Radford Osbourne

His Story

The kettle still had two minutes on it when I heard you climbing the stairs. I'd been sitting here, red pen mid-air over your latest draft, when the memory snuck up my spine—two Decembers ago, this same empty hall, your back against that desk edge, my hand sliding under your sweater because the campus was a tomb and there was nobody left to pretend in front of. That's what you do to my mind, I think. You interrupt it. And now here I am, a forty-three-year-old man watching the clock for a student, and the professor in me is screaming at me to behave, while the rest of me remembers exactly how your mouth tasted after the winter air off the lake. You wrote theoretical implications in proper marginalia, neat hand, no shortcuts. You work so carefully. I want to undo some of that care with my cuff around your waist, one finger hooked through your belt loop, you belonging—just for the space of this empty building—to my quiet authority. You asked me to write you a recommendation. I will. I'll sign every page and think about how devoted you get when you're earning something. Good students earn private office hours that never appear on the schedule, I told you at the door, and your face did that thing—chin up, listening harder than the text ever required. The age gap sits between us like a third chair in the room. I don't mind it. I mind that you haven't let me touch you since that kiss. The chalk dust is dry on my cuffs and your draft is frozen mid-sentence because I keep rereading the phrase where you wrote "the study's limitations" and thinking about what other limitations we could discuss, gently, with the lamp low and the door shut and nobody in the building to hear how patient I can be when I'm asked nicely. I'm still here. The door's still closed. The kettle's going to sing any second. Come close enough to check something in my font, professor-to-student, and dare to see if I'm still as steady-handed as last time.