One Last Lesson

The seal was broken every time he looked at her. Lips unsealed, legs parted, that was the effect he had on her. It had been long since she had last seen him, of course, a full fifteen years since that prom night where instead of going to the lovers’ lane with her date, she’d followed him to a motel. To those from the outside looking in, it could seem crazy that she’d choose her Spanish teacher over the football quarterback, but for those who knew him it’d make perfect sense, and needless to say that she didn’t regret a second of it. Her virginity bothered her, she had dragged it around longer than most of her classmates, and she’d thought it’d make more sense if she picked an older, more experienced guy over a horny do-nothing ballplayer, who would probably hump anything that moved anyway, thinking about everything but her pleasure.

She had tried to follow him all these years, from afar of course, and not at all in a stalky way. It so happened that sometimes she’d google his name, check if maybe he’d opened up a Facebook page, to no avail—did anyone use Facebook anymore, anyway? Although if he had one, it was probably under a different name. When she learned that he had gone from teaching in high school to teaching in college, she started following higher education events, expecting to meet him randomly as a panelist or a keynote speaker at a conference in the States or Spain somewhere. She had even registered for a conference in some border town in Texas with that sole purpose. He was supposed to present one of his papers, something with a boring title along the lines of Español en South Florida: The Experience of Bilingual Quality Education for Underserved Populations. She thought the title was long and stupid, but then again so were most paper titles in academia.

It had been a bust, though, as she had been unable to find him in the panel or anywhere else. And then, one morning as she was driving to the daycare, she got a call from Ida, struggling for breath.

“You’re—oh my god—you—you’re not—”

“Okay, okay, take a minute,” Lucia told her, shouting over her daughters fighting in the back seat. “What’s up?”

“The—the—fifteen-year—reunion—oh god.”

“Yeah, I got the email too but I didn’t even bother opening it. I don’t think I’ll go. Too boring. I don’t have time to fly to Miami right now. Plus, I don’t want to see any of those people.”

“Oh my god—god—stop—stop and listen.” She gasped for air once again, “Santiago—gosh—Santiago is going to be there.”

She hit the brakes, thankful that there was no car behind her and that her daughters were fully strapped to their car seats. Parked near the curve, she brought her phone to her ear and she sat in silence.

She finally asked, “How do you know?”

“You’d know as well if you had opened the email. Ugh. I hate you. He wrote some sappy bullshit about how we were the class that graduated during the first year of his PhD and bla bla bla. He’s gonna be there, Luce, and so are we.”

She closed her eyes, reminiscing. This was what she had been waiting for all these years, unbelievable that it would fall into her lap like that. And she knew, since Ida had been the one to call her, the one to announce the imminence of their encounter, that it was going to be prom night all over again.

“I’ll cover for you,” she heard Ida say distantly.

Those words. Everything started replaying in her mind.

That was what her best friend had told her that night as she was leaving the gym. All she’d meant to do was go to his classroom to soak in whatever was left of him before moving on. But he had surprised her there, and only later would she learn that it was Ida who had told him where to find her. There she was, sitting on her desk between all the fluff of her hot pink dress.

“I thought you couldn’t wait to get out of this place,” he’d told her.

“Out of this school, yes, but not out of this classroom.”

She gave him a smile and he smiled back, then grabbed a chair and sat in front of her. His fingertips brushed against the bare skin of her arms, and her breath caught in her throat. She looked at his hands, the ring on his finger bothering her a lot less than it once had, then she looked at him, his deep blue eyes fixated on hers.

“I’m sure you’ll do great things,” he told her. “Your life will just get better from now on.”

“It should,” she chuckled a little, then looked away. “At this point it kinda owes me.”

Santiago knew her struggles, everyone did. Her father, hooked on drugs, had started more 12-step programs than there was sand on the beaches of Miami. Her mother, absent, inexistent almost, had left to get sober and succeeded; the only problem was that she had forgotten to come back for her. She had had no problem, though, in replacing her with a husband and three more children. If it wasn’t because of her tía, who had taken it upon herself to clean her big brother’s messes, there would’ve been days she would’ve gone to bed on an empty stomach.

“Valedictorian, huh?” He told her, this time caressing her chin. “I didn’t expect less from you.”

“I’ve been working hard,” she admitted, then smiled, “you were an inspiration through it all.”

Inspiration. How stupid. She could at least have thought of a better word. Inspiration. He must’ve thought that she was an idiot, one of those groupies that were all over him at school. But if he did, it didn’t show.

“I should probably head back,” Lucia said, standing up.

But as she tried to walk past him, he grabbed her wrist and tenderly turned her around. Face to face, the kiss seemed imminent, but still, she waited. What was he waiting for? Their eyes locked, she smiled, and a couple of seconds later, his lips were on hers. Her eyes closed, she wrapped her arms around his neck. Was it even real? How to tell? He pulled her body against his, both of his hands firmly on her waist. It was the beginning of the best night of her life.