Teaching Learning Knowing

A love story in three parts

1. TEACHING

By Glen

Summer, 1982. Chapel Mount, Maryland. The kind of place where the high school football field doubled as the town’s fireworks launchpad every Fourth of July. Where Dairy Queen was considered a night out, and everyone knew your last name and could call your parents if you got in trouble.

I was eighteen. Just out of high school, barely stepping into adulthood. I'd already moved into my own apartment. Okay, a garage at a friend's house. My name is Glen. I’d known for a long time that I was smarter than most of the other kids at school. Not in a show-off way—just different. I read books the others didn’t. I asked questions in class that got eye rolls. I could tell long stories about arcane points in history—the Roman Republic, or the politics in Henry VIII's England. I couldn’t help it. And even though I had friends, I always felt like I was faking my way into the circle, using weird humor and dry jokes to make myself tolerable. I kept just enough company around me to avoid looking like an outcast, even if that’s exactly how I felt most of the time.

Caroline was twenty-six. She taught at my school, though never in a class I took. We just moved in the same orbit. She was the kind of teacher students noticed—long, straight brown hair that fell like a waterfall down her back. Elegant but not aloof. And when she laughed, it was always real. She laughed at my jokes, too. Not the fake kind of laugh teachers give to be nice, but the kind that made me feel... seen.

Inevitably, I developed a crush—a sad, high school crush on a teacher. But I knew it for what it was.

Then there was the graduation party. Someone’s backyard. A pool. Loud music, burgers on the grill, friends and family drifting in and out. It was a double celebration—graduation and my eighteenth birthday. Everyone was there. Including Caroline.

I wasn’t planning to swim, but somebody shoved me in, clothes and all. I came up sputtering, laughing, my shirt stuck to my skin like shrink-wrap. As I climbed out, dripping and half-blind, there she was—Caroline—holding out a towel.

She laughed and said something about boys never thinking ahead. Then, without asking, she stepped in close and started drying my hair.

And that’s when it happened.

At first, it was playful. Just a towel, just wet hair. But then her hands slowed. Her fingers tangled in my hair, brushing my scalp, lingering in a way that didn’t feel like a teacher drying off a student. I looked up.

She was staring at me.

And she didn’t look away.

It wasn’t long. Just a few seconds. But something passed between us in that moment. A spark. A flicker. Like we both noticed the same candle flame and tried not to breathe too hard.

Then she blinked, laughed a little too loudly, and stepped back. “Better go change before you catch a cold,” she said, already turning away.

It was nothing. And yet, it wasn’t.

I stood there, towel in hand, heart pounding for no reason I could explain. Or maybe I could.

Maybe that was the moment. The quiet turn in the road. The point where friendship bent—ever so slightly—toward something else.

Later that night, my thoughts were looping like a stuck record. The towel was balled up in the corner of the laundry basket, but the feeling of her fingers in my hair hadn’t gone anywhere.

I picked up the phone three times before I had the nerve to dial.

When she answered, her voice was warm but cautious. “Hello?”

“Hey. It’s me. Glen.”

A pause. “Hey. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just... I guess I wanted to say I hope I didn’t act too weird earlier. At the party.”

There was a quiet beat. Then she gave a soft, practiced laugh. “Weird? What are you talking about? No. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

But there was something in how quickly she said it. Like she was trying to wave away a moment that meant more than she wanted to admit.

I let the silence hang. “Okay,” I said eventually, trying to sound casual. “Well, I just... yeah.”

“Glen,” she said, her tone changing. Lower. Slower. “If you’re feeling odd about it, I don’t want you feeling that way. We’re good friends. Why don’t you come over and we’ll talk about it?”

I froze on the word—friends. It landed like a cold glass of water.

But I wasn’t stupid. I’d been to her place before—once or twice when her car gave out and I’d given her a ride. She didn’t invite people over. Not like this. Not now.

Something about the way she said it—gentle, practiced, a little rehearsed—told me this wasn’t just about clearing the air. Or maybe it was just me, hoping that it wasn’t just about clearing the air.

I waited to jump in the car. I figured if I went over there too fast, that would make it weird. Best to keep it casual, like it was nothing. The best I managed, and I was proud of myself, was thirty minutes.

Caroline opened the door in a T-shirt and jeans, barefoot, like this was nothing unusual. Her hair was loose. She smiled as if this was just a normal night, just two friends talking. I tried hard not to look at her T-shirt. But that left me looking at her eyes. And her hair. Danger zones no matter where I looked. I had to stop my brain from going into overdrive. Because if there was any chance at all that this was more than nothing, I didn’t want to blow it up by being too... obvious.

Inside, the apartment smelled like peppermint tea and dryer sheets. It was small; teachers in Chapel Mount didn’t get paid a lot. She was lucky she could afford her own place. A stack of lesson plans on the coffee table. A photo on the mantel—her and someone who looked like a younger brother. A house full of order. And now me, standing in the middle of it, feeling like the one thing out of place.

“You hungry?” she asked.

I nodded, even though I wasn’t.

She made me a ham sandwich. White bread. A little mustard. No fuss. But it was the most intimate meal I’d ever eaten. We sat at the little table, elbows close. The conversation was soft, drifting—nothing important.

I don’t remember what we talked about.

Only that she leaned in. That her face was closer than it needed to be. That her eyes kept finding mine and holding them, just a beat longer than they should have. I was feeling brave, adult, manly... making a decision to hold her gaze and only look away when she did. I was trying to send her signals without running the risk of being stupid, and seeing something there that wasn’t there.

