Off Limits, Professor

Chapter Three: The Rule She Broke

She lasted eight days.

Eight days of sitting in the front row by the window, answering questions when he called on her and refusing to volunteer when he didn’t, keeping her eyes on her notebook instead of his hands when he read aloud. Eight days of walking straight past Room 219 after class instead of slowing down, even when some small, traitorous part of her noted whether the door was open or closed.

On the ninth day, it was raining, and her only umbrella had a broken spoke that let water straight through onto her shoulder, and she was tired in the specific way that came from working a closing shift at the library and then getting up at six to finish an assignment she should have started earlier. She was not, she told herself later, in a state of mind to be making good decisions.

She was also not supposed to have a paper due for his class yet. It wasn’t due for another two weeks. But she’d finished a draft the night before, unable to sleep, and it sat in her bag now, printed and stapled, because some part of her had wanted an excuse.

She stood outside Room 219 for almost a full minute before she made herself knock.

“Come in.”

He looked up from a stack of essays when she stepped inside, rain still clinging to her jacket, and something in his expression shifted the way it had the first time she’d walked into his office. Not surprise exactly. More like he’d been half expecting her and hadn’t wanted to admit it.

“Ms. Reyes.” He set his pen down. “You’re soaked.”

“My umbrella’s a war crime.” She held up the offending object, one spoke bent at a useless angle. “I have a draft. I know it’s not due yet.”

“You could have emailed it.”

“I could have.” She didn’t offer a better explanation than that, and to his credit, he didn’t ask for one.

He gestured to the chair, the same one she’d sat in nine days ago, and this time she didn’t hesitate before taking it. He read through the pages while she sat there dripping quietly onto his floor, and she watched him read the way she’d watched him read poetry aloud in class, the small furrow between his eyebrows, the way his mouth moved almost imperceptibly over certain lines like he was testing the shape of her sentences.

“This is good,” he said finally, setting the pages down. “Better than good. But you’re holding back in the last section.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.” He looked up at her, steady. “You spend four pages taking real risks, and then in the conclusion you retreat into something safe. Something you think a professor wants to hear instead of what you actually think.”

She opened her mouth to argue and then closed it again, because he wasn’t wrong, and they both knew it.

“Why do you do that?” he asked, quieter now. “You clearly have the nerve for it. I’ve watched you do it in class. But on paper, when it actually counts, you pull back.”

“Maybe on paper it actually counts,” she said. “Maybe that’s the difference. In class you forget things. On paper it’s permanent.”

Something crossed his face at that, quick and complicated, and she had the distinct sense she’d said something that landed closer to him than she’d intended.

“Permanent things aren’t always the enemy,” he said.

“Easy for you to say. You’ve got tenure track and options. I’ve got one scholarship and no room for mistakes.”

She hadn’t meant to say that much. It slipped out before she could stop it, and she watched him register it, watched something in his expression soften in a way that made her want to take the sentence back and also, contradictorily, made her glad she’d said it.

“That’s not nothing to carry,” he said.

“It’s fine. I’m managing.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t.” He leaned back in his chair, studying her in that unhurried way that made her feel, uncomfortably, like he was actually seeing her instead of just looking at her. “I said it’s not nothing. Those aren’t the same thing.”

Outside, the rain had picked up, drumming steadily against the window behind him, and the office had gone dim enough that he reached over and switched on the desk lamp without seeming to think about it, the light pooling warm across the papers between them.

“Can I ask you something?” she said, before she could think better of it.

“You can ask. I reserve the right not to answer.”

“Fair.” She turned the compliment his own logic back on him, deliberately, and watched his mouth twitch again, that almost-smile he seemed to ration out carefully. “Why did you come back to teaching? People talk. They said you took a semester off before I got here.”

The temperature of the room changed. Not literally, but she felt it, the way his posture went very slightly still, the way his hand found the edge of a paper and straightened it unnecessarily.

“That’s not really a first-month-of-class kind of question,” he said.

“You asked me something just as personal nine days ago.”

“That’s fair too.” He was quiet for a moment, long enough that she thought he might actually decline to answer. Then, carefully, like he was choosing each word with real weight behind it: “I lost someone. It took me a while to remember why any of this mattered.”

She didn’t ask who. Something in his tone told her the door was only open a c***k, not all the way, and pushing further would close it entirely.

“I’m sorry,” she said instead, and meant it.

“So am I.” A ghost of something almost like a smile. “Most days it’s easier than others. Today’s one of the easier ones, if that tells you anything.”

The rain kept falling outside. Neither of them moved to end the conversation, and Elena became aware, in a slow unfolding way, of exactly how close their chairs were, how the desk lamp lit half his face and left the rest in shadow, how she had been in this office for nearly forty minutes again and hadn’t once thought about leaving.

“I should go,” she said anyway, because some part of her recognized the moment for what it was becoming and knew, with total clarity, that this was the exact instant to break it.

“You said that last time too.”

“I meant it less that time.”

That earned her a real laugh, low and surprised, and she felt something in her chest tighten pleasantly at the sound of it, which was exactly the reaction she’d promised herself she wasn’t allowed to have.

She stood, gathered her bag, and he stood too, close enough now that she had to tilt her head slightly to meet his eyes. Neither of them stepped back.

“Elena.” It was the first time he’d used her first name. It landed somewhere low in her stomach, unwelcome and entirely too welcome at once.

“Yes?”

“Fix the conclusion. Don’t give me what you think I want. Give me what you actually think.” A pause. “I meant that about more than just the paper.”

She didn’t have an answer for that. She left before she could try to find one, walking out into the rain without her broken umbrella raised, letting the cold water hit her face like it might wash away the fact that she’d just spent forty minutes not wanting to leave a room, and that the reason had absolutely nothing to do with literature.

Behind her, in Room 219, Adrian Cole sat back down at his desk, picked up his pen, and stared at the closed door for a long moment before he made himself go back to grading.

He did not, for the rest of the evening, grade a single paper.