Chapter Six #2
Aster’s expression turned sly. “Wasn’t it, though?”
I hesitated just long enough for her grin to widen before muttering, “If only.”
Her laughter rang low and unrestrained, echoing against the old plaster walls, warm in contrast to the cold morning pressing through the windows. “God, I knew I liked you.”
But as her laughter faded, I felt her gaze shift, sharper now, perceptive in a way that always made me uneasy. She was studying me, tracing the tension across my shoulders, the way my grip on the folder had become almost possessive, as if I needed the weight of it to stay grounded.
“You good?” she asked quietly. Her voice lost its teasing edge, softening into something more deliberate. “You’ve got that look.”
“What look?”
“The one that says, ‘I’m pretending to be composed, but I’m two seconds away from imploding and applying to some marine-biology program in Fiji.’”
That earned a smile from me, though it was thin and brief. I didn’t tell her that she wasn’t far off. My mind was still running in circles, replaying every word, every unspoken challenge, every flicker of something I shouldn’t have noticed in him.
Aster nudged me again, this time slower, gentler. “You need a break.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you need an actual break. Not caffeine and denial.”
“I have coffee,” I said, holding up my cup in weak protest.
She gave me a look that almost bordered on pity. “You need art.”
I blinked. “Art?”
“There’s an open studio course on Thursdays,” she said, her tone carrying that effortless persuasion I could never resist. “No grades, no professors, no pressure. Just a room, paint, and a few hours where no one expects anything of you. I go sometimes when my head won’t shut up.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Aster, I can’t draw a straight line even with a ruler.”
“Then don’t,” she said simply. “Use your hands. Smear paint, throw color, ruin the canvas if you have to. It’s not about creating something beautiful, it’s about remembering how to breathe.”
I hesitated, my steps slowing as the hallway opened into the pale light beyond.
She kept going, her voice quieter now. “You walk around as if you’re bracing for the next disaster, like you’ve trained yourself to fix things before they break.
But art doesn’t let you do that. It demands imperfection.
It forces you to let go, to make a mess and not apologize for it.
” She looked at me then, her expression uncharacteristically soft.
“And sometimes,” she added, “it’s the only thing that reminds you you’re still here, that you haven’t disappeared into control. ”
I looked away, teeth catching on the inside of my cheek, my throat tight with something I didn’t want to name. “You think I’m falling apart?”
“No,” she said, a faint smile tugging at her mouth. “I think you’re holding yourself together too tightly to notice you’ve stopped breathing.”
We stopped just outside the library steps, the winter light spilling through the branches, scattering thin, restless shadows across the brick Aster tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her breath curling in the air before dissolving.
“Come with me next Thursday,” she said. “You don’t have to draw. You don’t even have to speak. Just show up. Let something be imperfect for once.”
Her voice wasn’t coaxing, it held a quiet sincerity that settled somewhere beneath my ribs.
It wasn’t an order. It wasn’t advice. It was an offering.
And that made it harder to refuse. I didn’t answer right away, but something inside me shifted, small, fragile, a crack in the walls I’d built around stillness.
Maybe it was the way her words carried no expectation.
Maybe it was the way she looked at me, not as the polished version everyone else saw, but as the person behind the stillness, the one hiding beneath her own composure.
Or maybe I was just tired of pretending that nothing had touched me.
I nodded finally. “Fine. But if I end up painting a stick figure and crying, we erase that memory forever.”
Aster grinned, her eyes glinting in the pale light. “Deal. But I’m framing it.”
When classes ended, I didn’t stay for coffee.
Gwen had suggested the café near the library, the one with crooked tables, chipped mugs, and that perpetual scent of burnt espresso tangled with vanilla, but I’d smiled, mumbled something about work, and left before either of them could ask questions I didn’t have the energy to answer.
The truth was simpler. I didn’t want conversation. Not when my skin still carried the memory of his presence, when my thoughts were still strung too tightly around the cadence of his voice. I needed quiet. Space. Something that didn’t echo him.
By the time I reached home, the sun had already collapsed behind the skyline, bleeding its last color into the horizon until the sky turned the color of dusk-touched ink.
The city lights blinked awake one by one, faint halos against the glass, and the world seemed to exhale into stillness.
It wasn’t peace. It was the illusion of it, the kind that feels earned through exhaustion rather than calm.
I didn’t bother with the lights as I entered the apartment.
The darkness felt softer, more forgiving.
My coat slipped from my shoulders and landed somewhere near the doorway.
My bag followed. And the folder—his folder—ended up beside me on the bed, a quiet accusation in beige paper.
