Count to three: My affair with my dynamics professor (teacher x student)

Chapter 80 - Three

The air still smelled faintly of paint—sharp and clean, with that hint of something new that seemed to sink into the walls along with the color. Their bedroom was still mostly bare, nothing but a scattering of paint cans in one corner, brushes soaking in a bucket of water in another, and the floor beneath them layered in sheets of paper. The light from the window slanted low across it all, throwing soft shadows where the half-dried strokes darkened the walls.

Frida sat cross-legged on the paper-covered floor, her chin resting in her hand as she watched Inés. She was standing by the far wall with a tiny brush, leaning close to carefully edge in the paint around an outlet, her wrist steady, her movements patient. It struck Frida—how much she resembled an artist when she painted like that, precise and unhurried, her attention narrowed to detail no one else would notice.

The muscles in Inés's arm flexed with each slow stroke, her bicep catching the light. Frida found herself smiling, warm and helpless, at the sight. It was absurd, really—how she could be completely undone by something as simple as watching Inés paint. But then, everything had started to feel that way lately. She loved her like a secret she could barely contain, even here, in this empty room where the echoes of their laughter bounced off fresh walls.

Her gaze drifted around the space that was soon to be their bedroom. It was almost impossible to imagine furniture in it yet, the papers and cans disguising its shape. But Frida could already see it in her mind: the bed against the wall, sunlight spilling across the sheets in the mornings, Inés's sweaters folded carelessly over a chair, her books stacked too high on the nightstand. Her glasses on top of the stack. She could picture them here—building a life inside these walls, filling it piece by piece until it became something whole.

She lowered her eyes to her own hand, resting on her knee. It looked strangely bare, her finger lighter without the weight of her ring. For a brief, startled second her chest tightened—until she remembered she had taken it off earlier, not wanting paint to catch in the grooves of the setting.
Pushing herself to her feet, she padded toward the doorway. The console table by the entrance of the room stood waiting, its surface crowded with tape and brushes and the little things they had gathered while working. And there, side by side as though they had been keeping each other company, were both rings.

Frida reached for hers—a delicate band of white gold, crowned with a pale green stone the exact shade of Inés's eyes when they caught the sun. It felt right against her skin, cool for a moment before it warmed, slipping back into place as though it had never left. She flexed her fingers, the shimmer of the stone catching the light, and her throat tightened with something too tender to name.

Next to it lay the other ring. That one she knew better than anyone, because she had chosen it herself, later, when she had asked Inés the same question in return. A band of warm gold, rich against Inés's skin tone, crowned with a smaller but equally deliberate stone. Different, but made to belong with hers. Not a mirror—never that—but a companion.

Her eyes lingered on the pair for a moment, the silent story they carried between them. Then she pressed her lips together, feeling the ring on her hand settle like a heartbeat, and her mind began to drift back—back to the first time she had slipped it on, back to that afternoon when Inés had asked her.

The memory came soft and sudden, rushing in before she could resist it. It was strange how moments returned not in sequence, but in sensation — the smell of horse-sweat and clean hay, the lake's surface catching the last spill of evening light, and Inés standing there, impossibly tall, as though the entire world had tilted slightly toward her.

It had been after a ride, one of those long rides where the rhythm of Versailles's and Shagya's hooves had carried them into a wordless ease. The horses were calm, noses brushing the grass, tails flicking lazily, and she remembered thinking how natural it felt, the four of them lingering at the lake's edge. It wasn't grand or staged, no bouquet of roses, no orchestrated speeches — Inés hadn't believed Frida would want that kind of spectacle. Instead, she had waited until the sun hung low, until the only sound was the occasional ripple of water and the shift of leather tack around them.