It wasn’t a moment with fireworks or music swelling.

We didn’t discuss the pool party. Nothing changed. Except the depth of my crush, which I knew then would be hopelessly eternal.

After that night, we kept talking. Mostly on the phone. That was safer—for both of us. She’d answer in her usual calm voice, and I’d make some dumb joke about school lunches or how the summer heat was a sign of the end times. "Not one of the seven signs, but surely a bonus one." She’d laugh like she always had. Except now, it landed differently.

Her laugh used to make me feel good—funny, clever. That’s what kept me coming back at the beginning, the validation that my intelligence and weird humor didn’t mean I had to be alone. But now it made me feel something else. Something heavier. Sharper. Like I was getting away with something.

Sometimes, I’d slip in a flirty comment. Just a touch of innuendo, just enough to be deniable. “I had to shave my mustache, I was breaking too many hearts,” I’d say. Or, “You know, if you keep being this nice to me, people are going to start talking.” Once I even ventured a, “I hope you’re around to dry me off if I fall into a pool again.”

She never scolded me. Never gave me a “Now now, Glen,” or an “I don’t think that’s appropriate.” She just laughed. Not nervously, either. It was a warm, genuine laugh—like she wanted to play along, but couldn’t say so outright. Games, games.

That’s when I knew I was in trouble. Because if she really was the chaste, churchgoing woman I thought she was—if all that Bible study and modesty was who she truly was—she should’ve shut it down. But she didn’t.

And I didn’t stop.

I started imagining what it might be like to really cross that line—not just in my head, not just in suggestion, but for real. I didn’t think we would. I didn’t think she’d let it happen. But I thought about it.

I thought about it a lot.

That summer, just after my eighteenth birthday, my dad’s friend at the dealership gave me a good deal on a used car. A 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix—long, black, low to the ground. Front bench seat, back seat like a hotel room. It smelled like leather and possibilities.

The first night I had it, I was out showing it off to my friends. Revving the engine a little too loud. Letting people sit in it. Letting them pretend it was theirs.

And then Caroline showed up.

That was the night everything changed.

The others went inside, assuming we’d follow. I caught a few knowing looks. People had noticed the way we talked. The way we didn’t look away when our eyes met. At that point, nothing had happened between us. Not really. But something had been simmering for a long time.

We didn’t go inside. We stayed in the driveway, talking. That same strange energy hung between us—like it always had. Only now there was nothing in the way. No title. No classroom. No rules. Just two consenting adults.

I opened the passenger door and asked, “Wanna go for a ride?”

She hesitated for just a second. Then she smiled—small, mysterious—and slid into the seat.

We drove through the quiet back roads of Chapel Mount. Fields on either side, dotted with fireflies. Windows down. The warm summer air humming with crickets and tension. We talked like always—music, books, church gossip, little things. But every pause was a little too long. Every glance held a little too long. And there was something in her voice—a softness, maybe, or the fact that she kept turning slightly toward me, like she was waiting for something.

Somehow, we ended up parked at the end of a long, empty stretch of road where kids used to sneak off and kiss. The moon hung full and bright, casting silver across the hood. It lit her skin like it had been waiting to. My heart was pounding so loud I was sure she could hear it.

I kept thinking: eighteen and twenty-six. It sounds like a big gap. But someday, no one would care. We were both adults. We were here. We were alone.

We talked more. Our eyes met again—longer this time. Deeper. And I knew something was going to happen. Or maybe it already was.

I leaned in and kissed her.

She didn’t pull away.

I expected her to. I braced for it. But she didn’t. She paused, just for a second—caught between belief and desire—and then kissed me back. Slowly. Hungrily. Her sigh told me everything I needed to know.

Her hands found my face. Mine found her waist. Her breath hitched as I touched her, and something in her—a tension she’d been holding for who knows how long—unraveled. She leaned into me, deeper, letting the kiss carry her forward. Letting me in.

The Grand Prix’s back seat became our hiding place. It was clumsy and breathless and intense. There were buttons undone and skin revealed. She trembled beneath my hands. I trembled too.

There was a point where everything might have stopped. Where her conscience might have pulled her back. But it didn’t. Instead, she whispered my name—soft, unsure, wanting—and I whispered hers in return, reverently.

We moved together, slowly at first, then faster, the windows fogging, the night swallowing our sounds. Guilt and grace in the air between us.

When it was over, we stayed like that—silent, breathless, holding on. The air was thick with meaning, like we’d just walked through a door and couldn’t go back.

I looked at her. She looked at me. Her eyes were shining with something more than pleasure. Something dangerous. Something sacred.

And it didn't go away. Oh, we kept it quiet, we didn't make it obvious, but now that the barrier was down, now that the border had been erased, we kept spending time together. We had other encounters, some lusty and intense, some loving and deep. It wasn't just sex and it was no longer a crush. Neither of us had a name for it. We were just lucky that we saw it and were strong enough to let it be what it was.

But still, the fork in the road was coming up. It's in every story like this. In every movie like this. That last, final, sad, desperate cliché scene, where one of us has to go away.

I said, thinking of college in the fall, “I don’t want to leave you.”

She didn’t play the part I expected. Didn’t say, “Go live your life” or “We’ll always have this memory,” and give me one last, sweet, parting kiss.

She said, “I don’t want to leave you either. So... how do we work this out?”