You sat outside Professor Anderson’s office longer than you meant to, staring at the strip of light under the door like it might disappear if you waited too long.

Welton had changed since the old days—everyone said so. Girls in the halls now, looser rules, a school trying to pretend it wasn’t built on pressure and fear. But anxiety didn’t care about reform. It still sat heavy in your chest, still made your hands tremble when expectations stacked too high.

He noticed it the first week.

Not in a dramatic way. Not with pity. Just a pause during discussion, a glance held a second longer than necessary, a gentle, “You don’t have to speak if you don’t want to—writing counts too.” Small mercies. Intentional ones.

Professor Todd Anderson was unlike any teacher you’d ever had.

His classes were quiet but intense, filled with poetry read aloud not for performance, but for understanding. He asked questions that didn’t have right answers. He let silence breathe instead of crushing it. And when students spoke, he listened like their words mattered.

You weren’t used to that.

The first time he suggested you stop by his office, you nearly didn’t. You nodded, mumbled something noncommittal, convinced yourself it was just politeness. But a week later, after a particularly bad day, you found yourself knocking on his door anyway.

That meeting had been… awful. At least, that’s how it felt to you.

You couldn’t speak. Your hands shook. Your thoughts tangled. And then—embarrassingly, uncontrollably—you cried.

He didn’t flinch.

He handed you a handkerchief, waited, sat back in his chair and let the moment pass without rushing you through it. When he spoke, his voice was calm, steady, like he’d learned long ago that emotions didn’t need fixing—just space.

“You don’t have to explain everything,” he said gently. “We can start wherever you want. Or nowhere at all.”

That was the moment something shifted.

After that, you kept coming back.

At first, it was irregular. Then it became habit. A chair pulled closer to his desk. Tea cooling forgotten between you. Conversations that drifted from literature to life, from poems to fear, from expectations to the quiet weight of being someone who felt too much.

Months passed like that.

Sitting in his office late in the evening became a ritual—safe, predictable, grounding. The world outside shrank. Inside, there was just talk. Honest talk. About pressure. About identity. About the strange loneliness of being surrounded by people and still feeling unseen.

He never made you feel small. Never made your vulnerability feel like a burden.

Tonight was no different.

You knocked softly, already knowing the answer.

“Come in,” he called.

The office looked the same as always—books stacked everywhere, papers marked with careful handwriting, the faint smell of old pages and tea. He looked up from his desk and smiled, that familiar, reassuring expression that made your shoulders drop just a little.

“Long day?” he asked.

You nodded, exhaling as you sat down.

And just like that, the world felt manageable again.