Sick with a Sex Addiction novel · Chapter 2 of 12

Chapter 2: Monday

He didn't follow.

He stayed with my hand closed around his wrist, staring at me with wide eyes behind his glasses.

Then, with a gentleness that hurt me, he pulled away.

He stepped back two paces.

He took off his latex gloves, one by one, and left them on the steel tray.

"Get dressed, Miss Arosemena," he said.

His voice trembled, but the words were those of the last row.

"Professor..."

"Please."

I pulled the gown down over my hips and adjusted the mask around my neck.

I found my clothes on the chair.

I dressed in front of him, while he stared at the wall.

No one said another word.

I left the Imaginary Clinic at nine ten at night, with my underwear in my bag and my body burning.

On Monday, I arrived at class fifteen minutes before anyone else.

I sat in my usual spot, the last row, by the window, with my notebook open to a blank page.

Odalys arrived with her giant bag and a smile.

"What's with you?" she whispered. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Nothing."

"You lie terribly."

"I didn't sleep."

"Over who?"

"No one."

"Mmm."

At eight sharp, Professor Quesada walked in.

Beige linen shirt with rolled-up sleeves, dark trousers, the leather briefcase, the glasses.

He set the briefcase on the desk.

"Good morning. Today we'll talk about narrative as wound."

He wrote the topic on the board in firm, beautiful handwriting.

He didn't look at me once.

But every time he turned toward the classroom, his gaze bounced off me and darted away, as if he'd touched a hot stove.

He talked about Rulfo, about the voice of the dead, about the silence between two sentences.

I listened with goosebumps.

It was the same deep voice that had told me "breathe deep."

Oh my God.

Two years listening to him without knowing.

When class ended, everyone gathered their things.

Odalys tugged my arm.

"Cafeteria?"

"You go. I have to ask the prof something."

She looked at me with raised eyebrows.

"Something?"

"Something about the assignment."

"Sure. The assignment."

She left laughing.

I waited until the classroom was empty.

Professor Quesada was putting papers into his briefcase, with hands that didn't quite obey him.

"Miss Arosemena."

"Professor."

"My office is on the third floor. We can talk there."

"I'd rather talk here."

"Not here."

We looked at each other.

He walked ahead of me down the hallway, without turning around.

His office was a small, cluttered room, with a bookshelf up to the ceiling and a window facing the campus palm trees.

I closed the door behind me.

He stood by the desk, hands in his pockets.

"I'm thirty-nine," he said, by way of greeting. "You're twenty-two. I'm your professor. You're in my course this semester."

"I know."

"What happened on Saturday..."

"It was a mistake."

"It was a mistake," he repeated, relieved.

"But it wasn't anyone's fault."

He stood still.

"I didn't know who you were," he continued, his voice tense.

"I swear."

"I joined that app a year ago, when I was feeling very lonely. I wanted to talk to someone without being known."

"You wrote a phrase, one night..."

"That I liked too much."

"That you liked too much." He ran a hand over his face. "And I wrote that I wanted to examine you carefully."

"I remember."

"I didn't know, Mayte."

"Me neither."

I took a deep breath.

"Teodoro."

"Neither of us deceived anyone."

"We met like that, blind, because we wanted to."

"That can't be changed by the fact that we're... this."

"I'm your professor."

"You're the man who made me come on Saturday."

He choked.

"That's not something you say in a university office."

"It's true."

"It must not happen again."

"Tell me you don't want it."

Silence.

His eyes glistened behind his glasses.

"I can't tell you that."

"Then."

"Then I'm going to request that you be moved to another section. Today. It's the right thing."

"No."

"Mayte."

"I'm not switching sections. And I'm not going to forget you."

I took two steps.

I was a hand's breadth from him.

He smelled of linen, of men's soap, of coffee.

"Tell me to stop," I whispered. "And I'll stop."

He raised his hand, as if to push me away.

And he left it in the air, a centimeter from my cheek.

I brushed my face against it.

He closed his eyes.

I kissed him.

A brief kiss, a test, barely a brush of lips.

He stood frozen.

Then he let out a hoarse groan.

He grabbed my waist with both hands and kissed me back with a violence that stole my breath.

He pushed me against the bookshelf.

The books trembled behind my back.

His hands roamed my ribs, my hips, and rose to my breasts over my blouse.

He squeezed them, and I moaned into his mouth.

"I shouldn't," he panted.

"Shut up."

"I'm..."

"Shut up, Professor."

I unbuttoned two buttons of his shirt and slipped my hand inside against his chest.

His heart was racing, like mine.

His mouth trailed down my neck.

He nibbled my collarbone, and I lifted a leg around his hip.

I felt his erection against my belly, hard, through the clothes.

He pushed against me, slowly.

We both moaned.

And then someone knocked on the door with their knuckles.

Three sharp knocks.

"Professor Quesada," said a man's voice from the other side. "Got a minute?"

I froze.

I knew that voice by heart.

It was Bruno's.

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