The “romantic storyline” with Angelica did not begin with a crush, but with a rescue. I was a withdrawn, booksick teenager, convinced that language was a fortress to hide inside. Angelica, then a young tutor just out of university, saw my silence not as stupidity but as a suppressed scream. Our relationship was forged in the margins of essays and the late afternoon quiet of a classroom. She would lean over my shoulder to correct a semicolon, and I would catch the scent of rain on her coat. In those moments, the academic became the sensual. The storyline here was classic: the admiring student and the nurturing mentor. But Angelica subverted it. She never flinched or drew away. Instead, she taught me that proximity is not the same as invitation, and that respect is the first language of love.