I stared at it for a while, watching the faint shadows gather around its edges, tracing the indentation of his handwriting through the top page.
For a moment, I thought about ignoring it.
Pretending it wasn’t there. But I didn’t.
With a sigh that came out heavier than I intended, I flipped it open, letting the papers scatter across the duvet in organized disarray.
Every page was arranged with surgical precision, labeled, cross-referenced, annotated in that firm, unmistakably controlled handwriting that somehow managed to infuriate me on sight.
Even his notes seemed to judge me. There was a strange austerity in them, an obsessive order that hinted at someone who didn’t just value control, but worshiped it.
“Pretentious literature god,” I muttered, flipping past the page marked Symposium Panel Structure, the paper whispering beneath my fingers.
But I kept reading. That was the part that unsettled me most. I kept reading even though I’d already gone through the contents once.
Even though I didn’t need to. There was something magnetic about the structure.
His structure. Each margin carried intent, each underlined phrase felt deliberate, and every word seemed chosen to remind the reader who held authority over the page.
It was infuriating. It was precise. It was him.
I pressed my lips together, set the paper aside, and reached for my phone, needing something human to fill the space he’d occupied in my mind.
My playlist was already open, looping a Chris Grey track that drifted through the apartment, smooth and low, a voice that filled the air without intruding.
The rhythm bled softly into the corners of the room, and for the first time that day, I let myself breathe.
The sound didn’t ask anything of me. It didn’t demand perfection. It simply existed.
And maybe that was enough for now.
I leaned back against the pillows, the folder half-open beside me, pages breathing faintly in the quiet, and closed my eyes for just a moment.
You’re his student, a voice whispered inside my head, sharp and relentless. You can’t be thinking this way. You can’t fantasize about a man who’s at least ten years older than you, a man who carries authority in his posture, who is, for God’s sake, your professor.
And maybe that was true. Maybe I was losing perspective, crossing lines in my mind that should never be blurred. But denial didn’t stop the thought from returning, persistent and uninvited, curling through me like smoke.
Still, there was something in the way he looked at me.
His gaze had a precision that went beyond interest or intellect, as though he wasn’t merely observing silence but dissecting it, peeling it apart strand by strand until he reached the pulse beneath.
He studied me with that same unsettling intent, the kind of focus that stripped away any illusion of safety.
My eyes opened again. The ceiling was pale and unmoving, the air too still. I reached for the folder beside me, dragging it closer until the edge pressed lightly into my forearm.
“He probably alphabetizes his nightmares,” I muttered, flipping through another neatly labeled page. “Wouldn’t surprise me if his blood type is Helvetica Bold.”
The absurdity of my own words made me exhale through my nose, a weak attempt at humor that didn’t quite land.
The song changed then, though I didn’t notice at first, the smooth voice of Chris Grey faded into Isabel LaRosa’s haunting melody.
Older. Her voice dipping through minor chords that hung in the air like smoke.
It was softer, darker, too intimate for the distance I was trying to maintain.
I stilled, one hand resting on the papers, the other falling limply against the blanket.
My breathing slowed to match the rhythm of the song.
And there it was again, that thought, that pull.
The echo of his voice when he said my name, the exact inflection of it, the slight weight he gave to the vowels.
The memory of his gaze holding mine longer than it should have, quietly consuming.
The warmth of his fingers when they brushed mine, a touch that should have meant nothing, yet left something smoldering beneath the surface.
I shouldn’t have noticed. I shouldn’t have remembered.
I shouldn’t have been here, in my room, surrounded by the faint scent of coffee and paper, feeling my pulse catch at the thought of a man who made the air itself feel charged.
A man who stood on the other side of a line I had no right to approach.
And yet here I was.
My professor.
My professor.
The words echoed in my head, heavy and forbidden. I groaned, dragging the pillow over my face, muffling a sound that was half frustration and half despair. “Get out of my head, you insufferable, dark-eyed demon in tailored wool,” I muttered into the fabric, the words melting into the quiet.
The silence that followed felt almost alive, pressing against my skin, whispering through the edges of thought.
I felt ridiculous, embarrassed by the weight of my own imagination, by how easily I’d let him into the spaces meant for solitude.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to notice him. I wasn’t supposed to start unraveling.
The music swelled once more before fading into quiet.
I turned onto my side, eyes heavy, telling myself I would only rest them for a second.
Just a second. But the darkness didn’t stay empty.
It filled itself with fragments of memory, the timbre of his voice, the calm precision of his words, the measured rhythm that could silence a room without effort.