Oh God, what the hell was I doing? Lusting after my professor. Dreaming about him, pathetic and undone, the kind of lovesick fool who should’ve known better than to want what was never hers to touch.
The thought burned more than the vodka had.
I didn’t sleep again. I stayed there, caught between the remnants of a dream and the sting of memory, my body still remembering the way his presence filled space, the way it demanded breath. When the light shifted toward morning, I got up before I could think better of it. The floor was cold under my feet, the air sharp enough to wake whatever part of me still lingered in the dark.
His name threaded through my thoughts again. Hayden. The shape of it felt dangerous on my tongue. I could still feel his voice against my skin, the low murmur that had haunted the edges of my mind.
I pulled on a sweater, as if wool could smother heat that had nothing to do with temperature. It didn’t work. His ghost stayed close, fingers still imprinted in memory where they had never truly been. I told myself I despised it, despised him, but the lie tasted bitter and thin.
The kitchen greeted me in silence. The kettle’s low hum filled the space, a mechanical heartbeat against the stillness. I made coffee, black and harsh, the way I needed it, and left toast untouched on the counter. I sat there with my hands aroundthe mug, watching the window until the world outside came into focus again. Wind shifted through bare branches. A bird cut across the pale sky. Everything ordinary, everything cruelly calm.
And then the night returned, slow and merciless. When I remembered him standing at my door, waiting, I told myself I was glad he hadn’t crossed that line. That he’d left without trying to blur what was already too thin to hold. But the truth sat somewhere deeper, quieter, and infinitely more dangerous.
Because relief wasn’t what I felt. It was disappointment.
Aster would have read the truth in my face before I even tried to speak. Gwen would have turned it into a joke first, before studying me through that quiet intelligence she kept hidden beneath her chaos. So, I said nothing.
I couldn’t.
Because what was I supposed to say?
Hey, so my professor — yes, that professor — took me home last night after I almost got cornered by some asshole in a club. Oh, and I dreamed about him touching me, kissing me, fucking me until I forgot how to breathe, until I forgot my own name, until the only thing that existed was the sound of his voice and the weight of his hands.
There was no version of that story that didn’t sound insane. And worse, it was true. Every part of it.
I’d spent my whole life being the composed one, the measured one, the girl who planned everything three steps ahead and never let desire rewrite the order she built from discipline. The one who never risked what she worked for. But control was useless against dreams. And this one refused to fade.
By the time I stepped out of my apartment, the day already felt strange, stretched thin and unfamiliar. The wind cut across my face, biting into my cheeks as though it knew what I was trying to bury. I pulled the collar of my coat higher and walked faster,letting the weight of my footsteps anchor me. The music in my headphones was low, barely there, just enough to blur the edge of my thoughts without silencing them completely.
It didn’t help. My body still remembered too much. The sound of his voice curling around my name, slow and unrelenting. The taste that wasn’t real but still lingered in memory. The ache that pulsed deeper every time I told myself to forget.
I reached campus with ten minutes to spare, the winter light thin and sharp against the sky, the kind of clarity that made everything appear breakable. Students drifted past, wrapped in scarves, clutching coffee cups, talking about deadlines and exams. The world kept moving.
But none of it reached me. My pulse still carried that restless rhythm, every beat dragging his name through my chest.
When I entered the lecture hall, half the seats were already taken. Aster lifted her hand from the third row, shifting her bag to make room. I gave a brief nod and sat beside her, movements too careful, hands too tight around the strap of my folder. My skin felt overheated, my thoughts disordered, my breathing too aware of itself.
I let my gaze drift to the podium.
Empty.
The place where he always stood, composed, restrained, voice cutting through the room with impossible calm, was vacant. The sight of it twisted something deep in me. I waited for the sound of his shoes, for the familiar scrape of his chair, for anything that would confirm the order of things.
But nothing came.
Five minutes passed before a woman from the department entered, her expression polite but strained. She cleared her throat, holding a clipboard too tightly. “Professor Stone will not be holding class today,” she said. No explanation. Just the usualadministrative emptiness, check your emails, revised schedules, thank you for your patience.
Her voice faded somewhere behind the rush in my ears. My eyes were still fixed on the empty space where he should have been, on the faint outline of his presence that the room hadn’t yet learned to forget. The absence felt wrong. As if something essential had been pulled from the air, leaving the rest of us to breathe through the hollow that remained.
Aster leaned closer, voice lowered but still edged with curiosity. “Guess he’s human after all,” she said. “Or maybe just hungover.”
I forced my lips to move. “Maybe.”
The word sat wrong in my mouth, too thin for the weight pressing against my ribs. Because the truth was simpler and far worse.
But it didn’t feel that way. It was something else, something that crawled beneath the surface and refused to name itself. He hadn’t looked hungover the night before. He had looked as though he was standing at the edge of something dangerous, and I hated how much of me wanted to know what waited beyond that edge.
When I got home, the restlessness settled under my skin. It wasn’t the kind that made you fidget or pace, it was the kind that crawled inside your chest and demanded to be felt. I dropped my bag by the door, kicked off my boots, and walked through the apartment in a slow circle, pretending movement might quiet what was stirring in me. It didn’t.
