20. Silas
Icheck the clock and wrap my hands around my mug of tea. Seven minutes and twenty-one seconds until I see her.
Forty-eight hours. I don’t know how I lasted forty-eight hours without going to find her, without touching her. All I know is if I don’t see her today, someone is going to end up in a body bag, and I’m not particular about who.
I’m still trying to understand what qualities this woman possesses that make me forget all sense of reason with a single smile.
Yesterday I spent two hours going through the entire campus in my head — every female professor, every female student — and not for one of them did I feel even the smallest flicker of interest. Nothing. Nada.
But the thought that I’d have a lecture with her today was enough to make my chest tighten in a strange way, similar to how it tightens when I see Karina and Seb, but different at the same time.
I need to find a book and read up on what the hell might be happening to me.
In the six years I’ve been teaching, I’ve never found myself drawn to any student, and yet here we are. Amalia Sanchez has managed the impossible.
Two weeks. That’s how long I lasted before I went looking for her in that library corner where I knew I’d find her, and when I saw Hugo Duarte sitting ten centimeters away from her, all I wanted was to drag him into Andreas’s ring and wipe that irritating smile off him with my fist.
We haven’t revisited the tutoring situation, but if she thinks I’m going to stand by while she spends time with that guy, who is legendary across campus for collecting STDs like they’re achievements to unlock, she’s wrong.
She might think she’s not the kind of girl who draws attention, but it hasn’t escaped me how everyone looks at those colorful blouses, her perpetually flushed cheeks, and the strands of hair that frame her face.
She’s every guy on this campus’s fantasy, and ever since I kissed her, something territorial has been sitting in my chest, getting louder every time I let myself think about her near someone else.
We didn’t discuss anything else afterward, we just sat in silence for another hour until she had to leave for home.
She doesn’t know, but I followed her to her front door and then found myself standing on the corner of her street for another twenty-two minutes and ten seconds.
Because I wanted to go back and knock, just to see the surprise on her face.
Just to steal one more kiss.
Because I have been with different women across twenty-eight years of life, but I have never kissed one of them.
My brain never found a logical explanation for why anyone would want to do that with another person, but when I felt her in that library, smelling of chocolate and lilac, my mind went completely blank.
All I wanted was to find out if her lips were as sweet as that poison she drinks every day. And they were. My fucking God, they were.
I take my place at the podium while my head tries to regroup for the lecture I have to deliver, without a pair of round glasses occupying my entire left cerebral hemisphere.
I feel her the moment she walks into the lecture hall, because she brings that lilac scent with her, and when I turn, I find her eyes already on me. Her cheeks are faintly pink, and without being able to stop my own reaction, the corner of my mouth lifts slightly.
Just for two seconds, enough for her to catch it, but not long enough for the rest of her classmates to notice something is off.
Why am I smiling? I don’t smile!
I start the lecture, and even though my class is always quiet, given that I have zero tolerance for background murmuring and whispers, I catch a small laugh, and without meaning to, my eyes search for her.
A student sitting beside Amalia appears to be copying some formulas from her notes, but what irritates me is the way his eyes stay on her hair a beat too long.
I watch her glance at what he’s written and underline something on his page with her pen.
Her eyes lift from the notes, and she finds me watching them both.
To anyone else in the room, I’m simply a professor waiting for everyone to copy from the board.
But internally I’m calculating exactly what distance I’d need to throw him from the window to guarantee he never walks to the seat beside her again.
I watch him touch her hand, trying to get her attention back to something in his notes, and it’s settled. I’ve lost my mind, because not only do I know the height from which he’d need to fall, I’ve calculated the force I’d need to push him so he’d have no chance of catching himself.
I’m fairly certain she notices my irritation, which is why she gives me a small, appeasing smile before turning back to her notes.
The look I’m giving him is probably making the idiot’s skin crawl, because I know that if he steals her attention from me one more time, he’s going to find out what it feels like to be buried alive.
Am I exaggerating? A little. Burying someone alive is messy.
I don’t do messy. But I can have Andreas move some money into his account and send him to jail until he’s forty and he hopefully doesn’t remember the color of her hair.
Or how her skin feels. Or how beautiful she looks when she decides that you are worthy of a fraction of her smile.
After two more moments of Amalia helping him decode whatever mysteries the board holds, I watch her whisper something to him, and he seems to flush.
I don’t know what she said, but when I see the distance she’s put between them, something in my chest fills with pride and something close to certainty.
Fuck, I want to kiss her again.
The lecture ends fifteen minutes later, and with my eyes on a workbook, I hear myself say, “Amalia, stay behind for a moment.”
She stops, surprised, just before she reaches the door, and with slightly tentative steps, she walks back toward the podium.
We’re alone now, and I know she has a lecture in another building, so I don’t want to make her any later than she already is.
“La Condesa neighborhood. The new Condesa Park residential complex. Tonight at eight.”
Right now, I can’t read her at all, and that unsettles me more than I’d like to admit.
I know how the invitation sounds, and even though I can’t deny the physical pull I feel toward her, the reason I’m asking her to my apartment is simply to have a few minutes with her without the wrong pair of eyes on us.
She gives me nothing back and turns to walk out. Before she crosses the threshold, doubt gets the better of me and I ask, “Are you going to come?”
She turns toward me, and with the same small smile as before, she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and gives me her answer.
“You’ll find out in a few hours.”