Contrary to what her students and family believed, most days, Deja felt like a weak, disorganized mess and lived in terror that people would see her for the fraud she was. But every minute she spent with Alejandro made her feel powerful and capable and beautiful, something she didn’t know she was missing. It had only been a few weeks, but Deja felt desperate to stay in the bubble of her time with him, and now that she knew she couldn’t — that he would be heading home soon — she was determined to revel in the way he felt and the way he made her feel. She wanted to savor every inch of his naked skin and his red face as he helped her pull his boxers quickly down his legs.

“I swear I don’t always come that fast,” he said.

“We’ll see,” she teased as she turned toward the shower.

She giggled when he wrapped his body around her from the back, pressing his face into the crook of her neck. She shivered at all the skin-to-skin contact, the way the hard planes of his muscled body felt against her soft curves.

“Condoms are in the bedroom,” he whispered into her ear, following the words with his tongue.

Deja groaned. “We’ll get there.”

Deja normally spent Saturday and Sunday trying — and failing — to get her life together. She spent hours catching up on grading and course prep while cleaning her apartment and washing her clothes. She didn’t rest, though, and when she did, she usually felt terrible for it, or she was sick and had no choice.

But as she and Alejandro stepped into his shower together, she did something her parents and sister and mentor and friends had all been trying to convince her to do for years: she gave herself permission not to work. If she only had a week or so before Alejandro left for over a month, she wanted to spend as much time with him as she could. She wanted to fill her mind with as many memories as she could, hoping they might hold her over while they were apart.

It had been far too long since she’d given herself permission to put herself first, and her anxiety spiked for a second, but then Alejandro’s hands began to knead her breasts, and suddenly, there wasn’t any room to mentally berate herself. There was only Alejandro.

WINTER BREAK

Fourteen

Deja liked to spend the first day of winter break cleaning since she usually had to give up keeping her apartment in order right around final exams. But it was the first day of winter break, and Deja had other, better things to do. Alejandro had a red-eye flight home tonight, and he and Mike were heading to the airport in three hours, so they were making the most of their limited time together.

“Fuck,” Alejandro hissed and then moaned.