Off Limits, Professor

Chapter Eight: A Normal Tuesday

Nothing happened for two weeks.

Elena noticed this the way you notice the absence of a sound you'd gotten used to, a strange, hollow quiet where the tension used to live. Seminar continued as normal. Professor Cole called on her sometimes, didn't call on her other times, graded her papers with the same sharp, useful feedback he gave everyone, and made exactly zero comments that could be mistaken for anything beyond professional. No lingering looks. No forty-minute office hours. No four-word emails sent at inconvenient times of night.

She told herself this was good. This was, in fact, exactly what should be happening. This was two responsible adults recognizing a line and stepping back from it, which was mature, and healthy, and precisely what she should want.

She hated it more than she was willing to admit to anyone, including herself.

"You're doing the face again," Maya observed, over breakfast, three Tuesdays into this new normal.

"What face."

"The 'I am fine and everything is fine and please stop looking at me' face. You've had it on since Thursday." Maya poured cereal with the focus of someone conducting a very serious investigation. "Did something happen with Professor Hot-and-Complicated?"

"Nothing happened. That's the whole problem."

"Ooh." Maya's eyebrows shot up. "Radio silence?"

"He's just being professional." Elena stirred her coffee harder than the coffee required. "Which is fine. Which is what should happen."

"Sure, but you also look like someone stole your dog."

"We don't have a dog."

"Hypothetically." Maya waved a spoon in her general direction. "You know what I mean. Cheer up. Come to the campus fall festival thing with me tonight. There's a pie eating contest and I intend to enter it and humiliate myself for a good cause."

"What's the cause?"

"My own personal entertainment, mostly, but also I think proceeds go to the library, so, we're basically philanthropists." Maya grinned. "Come on. It'll be good for you. Normal, dumb, college fun. No professors allowed, well, they might be there, but you're not required to think about him for two entire hours, which frankly might be a personal record."

Elena laughed despite herself, the first real laugh she'd had in days. "Fine. But I'm not eating pie competitively. I have dignity."

"We'll see how you feel after your first slice."

They spent the afternoon getting ready with the kind of unhurried, easy ritual Elena had missed without quite noticing, Maya doing both their eyeliner badly while narrating an elaborate, entirely fictional backstory for the pie eating contest as though it were an Olympic event she'd trained her whole life for. It was silly and warm and entirely uncomplicated, and Elena found herself grateful for it in a way that went beyond the festival itself, grateful for a friend who could pull her out of her own head without ever demanding to know exactly what was in there.

---

The campus quad had been strung with string lights and folding tables by the time they arrived, the whole thing smelling like cinnamon and fried dough and the particular chaos of several student organizations competing for attention within fifty feet of each other. Someone's a cappella group was murdering a Fleetwood Mac song near the fountain, badly, with real enthusiasm, and Elena caught Maya's eye and they both dissolved into laughter at the same moment, for no reason beyond the sheer, ordinary joy of a badly sung cover song on a cold night.

"This is exactly what you needed," Maya said, dragging her toward the pie table. "Objectively terrible singing and equally terrible pastry. Very grounding."

"I didn't need grounding."

"You very much needed grounding. You've been floating six inches off the ground for weeks, alternating with sulking about six inches underground. I'm here to bring you back to sea level."

The pie eating contest was, predictably, a disaster, Maya emerging with cinnamon filling in her hair and a third-place finish she considered a moral victory, loudly contesting the judges' methodology to anyone within earshot while Elena laughed so hard she nearly dropped her own untouched slice. It was ridiculous, and perfect, and Elena found herself laughing more in that single hour than she had in the two weeks prior combined, the tight knot in her chest loosening slightly with every ordinary, unremarkable moment.

They wandered the rest of the festival afterward, trying on ugly knitted scarves at the crafts table, letting a very earnest freshman explain the entire mission statement of the campus astronomy club, buying overpriced hot chocolate from a stand run by the debate team, who seemed to be arguing about something even while making change. It was the kind of aimless, cheerful chaos Elena had forgotten she was allowed to enjoy, the kind that didn't ask anything of her except to exist in it.

She was still laughing, wiping powdered sugar off her hands, when she turned toward the drinks table and nearly walked directly into Professor James Bellamy.

"Ms. Reyes." He caught himself, mildly startled, then recovered with easy warmth. "Enjoying the festival's finest culinary offerings, I see."

"They're better than they sound."

"They are exactly as good as they sound, which is not a compliment, but I appreciate the diplomacy." He glanced past her, toward Maya, who was now attempting to reclaim her dignity by aggressively napkin-ing cinnamon out of her hair. "History department's cider stand is objectively superior, if you want a real recommendation. I have no bias whatsoever."

"Duly noted."

He hesitated, just slightly, something in his expression shifting into a more careful, measuring look. "How's the seminar going? Adrian mentioned it's a strong group this year."

Something in Elena's stomach did a small, involuntary flip at the casual use of his first name, at the mental image of Adrian talking about the class to someone else, wondering, briefly and uselessly, whether her name had come up in that conversation.

"It's good," she said. "Challenging. He's a good professor."

"He is." James studied her for a beat longer than the conversation strictly required, something unreadable behind the friendly exterior, and Elena had the distinct, uncomfortable sensation of being evaluated for reasons she couldn't quite name. "He's had a difficult few years. I'm glad the department's got him doing something he's good at again."

"I heard he took time off before I started here."

"He did." James's expression closed slightly, polite but firmer now, a door swinging gently shut. "Not really my story to tell, though. If you're curious, that's a conversation for him, not me."

"Of course. Sorry."

"No need to apologize." His smile came back, easier now, and he nodded toward the cider stand. "Enjoy the festival, Ms. Reyes. And tell your friend the cinnamon's a good look, very festive."

He disappeared back into the crowd, and Elena stood there for a moment, turning the brief exchange over, cataloguing it alongside the car in the parking lot, alongside every small, unexplained detail that didn't quite add up to anything on its own but kept accumulating anyway, a pile of loose threads she still hadn't found the nerve to pull.

"Who was that?" Maya reappeared at her elbow, considerably less cinnamon-covered than before.

"Professor Bellamy. History department. Friend of Cole's, I think."

"Interesting. What'd he want?"

"Nothing, really. Just talking." Elena accepted the cup of cider Maya handed her, warm and cinnamon-spiced, and let the easy noise of the festival wash back over her, string lights and bad singing and the particular comfort of an ordinary night with her best friend. "It was nice, actually. Normal."

"Look at you, having a normal night. I'm so proud." Maya bumped her shoulder, grinning. "See? You didn't even think about your professor for at least, what, ninety whole seconds?"

"I hate that you're right."

"I'm always right, it's exhausting being this correct all the time." Maya linked their arms together, steering them both toward the last of the craft tables before the festival wound down, the string lights swaying gently overhead in the cold breeze. "Come on. Let's go win something ugly and knitted before they pack up. I feel like tonight's a scarf night."

Elena let herself be pulled along, laughing, and gave herself permission, just for the rest of the evening, to enjoy the uncomplicated warmth of it all, string lights and bad singing and a best friend who knew exactly how to pull her out of her own head. It wasn't until much later, lying awake long after Maya had fallen asleep down the hall, that she found herself turning James Bellamy's words over again in the dark, wondering exactly what he'd almost told her, and exactly why some instinct in her chest told her it mattered more than she wanted it to.