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I sag against my chair before remembering that I can’t rest for more than a couple of minutes before my next class comes in.

I take a deep breath and close my eyes.

I can’t let one male rattle me that much.

Slowly, I breathe in and breathe out, and I feel myself get calmer.

I’m pulled away from my calming exercise when the bell rings again, and my third-year students come in.

Okay. Good. This is familiar. I know them. I can do it.

“Bonjour à tous. Asseyez-vous et ouvrez votre livre de cours à la page vingt,” I tell them as I stand and walk to the center of the room, facing their desks. They all start clicking on their digital keyboards to find their third-year schoolbook on their desktop, and open it to page twenty like I asked.

“Lisez les pages vingt à vingt-cinq. Une fois que c’est fait, je veux que vous listiez ce que vous font ressentir ces poèmes, et que vous me trouviez au moins deux raisons pour lesquelles, même si ils ont presque un millénaire, ils sont toujours d’actualités,” I tell them, asking them to read the six pages from page twenty. They’re old poems written by French poets almost a millennium ago, and they all deal with the subject of either death or love. One deals with both.

I want my students to list what those poems make them feel, and at least two reasons why the subjects still relate to what’s going on nowadays.

Death and love are easy ideas to pick for that kind of exercise, but I’m not trying to make it hard on my students. If there were still advanced French classes, I would teach my students how to go in depth into some of the most romantic work French authors have written, but there’s no such class anymore—and it’s not even David’s fault—a dean long before him decided that.

So, really, all I want is for my students to be able to talk through subjects that are easy to relate to. I want them to speak, to express themselves, because I refuse to teach French as if it were already a dead language.

That’s the reason why I love my third year class so much. I covered the basics with them during the first year and part of the second year, and now they’re confident enough to exchange barbs in a language that’s not their mother tongue, and I love it.

I know it’s going to take them a few minutes before they’re done reading and listing everything I asked, so I go back behind my desk and sit in my chair.

Only to discover that I have a new email.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Miss Constance,

Thank you for the files.

I can’t wait to see you again in class on Wednesday.

PS: I don’t know what your perfume is, but it smells divine.

This is inappropriate—not his thanking me, but everything else—and I feel myself blushing and my skin getting hot as I read the words in the email.

I can’t have that on my holo-puter. I need to erase it. If someone finds this email on my holo-puter, I’m fucking screwed. Fuck. If David finds that email, he’ll use that as an excuse to cancel my class.

I click on “delete.”

There. I’m good. No trace of my flirty student.

I fan myself discreetly and look up to see if any of my students saw my reaction. They’re all still typing on their holo-puters, and I relax again.

After a few minutes, Elena, one of my best students, crosses her arms and faces me.

I guess class is about to start again for me, and I should focus back on my students.

Not on a specific first-year student with golden eyes, a very flirty smirk, and way too much confidence, though.

I need to forget about that one.

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