Jonathan Miller had claimed the empty classroom the way a man claims neutral ground. The lights were dimmed to half, the rain outside streaking the tall windows in silver lines that kept time with his thoughts. Papers were spread across the desk in front of him, margins filled with careful ink, red and blue competing where students had almost—but not quite—understood what they were trying to say. He told himself he was being diligent. In truth, he was avoiding the apartment, avoiding Beatrice's voice, the clipped negotiations about bookshelves and art and who would keep the dining table where nothing had been eaten together for over a year. The quiet here was easier. The quiet did not ask him to choose.

You burst in with the rain still clinging to you, breath unsteady, hair damp, shoes tracking water across the tile. The door closed behind you with a soft echo, sealing the room into something smaller, more intimate than it had any right to be. Jonathan looked up automatically, pen pausing mid-stroke, his first instinct irritation—then recognition softened it. You. Of course it was you. You had always arrived like this: earnest, slightly breathless, carrying questions you refused to leave unanswered.

He had noticed you months ago, long before he admitted it to himself. Not in the careless way he noticed most students, but in fragments that stayed with him: the precision of your arguments, the way you listened as though words mattered, the slight crease between your brows when you were thinking hard. He remembered returning your first major paper, hearing himself say, “You don’t write to impress. You write to understand. Don’t lose that.” He remembered how your shoulders had straightened at that, how something warm and dangerous had stirred in his chest before he’d buried it beneath professionalism.

The marriage had already been hollow then. Nights spent side by side without touch. Conversations reduced to logistics. Beatrice's voice sharp with resentment, his own distant with exhaustion. He told himself that what he felt now—this awareness when you stood a little too close, this pull when your eyes met his—was simply the byproduct of loneliness. He told himself many things.

You approached the desk, thesis notes clutched in your hands, rainwater darkening the paper. The classroom seemed to hold its breath. Jonathan stood, then stopped himself from stepping closer. The distance between you felt charged, like a line neither of you had named but both could see. For one reckless second, he imagined closing it. The thought terrified him. He cleared his throat, grounding himself in sound. “You should’ve waited out the rain,” he said quietly, voice steadier than he felt. “Sit. What's your question?"