THE THINGS WE NOTICE TOO LATEPART 2
The professor turned away first.
As if staying would mean saying something she could never take back.
"You shouldn't be here," she said, voice low, controlled to the point of strain. "Office hours are for academic discussion only."
The girl didn't move.
"Then why did you email me?"
Silence.
Thick. Pressurized.
The professor closed her eyes for a brief moment—just long enough to betray herself—before opening them again.
"That was a mistake," she said. "I shouldn't have."
"You keep saying that," the girl replied softly. "But you keep doing it anyway."
The professor's jaw tightened.
"This isn't a game," she said. "You don't understand the consequences."
"Then explain them to me."
The words landed cleanly.
Not challenging.Not pleading.
Honest.
The professor looked at her then—really looked—and something in her expression shifted. The authority slipped. The woman underneath surfaced.
"You leave here with your future intact," she said quietly. "I lose everything."
The girl's chest tightened.
"That's not fair."
"No," the professor agreed. "But it's the truth."
She stepped closer.
Not enough to touch.
Enough to feel.
"I didn't plan this," the girl said. "I didn't wake up one day and decide to want you."
The professor inhaled sharply.
"Stop," she whispered.
"Why?" the girl asked. "Because you don't feel it? Or because you feel it too much?"
The professor's control cracked.
Not loudly.
But irrevocably.
She laughed once—a short, humorless sound.
"You think I don't feel it?" she said. "You think I don't wake up every morning reminding myself not to look for you in a room full of students?"
The girl's breath caught.
"You think I don't replay that night and hate myself for how easy it was to forget every rule I've ever lived by?"
Silence crashed down.
The confession hung between them, raw and unguarded.
The professor stepped back abruptly, as if realizing how far she'd gone.
"This is exactly why it can't continue," she said, voice trembling now despite herself. "I won't be the reason you're whispered about in hallways. I won't be the woman people point to when they talk about ruined careers and ruined girls."
"I'm not ruined," the girl said.
The professor looked at her.
And that—that—was the mistake.
Because in that moment, she stopped seeing a student.
She saw the woman she had kissed in the dark.The one who had looked at her like she was more than a title.More than a role.
"You don't get to decide that," the professor said hoarsely.
"No," the girl replied. "But I get to decide whether I walk away believing you were just a lesson… or the truth."
The professor's breath hitched.
She turned sharply, putting distance between them, hands gripping the edge of her desk like it was the only thing holding her upright.
"You should go," she said. "Now."
The girl hesitated.
Then—
"I don't regret you," she said quietly.
The professor's shoulders stiffened.
"And that," she replied, not turning around, "IS EXACTLY THE PROBLEM."
The door closed softly behind her.
Too softly.
The girl stood in the hallway for a long moment, heart racing, pulse alive with something terrifying and beautiful.
This wasn't longing anymore.
It was recognition.
That night, the professor sat alone in her apartment, lights off, city noise bleeding in through an open window.
She replayed the office scene again and again.
The courage in the girl's voice.The steadiness.The refusal to be treated like a mistake.
She pressed her fingers to her lips.
Closed her eyes.
And admitted the truth she had been avoiding since the bar, since the lecture hall, since the first moment their eyes had met again—
DISTANCE WAS NO LONGER PROTECTING EITHER OF THEM.