Teacher

I thought the bathroom would be empty. Carolina was standing at the mirror, and her gaze wasn’t surprised: it was the gaze of someone who knew exactly what I had just done.

I felt his body trembling against mine on the bench along the seafront. What he confessed that night changed everything, and there was no turning back.

Two weeks alone, with no one knocking at the door. I took out the red lingerie, opened a cold beer, and promised myself I wouldn’t stop until I was shaking.

She wore the tightest yellow dress in her closet and her head was full of arguments against that woman. An hour later, she didn’t know if she hated her or wanted her.

I’d spent the whole morning imagining being caught. I didn’t expect it to be the professor I’d been thinking forbidden things about for months.

When Tobías’s teacher gave me her personal number “in case anything urgent came up,” I knew it had nothing to do with my son’s grades.

I’d been fantasizing about her in silence for months. That afternoon, during class, she looked up from the book and told me: you have to be more careful with the bathroom door.

She knew he watched her too long, trying to hide it. And, as always, she decided not to let it go.

She knocked on my door at midnight with red eyes and a broken voice. I didn’t expect the last night of the trip to end with my student in my bed.

That September morning I saw the shyest girl in class walk in. It took me two weeks to realize the shy one wasn’t her, it was me.

I arrived at the square expecting a polite coffee with the woman who taught me to read poems at seventeen. What happened next wasn’t in any book.

When I saw her get off the bus with the pink backpack on her shoulder, I understood she had already decided everything, and I was only going to do my part.