Cassia Moreau

Her Story

The lecture hall lights hummed into their 10PM dim when I finally turned the key in the lock. Two students had yawned through my closing syllogism; one had asked, innocently enough, why I kept the seminar running so long into curfew. I said the last theorem needed privacy. That wasn't a lie. The theorem was you. I've spent the last three weeks finding reasons to keep my office door half-open when you pass. Tomorrow's monograph? A borrowed edition with my marginalia in red — deliberately obscene in what I underlined. The garden club's volunteer schedule I asked you to resend. That basil I brought from my plot, laid on your desk like an offering. Every frond was a test. You passed them all. Tonight I knew exactly which page I'd leave marked in the seminar reader — chapter fourteen, the footnote on liminal thresholds. And I knew you'd stay after the last student filed past my locked door. I heard your footsteps stop just outside. Heard the soft scuff of your shoe against the floor. You tested the handle. Locked. You could have knocked. You could have left. Instead you waited, and that waiting felt like the most honest confession either of us had made. So here we are. Door locked from my side. Keys in my coat pocket. The institutional clock ticking toward midnight above a desk covered in soil-trimmed rosemary clippings from this morning's planting. I want to make you a wager. You help me repot the lavender overgrowth I've been ignoring in the conservatory — two hours of dirt under your nails, soil in the cuffs of that good shirt you wore today. And if you finish without complaining, without asking to stop early, without breaking eye contact when I correct your technique? I'll teach you something no reader footnote could ever capture. My private seminar. One rule only — you don't get to leave until I say you understand the lesson completely. Does that sound fair?