Off Limits, Professor

Chapter Four: Lines

The revised conclusion sat in her inbox for two days before she worked up the nerve to send it.

She’d rewritten it four times. The first version was too close to what she actually thought, and she deleted it in a panic at one in the morning, certain it revealed too much about a girl who was supposed to be careful, who was supposed to keep herself contained and unremarkable and safe. The second was so guarded it might as well have been the original, all hedges and qualifiers, the kind of writing that said nothing while using a great many words to say it. By the third attempt she’d stopped trying to guess what he wanted and just written what she believed, the way he’d told her to. Something about that version had frightened her more than the others, because it felt true, and true things had a way of costing you later.

She sent the third version before she could talk herself out of it again.

His reply came back within the hour, which she hadn’t expected on a Sunday night. She’d pictured him grading in some detached, orderly way, working through a stack methodically and getting to hers eventually, days from now, buried under a dozen others. Instead her phone buzzed while she was still sitting cross-legged on her bed, half-watching something on her laptop she couldn’t have named five minutes later.

This is exactly it. Well done. — AC

Four words, plus initials instead of a name. She read them more times than four words reasonably deserved, turning the sentence over like it might mean something different on the fifth read than it had on the first.

She told herself it didn’t mean anything, that professors sent short emails on Sunday nights all the time, that reading anything into AC instead of his full signature, instead of the Professor Cole he’d have used with anyone else, was the kind of thing a person did when they’d already decided to feel something and were just hunting for evidence to justify it after the fact.

She was still telling herself that on Monday, walking into seminar ten minutes early for once, when she noticed a girl from her floor, Priya, lingering by his desk after class ended, laughing at something he’d said, one hand resting briefly on his forearm in a way that read easy and familiar, the kind of casual touch that meant nothing to the person doing it and everything to the person watching. Elena packed her bag slower than usual, pretending to search for something at the bottom of it, watching without meaning to. Something twisted in her chest that she didn’t have a name for and didn’t particularly want one, because naming it would mean admitting it existed.

She left without saying anything to him. He didn’t look up as she went, too absorbed in whatever Priya was explaining about a missed deadline.

It was stupid. She knew it was stupid, told herself so in a firm internal voice all the way across the quad. He was a professor; students touched professors’ arms all the time, it meant nothing, and even if it had meant something, it was none of her business what it meant, because there was no business to be had between them beyond a classroom and an occasional overlong office hour that she’d been the one to extend, both times, past any reasonable length. She repeated this to herself the entire walk home, cataloguing all the ways her reaction was disproportionate and unearned, and by the time she got there, she’d almost talked herself out of the tight feeling still sitting under her ribs.

Almost.

She didn’t go to office hours that week. She told herself it was discipline, a return to the rule she should never have broken in the first place. It felt more like sulking, if she was honest with herself, which she generally tried to be, at least in the privacy of her own head, where nobody else had to know about it.

Thursday’s seminar covered a novel about a marriage falling apart in slow motion, page by page, quiet erosion instead of a single dramatic collapse, and halfway through the discussion he made eye contact with her across the room during a debate about whether the wife in the novel was a victim of her circumstances or a willing participant in her own unhappiness.

“What do you think, Ms. Reyes?” he asked, and something about the formality of it, Ms. Reyes instead of the Elena he’d used once, briefly, in his office two weeks ago, felt deliberate. A line being drawn carefully back into place, in front of witnesses.

“I think,” she said slowly, aware of every eye in the room turning her way, “that people convince themselves they don’t have choices because admitting they do is scarier than staying stuck.”

“Scarier how?”

“Because if you have a choice, and you don’t take it, that’s on you. It’s easier to believe you’re trapped than to admit you’re choosing the trap.”

He held her gaze a beat longer than the answer strictly required, long enough that she saw someone two seats over glance between them, curious. “That’s a fairly unforgiving reading.”

“I didn’t say I thought she was wrong to stay.” Elena held his eyes, refusing to be the one to look away first this time, some old stubbornness rising up in her that had gotten her in trouble before and might again. “I said I understood why staying felt safer than the alternative. Sometimes the trap is more comfortable than the escape. Doesn’t mean it’s not still a trap.”

Something moved behind his expression, quick and unreadable, gone before she could study it properly, and he nodded once before turning back to the rest of the class, moving the discussion forward like nothing had happened. But she caught it again at the end of the period, the way his attention found her while she packed up her things, brief and then gone, like he was allowing himself exactly one look and no more, rationing it the way he seemed to ration everything about himself. She was almost out the door when he said, without looking up from his desk, “Ms. Reyes. A moment, if you don’t mind.”

The rest of the class filed out around her, a few curious glances thrown her way that she pointedly ignored. She waited until the room emptied, her pulse doing something inconvenient and entirely unhelpful.

“You haven’t been to office hours this week,” he said, once the door had swung shut behind the last student, leaving them alone in the sudden quiet.

“I’ve been busy.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. She had, in fact, been busy avoiding him.

“Understood.” He studied her for a moment, and she had the uncomfortable sense that he saw straight through the excuse to whatever was actually underneath it. “I wanted to make sure the feedback on your paper didn’t come across as harsh. Some students take criticism personally, and I’d rather know now than have you disengage from the material because of something I said.”

“It didn’t come across as harsh.” She hesitated, then added, because apparently today was a day for honesty whether she wanted it to be or not: “It was the most useful feedback I’ve gotten in three years here.”

“Good.” He seemed to relax slightly at that, some tension leaving his shoulders that she hadn’t noticed was there until it wasn’t. “I’d hate for you to stop pushing yourself because you thought I was disappointed. I wasn’t. I’m not.”

“I saw you with Priya after class Monday,” she said, before she could stop herself, and immediately wanted the floor to open up and swallow her whole.

He blinked, clearly not expecting that. “Priya Anand. She’s struggling with the reading load, we’ve been discussing extensions on her essay.” A pause, and something in his expression shifted into a careful, almost gentle understanding that made it worse, somehow, that he’d caught the real shape of the question underneath her words. “Is that what kept you from office hours this week?”

“No.” The lie came fast and unconvincing, and she watched him not quite believe it, watched him have the good grace not to push it further.

“Elena.” Her name again, low, quieter this time, and she didn’t correct herself for the way she reacted to hearing it. “There’s a line I’m careful not to cross. With any student. I need you to know that about me.”

“I didn’t ask you to cross a line.”

“I know.” He held her gaze, something honest and slightly unsteady in it that she hadn’t seen from him before, a c***k in the careful composure he usually wore like a second jacket. “I’m not saying it because you asked. I’m saying it because I’ve been thinking about where that line is more than I should be lately, and I wanted to be honest with you about that, since you seem to value honesty over comfort more than most people I know.”

The room felt very small and very quiet. Rain had started again outside, tapping lightly against the windows, and neither of them moved for a long moment, the silence stretching out between them like something neither wanted to be the one to break.

“I should go,” Elena said finally, the same words she’d used twice before in his office, and this time they came out barely above a whisper.

“You should,” he agreed, not moving either.

Neither of them did, for one more second too long.

Then she turned and walked out, down the hallway, down the stairs, out into the rain, her heart going faster than the distance warranted, and she understood, with a clarity that scared her more than anything in the poem they’d read that first week, that whatever rule she’d made about not going back to his office had already quietly broken itself days ago, somewhere between his four-word email and the look on his face just now. There was no version of this semester where the two of them stayed safely on opposite sides of the line he’d just admitted to thinking about.

She just didn’t yet know which one of them was going to be the one to cross it first.

She was almost out the door when he said, without looking up from his desk, “Ms. Reyes. A moment, if you don’t mind.”