Taught by him

CHAPTER 14. Two weeks

Two weeks is a long time when you are not allowed to exist.

First day, I moved to Dr. Patel's class. She teaches Plath like a math equation. No one argues. No one wears yellow.

I sat in the back. My phone buzzed.

Ethan: _What does Patel think about Elm Street?_

I smiled for the first time that day.

Me: _She says it's "a capitalist hellscape that commodifies student suffering"_

Ethan: _She's not wrong. The coffee is terrible._

Me: _I miss terrible coffee._

Ethan: _6pm?_

Me: _6pm._

Second day, Lila found out. She screamed for ten minutes.

"YOU KISSED PROFESSOR BLACK? THE GHOST PROFESSOR? ARIA, YOU—"

"I know."

"AND CLARA IS ALIVE? AND SHE WORE YOUR DRESS? AND YOU WENT TO THE LAKE AT 6AM?"

"Yes."

She sat down hard on my bed.

"Is he good at kissing?"

"Lila!"

"What? It's important data!"

Third day, Clara left town. I saw her from my dorm window, getting into Mrs. Ashford's car with a suitcase. She looked up, saw me, and lifted a hand. Not a wave. An acknowledgment. _You win. Take care of him._

I lifted my hand back. _I will._

Fourth, fifth, sixth day — we became ghosts.

6pm, Elm Street Coffee. He would sit at the corner table in the back, laptop open, pretending to work. I would come in ten minutes later, order, sit two tables away, pretending not to know him.

Under the table, his shoe would find mine.

Under the table, he would slide a folded piece of paper across the floor with his foot.

Day four: _You wore blue today. I hated it._

Day five: _Your essay for Patel was better than anything you wrote for me. I'm jealous of Patel._

Day six: _I measured my office. If we move the bookshelf, we could fit a small couch._

I nearly choked on terrible coffee.

Me, sliding back: _Professor Black, this is highly inappropriate._

Him, sliding back: _Miss Vale, you have no idea._

Day ten, he was called back to the Dean. I waited in the coffee shop until 8pm. He didn't come. I thought he had been fired.

At 8:13pm, he walked in, soaking from rain, no coat.

"Well?" I stood up, forgetting we were supposed to pretend.

He grabbed my face in front of everyone — Maya Chen, the barista, two freshmen — and kissed me.

Properly. Finally. Not because he was scared, not because it was raining.

Because two weeks were over.

"Reinstated," he said against my lips. "With conditions. No teaching students I'm... involved with."

"So?"

"So you are officially no longer my student. Dr. Patel says you are her problem now. Permanently."

The coffee shop clapped. Lila, who was somehow there with her phone out, screamed, "FINALLY!"

Ethan pulled away, embarrassed, his ears red.

"Aria Vale," he said, loud enough for the whole terrible coffee shop to hear, "will you go to dinner with me? Like a real person? Not at 6am at a lake, not in my office after hours, not in yellow because someone told you to?"

I looked down. I was in yellow again. I hadn't been able to help it.

"I only have yellow," I whispered.

He laughed, that real laugh I had only heard once.

"Good," he said. "Then wear yellow forever."

He took my hand, laced his fingers with mine, and we walked out of Elm Street Coffee into the October night, past the green awning where it had all started, past the campus where we were no longer professor and student.

Just a man in black and a girl in yellow.

And this time, no one was watching.