Thanks to TippyL and SingleStrand and SaritaPagita.
... a first story, because I want to see sweet, unassuming Edward kiss that pretty mouth of Riley's. And he will.
The start of a new semester is always full of possibilities. He liked the feel and the smell of new notebooks and unused pens. Each blank spiral was literally a clean slate. Not that he needed one, per se. His semesters ended exactly as they should; he made A's, and professors he would never see again gave his final essays good enough, or even glowing, praise. He was making it, doing well even.
Sometimes, in a class or on the quad, he would feel a little stirring for someone. He would notice one girl a little more than the others. But it always took him several weeks to find the gumption to say anything of consequence to her, if he did at all. If she was in class with him, and that class was pleasant, with lots of camaraderie and banter, he would loosen up enough to look that girl's way, say something pithy and perhaps strike a tentative acquaintance that might lead to something more. If the stirring was for a girl he simply saw around campus regularly, it would take him four or five instances of prolonged eye contact to work up to a handsome smirk, and then, only if fate provided a opening - such as finding themselves sitting on the same bench, needing a light, or in queue together at the cafeteria - would he introduce himself.
So it was that after six full semesters of college, he'd been on dates with five girls. He'd found the nerve to ask six times. One of them didn't work out. Well, none of them worked out, but that one didn't work at all. She was with someone, he guessed, but she never said for sure. She just hemmed and hawed about her plans for the weekend and then never looked his way again. The others, well, they went on dates, sometimes several. They met each other's friends, hung out at bars, saw movies, studied together, talked about life and the universe sometimes. Four of them he kissed. Three of them he touched. One of them he was inside. A lot.
They spent all of their time together that semester. She was soft and round in the right places. She wore little black rimmed glasses and had really short hair. She almost always wore earrings. She had a pretty tattoo between her shoulder blades. She had been in his chemistry class and lab. He was fulfilling a general educational requirement; she was a biology major. He'd needed a good deal of help in that class. So she taught him chemistry, and they had had some. Then, it was the summer. He went home for it. She stayed on campus for some summer courses. And when he moved back to the dorm, he had no need for chemistry anymore, and she had no need for him.
It wasn't a problem for him, although he should have wondered why a fairly good-looking guy had been laid by only one girl in three years of college. But he wasn't in school to get laid or to make friends; he really just wanted to learn . . . something. Something about himself and something new. He wanted the possibility of those blank pages to finally fill up with something that called to him. This is what you should recognize in yourself. This is who you are. Unfortunately for his looming graduation, all he had found was that he really enjoyed filing up spirals with meticulous notes. He liked lectures and seeing how much of what the professor said he could get down verbatim. He liked going back over his spirals and discover the outline of the lecture with precision, even when the instructor had worked to hide it. He had built up a college-ruled library of things he wasn't sure he would ever need, but he still relished the opportunity to put pen to paper and figure it all out.
On the first Monday of his senior year, he found himself doodling the pages. He knew spanish class was not going to speak to his future, as the lectures would be few and far between. He stared at the thinly-ruled blue lines and knew they would fill up with translations, conjugations and equal signs, but no flowing thoughts or brave, philosophical outlines. Not much was Socratic about Espanol. So, he wrote his name and doodled boxes in the margins, waiting for the class to fill up. A few fellow students were sitting quietly around the room when a group of friends came in and plopped into the seats behind him. Their conversation was interesting and their words were clear, and he found himself writing them down. In the neat script that he loved to create and then pour over, he filled his spiral-bound lines with their thoughts about a recent film he hadn't seen, and had no plans to.
She was loud and witty, making the three guys laugh and admire her. Her thoughts were separately poignant, silly, trivial and sometimes raunchy. Two of the guys were only raunchy, laughing heartily when she said something taboo, or when they themselves spouted innuendo. Still, they weren't puerile and neither were their observations. He wasn't offended or annoyed. He found himself wishing he had seen the film so he could join the conversation. The last guy was quieter and reserved. His chuckle was low and unobtrusive. As she expended their talk on the movie, this last guy smoothly switched their conversation to Senorita Veronica, who was instructing the class. He'd had her before, and knew her to be cool and low-key. She rallied for peer grouping and threw fiestas for her students regularly. Suddenly, the conversation was no longer something he could pen. He didn't want to copy idle gossip about his professor; he wanted to go back to film criticism. That had some value for his page. However, despite the cessation of his pen and its interest, he listened more intently.
When the syllabus had been handed out, Spanish monikers adopted, and a short story read aloud in choppy phrases and bad accents, he allowed himself to turn around and take his first look at this group of friends. They looked totally normal. They looked like him. Nothing stood out about them so that he could place where they might fit. They weren't hipsters, even though one was wearing an old concert t-shirt that was obviously meant to convey what he felt was his superior music knowledge. They weren't jocks, even though one of them obviously lifted a lot of weights. They weren't intimidating, even though he was intimidated. Jeans, t-shirts, hoodies, Vans, a headband, flipflops, a black wristband of no known origin, a pair of glasses, a soft brown jacket, a GAP messenger bag. It was all very normal. Just like him.
Dark brown eyes met his greenish ones and a wide, impressively beautiful mouth spoke the first words directed to him this semester, "Hey. You had Spanish before?"
"Um, yeah. I have. I took 1101 last semester and tested out of 1102. That's how I'm here."
"Did you have Veronica?"
"No. Senor Morena."
"Veronica's awesome. I think this class will be more conversational. She likes that."
"Yes, I heard that you'd had her." Dark brown eyes above a soft brown jacket sparked with the acknowledgment of his admission that he'd been eavesdropping. Dark brown eyes didn't seem to mind, but the rest of the group was shuffling out, their belongings gathered in arms and bags, their bodies turning towards the exit.
His soft, sort-of green eyes looked to floor, allowing them to leave without feeling the need to include him even with a simple, "See you Wednesday." He hoped this would be one of those classes where he would feel relaxed enough to open up, be himself, and maybe act on that stirring he felt.
Even though this time, the stirring had him spinning.
oooOOOooo
On Monday night, he looked over his notes for each of his classes: the blue spiral for Modern Psych, the yellow one for Southern Gothic Literature, and the black one for Spanish II. He searched his notes, looking for what punctuated the pattern - where his pen should trace his script so that what once got lost in the stream of words would stand out in bold. He liked the look of his notes once he thickened the headings with extra ink. He could glance at the page and distinguish the finer points from the major ones. Bold and utmost. Fine and detailed. All ordered.
He didn't expect to find a pattern in between those thin, black cardboard covers, in the pop culture ramblings of a group of friends from his Spanish class, but it was there - the conversation punctuated not by the loud, amusing declarations of an assertive girl, or the brash comments of her cruder friend, but instead by the modest, assured directives of the one with the dark brown eyes. His statements were unassuming but crisp and moved their random conversation with a grace that had gone unnoticed. When they got bawdy, he was resolute, but witty. When they were obvious, his response was wily and astute. He never offended, but he navigated their talk with skill, smarts and symmetry. The words were bold, and so he, confused and compelled, bolded them. Then, he went to that damn movie.
oooOOOooo
Thanks for reading.