Off Limits, Professor

Chapter Seven: Wine and Bad Advice

Maya made good on her threat. There was wine.

It was cheap wine, the kind that came in a bottle with a screw cap and a label that tried too hard to look expensive, but it was wine, and Maya poured two generous glasses the second Elena walked through the door, planting them both on the coffee table with the finality of a woman who considered the matter settled before it began.

"Sit," Maya said. "Talk."

"I have reading."

"You have a professor-shaped problem, and I have a bottle of Barefoot Merlot, and we are going to solve one of those things tonight, possibly both." Maya patted the couch cushion beside her with theatrical insistence. "Sit down, Elena Marie Reyes."

"That's not even my middle name."

"It should be, it has drama built in." Maya waited until Elena finally sat, curling her legs underneath her with the particular reluctance of someone who knew she was about to lose an argument but wanted it on record that she'd tried to avoid it. "Okay. Start from the beginning. When did you first notice."

"Notice what?"

"Don't." Maya pointed a finger, stern. "We are past that. I saw your search history, by the way."

Elena nearly choked on her wine. "You what?"

"Relax, I wasn't snooping, your laptop was open and the tab was just sitting there in broad daylight, practically begging to be seen. 'How old is too old for a college professor to date a student,' typed into Google at one in the morning, is not exactly subtle, babe."

"Oh my God."

"I'm not judging. I'm delighted. This is the most interesting thing that's happened in this apartment since the raccoon incident." Maya took a satisfied sip of wine, clearly enjoying herself far more than the situation warranted. "So. Tell me everything. And don't leave out the parts where you get red and flustered, those are my favorite parts."

Elena buried her face briefly in a couch cushion, which did nothing to make the situation less real, and came back up with the specific defeated expression of someone who'd run out of ways to deny it.

"It's not going anywhere," she said. "It can't. He's my professor. There are rules about this. Actual rules, written down, with consequences."

"Sure, but has anything happened?"

"No."

"Has he said anything?"

Elena hesitated, just long enough that Maya sat forward, sensing blood in the water.

"He said something," Maya said. "What did he say."

"It doesn't matter what he said."

"It very much matters what he said, that's the entire point of this conversation." Maya set her wine down, giving Elena her full, unblinking attention, the kind that made lying feel physically impossible. "Elena. I've watched you avoid every single guy who's ever shown interest in you since I've known you. You turned down Marcus from your econ class, and Marcus was objectively very cute and also brought you soup that one time you were sick, which, frankly, is more effort than most men put in over an entire relationship. You've had a wall up since before I met you, and I've never once pushed on it, because it's yours and you get to decide when you talk about it. But this is the first time in two years I've seen you actually want something. So forgive me for being a little invested."

The teasing had drained out of Maya's voice somewhere in the middle of that, replaced by something gentler, more careful, and Elena felt the familiar tightness rise in her chest, the one that showed up whenever a conversation got close to the parts of herself she kept locked in a drawer she didn't open for anyone. Not even Maya, not fully. Maya knew there was something. Maya didn't know what.

"It's complicated," Elena said finally, which wasn't a real answer and they both knew it.

"Most good things are." Maya didn't push further, which was its own kind of mercy. "Look, I'm not saying run off and elope with your literature professor. I'm saying you've been different lately, in a good way, and I don't think you should talk yourself out of that just because it's scary. You're allowed to want something even if wanting it is complicated."

"Even if it could end his career? Get me kicked out of school? Blow up both our lives?"

"Okay, when you put it that way, it does sound like a lot." Maya considered this with the seriousness of someone slightly buzzed on cheap wine attempting real wisdom. "But for what it's worth, from everything you've told me, and everything you very obviously haven't, he doesn't sound like a guy who's just messing around. He sounds like a guy who's trying really hard not to want you, and failing, which, honestly, kind of romantic, in a doomed sort of way."

"That's not comforting."

