Cosima had never believed in "The One." She had never, and could never have thought that there was one person for everyone. That was, of course, until that awful September day; that horrible morning when the sky was some kind of hazy shade of fall or winter, that morning when Cosima's breath danced in front of her face as she walked into South San Francisco High School and bumped into Miss Cormier. Oh, how the young teacher had riled the adolescent's hormone filled body, the bio-chem student barely able to stutter out an apology as she sent the teacher's files cascading from her hands and down the corridor.
"Oh mon dieu! Tu est une fille tres stupide." The french woman shouted angrily, shrinking to the floor as she gathered the few files in her immediate reach and began to arrange them into some kind of order. Cosima was breathless from the collision, but had no idea why. Although the girl could feel anger bubbling somewhere deep in her, some kind of underlying hatred of being called stupid, the blush filling her cheeks, the fog on her glasses and the words caught in her throat as she watched the unidentified french woman grabbing her things from the squeaky, waxed floor were much harder to ignore.
"Uh-O-Oh, my god. I'm s-so sorry ma'am. Miss uh, Miss?" Cosima spluttered, realising that the other woman's face was unrecognizable.
"Cormier," The blonde answered, looking up at the young girl stood before her. "Would you mind giving me a hand?" The woman spoke in slightly disjointed english, with a heavy accent. It would have been fair to assume that she had only recently graduated from university, and had been in an English-speaking country for even less time.
"Of course," Cosima answered, slightly more confident than before, crouching to pick up some of the further away stray papers, she tried to gulp down all the air she could, but found her breath catching due to the close proximity to the teacher. As they stood, their heads knocked together , which sent Cosima falling backwards, landing heavily on her rump with a loud cracking noise.
"Merde." She joked, realizing that the french woman before her was suddenly much harder to focus on.
"You're mocking me?" The teacher asked bluntly, Cosima assumed that she crossed her arms at this point, she could tell by the change in intonation of the french woman's voice, but she was too blurry to see properly.
"No, no of course not. It was just a joke, Miss, honestly." Cosima reassured her. "Seriously though..." she paused for a few seconds to pull out some mangled spectacle frames from beneath her. "my fucking glasses. Not again." She sighed and stood up, rubbing her sore head and waving her other hand around to find something to support herself with. The french woman stood watching this for a few seconds before it occurred to her to help, she extended an arm, unbeknownst to Cosima, who continued to feel around until the teacher was forced to grab her hand.
"What was it you said your name was, Mouse?" She asked bluntly, but Cosima could still tell that there was some kindness hidden deep in her voice, her tone was, admittedly, a lot kinder than the one she had previously been using.
"I didn't, yet... It's Cosima: Cosima Niehaus." The dreadlocked girl answered an internal shudder ran through her at her own use of her father's surname following her first. "I would shake your hand, but I can't see it; I'm having a bit of a Velma moment." She continued, staring into the general direction of where she assumed the french woman must be.
"Cosima Niehaus? It sounds familiar." The teacher pondered for a moment or two before she realised who she was talking to. "Oh, Mouse! You're the girl who took a ridiculous amount of extra credit to apply to MiT aren't you. The one with the grades?" The blonde seemed to get excited once she realised who Cosima was. "I read your term-paper on DNA Helicase, and a 5th grade piece in your file about evolutionary development. You're remarkable. For your age, Mon dieu!" The teacher praised, her eyes glittering as she spoke, leaving a very confused brunette staring back at her.
"The grades, what?" She paused for a few seconds. "Thankyou, Miss Cormier. That's very nice of you to say, but I just get science. It's not something I do on purpose."
"I suppose you aren't so stupid after all, Mouse." The teacher paused for a few minutes. "How is your french?"
"Merde." Cosima answered, a small smirk on her lips.
"Well, maybe a few lunchtimes a week, if neither of us is busy, you can come and see me for some private tutoring... You'll need the good grades if you want to get into a good college." She paused for a few seconds, looking away from the dread-locked teen. "I actually have a free period until lunch to settle into my new classroom, you could come now, unless you have a class." The french woman realized she was rambling, and came to a gradual stop.
"I actually have a few hours free; I'm given personal study time as I have already taken most of my SATs, I could've graduated last year, but I wanted to stay at High School for a while, I wasn't ready to leave my mom just yet..." Cosima stopped herself. "...And that was way too much information. I'm sorry. Anyway, I would love to polish up my french, I might need it someday." She finished with a smile.
