the room.
It hits my hamper and disappears into a nest of laundry, which honestly feels metaphorically correct.
I groan into my hands.
I slept with my professor.
My hot, tattooed, probably-should-be-illegal professor.
And then I walked into class still smelling faintly like him. Still wearing the same bra he’d pushed aside. Still thinking about the way he’d said my name like it mattered.
I should have combusted on the spot. Burst into flames. Poof — gone. I could’ve been a tragic but educational story for future freshmen.
Instead, I’m here. Alive. Barely.
And the worst part?
I can still feel him.
The weight of his hands on my hips.
The warmth of his breath against my neck.
The way he’d looked afterward, like he wasn’t supposed to stay but couldn’t make himself leave.
I groan louder and stuff a pillow over my face.
Because the OTHER worst part?
The way he’d looked at me today.
Not angry.
Not disgusted.
Not indifferent.
No.
He’d looked at me like he remembered every second.
Like forgetting wasn’t nearly as easy as he wanted it to be.
I sit up too fast. The room spins slightly. Could be panic. Could be leftover tequila.
“Oh no,” I whisper. “Oh no no no no—Emma, do not do this. Do not catch feelings for your professor. That is—a felony? A Greek tragedy? Both?”
My stomach drops.
I flop back down dramatically.
“This is why I don’t drink.”
A lie.
“This is why I shouldn’t have gone out alone.”
Also a lie.
“This is why attractive men should come with warning labels.”
True.
I grab my pillow and scream into it again.
Then there’s a knock.
I freeze.
No.
No no no don’t be him don’t be him don’t be him—
“Emma?” my RA calls. “Your friend Tessa is here.”
Oh thank God.
And also oh no.
The door swings open and Tessa comes barreling in like a chaotic angel with iced coffee and judgment.
She stops dead when she sees my face.
“Oh my God. You DID get laid.”
I whimper.
She drops the coffees. Pounces onto my bed. Grabs my shoulders.
“Tell me EVERYTHING.”
I cover my face.
“I can’t.”
“You will.”
“It’s bad.”
“Good bad or bad bad?”
“Bad bad.”
“How bad?”
I whisper it.
She blinks.
Then her mouth drops open.
Then she screams.
I slap a hand over her lips.
“SHHHHHHHH! Tessa! Do you want to get me EXPELLED?”
Her eyes are huge above my fingers.
She slowly peels my hand away. “Okay,” she whispers. “Okay. We need a plan.”
“A plan?”
“Yes,” she says, already hopping off the bed and pacing. “Step one: hydration. Step two: deep breathing. Step three: figure out if you should transfer universities or fake your own death.”
“Both are valid,” I mutter.
Tessa stops. Points at me.
“Emma Hart. Did you—” she gestures wildly “—catch feelings?”
My entire soul leaves my body.
“What? NO. Absolutely not. That would be insane. Criminal. Deranged. Irresponsible.”
She raises a brow.
“… maybe a little?” I squeak.
“Oh my God,” she groans, collapsing dramatically on my bed. “We’re dead. We’re so dead. We’re little academic corpses.”
I lie beside her.
We stare at the ceiling.
This is rock bottom.
Quietly, Tessa asks: “Is he hot?”
I cover my face again. “He looks like a Greek god who punches people for fun.”
“Oh,” she says reverently. “So we’re extra dead.”
I nod into my pillow.
And for the first time since I left his classroom, I let myself think the thing I’ve been trying not to think:
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
But it did.
And no matter how many panic attacks I have, how many pillows I scream into, or how deeply I bury myself under my blanket—
I can’t make myself regret it.
Not even a little.
- Writer
