Teacher

I told him to take the well-lit highway. He smiled, took the turn toward the overlook, and I let my dress ride up to my thigh.

I passed by his desk, slipped him a note without anyone seeing, and went out to the courtyard to smoke. By the time he knocked on the door, I'd stopped thinking about what was right.

I looked up at the professor everyone feared, and my blood ran cold: it was the woman I’d masturbated with on camera for two years.

I arrived at his house in a skirt that was too short, with passing as my excuse. He never stopped looking at me, and I hadn’t come exactly to study.

I recognized her between the supermarket aisles: fuller, more confident, with the look of someone who still remembered what happened between us in that empty classroom.

When I locked the door, he turned around and reproached me for kissing another man. I couldn’t tell whether it was rage or desire burning in his eyes.

I only wanted to sweet-talk him into raising my grade, playing the pickpocket who distracts to steal. I never imagined how far my own bluff would take me.

I knew Professor Aníbal watched my body every time I said goodbye. That afternoon I walked into his classroom ready to use that look to my advantage, whatever it took.

I spotted her in the back of the bar and my heart lurched: it was her, the teacher who stole my sleep when I was just a kid. And this time I was no longer that child.

That night, while I was correcting his exercises in the hotel room, I felt his gaze fixed on me and knew I could no longer be just his teacher.

I found my friend trembling in the bathroom at that dinner. When I asked who had left her like that, I never imagined she’d say the name of our most feared professor.

When I walked into that attic with the ropes hanging from the beams, I understood that night would no longer belong to me.

She trusted her blindly, which is why she didn’t ask where they were going when the car left the highway and headed for the coast with the professor in the back seat.

I thought the hardest thing of the year would be passing my English exam. I was wrong: the hardest thing was hiding how badly I wanted the woman teaching me.

I had been away from her for a week and, the moment I stepped through her front door, I knew that lesson wasn’t going to be about any exam.

I thought I had her cornered against the wall. It took me one second to understand that the only one trapped in that empty house was me.

For months I’d imagined that scene in her office, but I never thought it would be her who made the first move, with the lock clicked shut and her perfume filling everything.

When I passed the half-open bathroom door and saw her naked from behind, I knew that night at my place wouldn’t end with two old acquaintances drinking tea.

I thought I was alone correcting my texts, until her hand settled on my leg and I understood the break would last much longer than expected.

Each excuse she gave my fiancé was more elaborate than the last. I left that office trembling, aching, and with a smile I couldn’t hide.