Deep Inside
His smile was small, polite, but the kind that stays with you long after you’ve left the room.
That was the first problem.
I wasn’t supposed to notice him. He was my professor, brilliant, thirty-something, rumored to be cold, and known for dismantling a student’s arguments with precision. I was twenty-one, curious, reckless, and far too eager to prove I belonged in his world of quiet intellect and sharp logic.
And yet, every time he spoke in class, his voice seemed to find me, cutting through the noise, through the rows of students, through every rational reason I gave myself to stop feeling what I felt.