"I'm not in the comfort business, I'm in the honesty business." Maya grinned, refilled both their glasses without asking, and settled back against the couch cushions. "Okay, changing the subject slightly, because I can see you're about to spiral and I don't want to deal with spiral Elena on a Thursday. Brianna Cho was talking about you today."

Elena groaned into her wine glass. "What now?"

"Nothing crazy, just campus gossip stuff. She was telling some girls in the library that Cole plays favorites, and that it's 'obviously' you." Maya made air quotes, unbothered. "I told her to mind her business, obviously, but you might want to keep an eye on her. She seemed genuinely irritated, not just catty-irritated. Like actually bothered."

"Great. That's exactly what I need."

"She's just mad because she's been trying to get on his thesis committee for weeks and he hasn't gotten back to her. It's not that deep, probably. She'll get over it." Maya shrugged, unconcerned, though something in Elena's stomach didn't share the confidence.

They sat in easy silence for a minute, the cheap wine doing its slow, warm work, and Maya reached for the half-empty bag of chips on the coffee table, tossing one into her mouth with the casual disregard of someone who had never once worried about crumbs on the couch.

"Can I ask you something?" Maya said, after a while, her voice quieter than before, more careful. "And you don't have to answer."

Elena tensed slightly, already anticipating the direction this might go. "Okay."

"Is this thing with Cole part of why you've been better lately? Like, actually better. Not just performing fine for everyone's benefit." Maya picked at the edge of the chip bag, not quite looking at her. "Because I've noticed. This past month, you've been sleeping better. You laugh at things again, like actually laugh, not the polite kind. You let me hug you the other day without going stiff first. I wasn't going to say anything, because I know how you get when I bring stuff like this up, but I've been really happy watching it. Whatever's causing it."

Elena felt something catch in her throat, unexpected, the kind of feeling that came from being truly seen by someone who'd never once demanded an explanation for the parts of her that didn't make sense.

"I don't fully know," she admitted. "I think it's part of it. I think talking to him, being challenged by him, it's made me feel like myself again, in a way I hadn't in a long time. Which is stupid, because I've known him for like six weeks."

"It's not stupid." Maya bumped her shoulder gently against Elena's. "Some people just do that to you. Doesn't matter how long you've known them."

"You sound like a greeting card."

"I contain multitudes." Maya grinned again, teasing back in full force, the heavy moment passing as easily as it had arrived, the way it always did between them. "Anyway. Enough about her. Tell me something good. Something not complicated. What's the best thing that's happened this week."

Elena thought about it, actually thought about it, and found herself smiling before she'd fully decided to.

"He laughed at something I said. In his office. It wasn't even that funny, but he actually laughed, like a real laugh, not a professor being polite laugh." She traced the rim of her wine glass, feeling a little foolish saying it out loud, and a little relieved to say it out loud at all. "I don't know. It felt like I'd won something."

Maya's face softened into something unguarded, no teasing left in it at all. "That's not a small thing, El. That's actually a really nice thing."

"I know it can't go anywhere."

"Maybe. Or maybe things have a way of working out that you can't see yet." Maya bumped her shoulder against Elena's, warm and solid, the same way she had a hundred times before, through worse nights than this one. "Either way, I'm glad you're humming again. Whatever it costs to get you there."

They sat like that for a while, the bad wine going down easier with every glass, Maya's playlist murmuring low in the background, the apartment warm and small and safe in the particular way it only felt on nights like this. Elena let herself sit in the good feeling instead of immediately searching for the catch, which was, itself, a kind of progress she didn't fully register until much later, lying in bed with the ceiling fan ticking overhead and Maya's laughter still echoing faintly from the living room.

There would be time enough tomorrow to worry about Brianna's whispers, about Naomi's watchful eyes, about all the ways this could unravel, about a past she still hadn't told Maya the whole truth of, not even after two years of late nights just like this one.

Tonight, there was just wine, and a warm apartment, and the small, stubborn hope she hadn't let herself feel in a very long time.