It was the end of my senior year, just a few weeks before graduation, and the school was buzzing with that end-of-year chaos. I was 18, captain of the volleyball team, with a tight athletic body I knew turned heads—especially Mr. Demir’s. He was our young history teacher, 32, tall and built like he still played sports, with dark hair, a trimmed beard, and those intense hazel eyes that always lingered on me a little too long during class. I’d been teasing him all year: short skirts on dress-down days, bending over his desk to ask questions, “accidentally” brushing against him in the crowded hallways.