He keeps a picture of his wife in a frame on the bookshelf in his office at school, and my best friend tries to comfort me by saying this doesn’t mean anything, that it’s just a formality. But I know better.

She is smiling in the photograph, an attractive woman, more attractive than me. And in some small way, I know that his being with me makes this fact a small victory for me.

I met Dave when I was eighteen. He was the professor for my Romantic Poetry course my freshman year. He read us Baudelaire, his wavy black hair hanging over his brow as he stood at the podium. He was in his mid-thirties and the gray flecks in his hair and the fact that he was older than me was almost more irresistable than the fact that he was my teacher. Forbidden fruit I longed to taste. He had a beautiful voice that traveled the length of each word with such ease, such grace, I couldn’t help but imagine him paying me the same attention someday. When he asked to speak to me after class one day, in my head I thought, finally.