"Would you mind showing me to the empty biology lab that's meant to be mine? Nobody showed me or gave me a tour or anything, I've just been wandering around awkwardly for 15 minutes, but I have no idea where I'm meant to be going." The blonde teacher asked, watching as Cosima shifted her grip slightly, she hadn't been expecting that this beautiful french woman was interested in biology, and she held her breath when she heard it, afraid that if she opened her mouth then the butterflies would escape from her stomach and fill the entire corridor, perhaps the entire city.
"Of course I can show you, but did you say you were looking for the science department, biology I mean, I had kind of assumed you would be a french teacher."
"You shouldn't assume, Mouse... It makes an ass out of you and me. Besides, I can do both quite easily, you're not the only one with killer grades." Cosima couldn't see it, but she would have sworn on any bible that a smirk appeared on her new teachers face.
"Would you mind if we took a little detour on the way to your lab? I think I have some spare glasses in there or something, unless it was my spares that I just sent to spectacle-heaven..." Cosima paused for a few seconds, pondering whether that was the weirdest thing she had said so far today, she decided it probably wasn't. "Anyway, this whole school-day process would go a lot smoother if i was able to see anything, don't you agree?"
"I would say so, yes." Came the taller woman's reply. "I presume the locker rooms are straight up this corridor and either right or left."
"Probably." Cosima answered, a cheeky grin starting on her lips as the teacher pulled her forward playfully.
After several minutes of searching for Cosima's locker, the younger girl having to tell her teacher the combination because she couldn't see the padlock, and the discovery that she did have a pair of glasses in her locker, and that they happened to be covered in glitter and feathers, which triggered the sore memory of how they got that way, the pair finally ended up in a lab, sitting side by side, hunched over a french textbook.
"So, Mouse, when speaking in french there are two conjunctions we use: the first being Avoir, meaning to have, and the second being Être, meaning to be." The blonde placed her hand on Cosima's side of the table as she turned to face her student. "It's pretty simple once you get the hang of it."
"Yeah..." Cosima mumbled under her breath. "Just like molecular fucking astrophysics."
"la science de fusée est vraiment pas que la confusion une fois que vous comprenez le concept de la pression dynamique maximale" Miss Cormier answered, shifting her gaze back to the page she had been reading from, her blonde ringlets falling around her face like a curtain.
"If you say so." Came Cosima's reply, she nudged the teacher gently with her .
"Your french actually isn't as bad as you think, Mouse." Miss Cormier praised, a wide smile forming on her lips.
"Merci." the teenager answered, turning to face the older woman. "Miss Cormier, may I ask why you keep calling me mouse?"
"There are many reasons for this." the french woman answered "Mostly because you remind me of one of the mice from the nursery rhyme; the one where they all get their tails chopped off."
"Uh, thanks I guess. Is that meant to be a compliment?"
"Perhaps, or perhaps it's an inside joke we have about your impaired vision." The french woman smiled, which forced more and more butterflies down Cosima's throat and into her stomach, which she was sure must be at it's capacity by now. Cosima paused for a few moments to compose herself
"You have a leaf in your hair." The brunette blurted out awkwardly.
"Oh, would you mind getting it for me?" The blonde almost breathed out her reply, nearly silent, but not quite. Cosima gingerly extended her arm and lightly brushed her fingers through the teacher's soft curls, trying to remember to breath. The butterflies filled her whole body, and for a few moments she was afraid that she might take off, though she knew it to be scientifically improbable. She picked out the leaf carefully, and let it drop to the floor. She drew her fingers slowly back across her teacher's face, her fingertips lightly brushing against the french woman's skin. She felt the blonde tilt her head towards her hand, her breath hot and welcome against the skin. The teacher suddenly jerked forwards, her lips crashing down on the teenager's. From that point onwards, neither would have been able to explain what happened next, just an impossible magnetic force between their mouths. Cosima's hand was entangled in her teacher's hair, and Miss Cormier's tongue was entangled with Cosima's.
The french woman snapped out of her daydream and cleared her throat, sure that her face must be flushed at what she had just envisioned; this was not who Delphine Cormier was. She was not a pervert, and she definitely wasn't a lesbian for that matter. She had no idea what was going on, just that she couldn't allow this new found friendship to go any further. She could not lose her job over a frivolous would-be crush on a student - a female student. Why, then, was she finding it so hard not to fall into Cosima's deep, brown eyes? She realized that she must have been silent for a fair few minutes now, and tried to stop her mind from racing so fast.
"Oh." Was all she could manage, she ran her fingers through her hair rougly, knocking out the dried leaf. "Did I get it?"