A Missed Class, A Found Connection
I could feel my throat burning as my feet brought me closer to the looming building. I could feel my backpack hitting the small of my back as I dodged a small puddle.
"Great," I thought to myself, "Just great, my first day of class in university and I'm already soaking wet."
I grasped the door handle and pulled, opening myself to a reprieve of dryness. I walked to the classroom, set my bag down against the wall and let my rain jacket fall to my elbows; drops of water clung to the strands of hair hanging in front of my face and to my forehead. I hung my jacket on the provided coat rack and faced the door, waiting for the previous class to get out.
I could feel eyes on me, and out of the corner of my eye I could see a tall boy with a mess of blond hair, a red jacket, and a large messenger bag. I quickly straightened myself and glanced around, hoping to meet the gaze of another classmate to befriend. However, I noticed the hallway was almost completely empty, save for a few professors talking to students at the end of the hall.
"You noticed too huh?" a soft voice commented.
I turned my head to see the boy had walked over and was now leaning against the wall beside me. "Yeah, where is everyone?" just then the previous class began to spill out of the room, "Not everyone can be late, surely."
"I've been here for awhile, and no one's been here yet." He commented, now standing up straight I could see how much taller than I he was. I couldn't before. As he saw my puzzled look he added, "I get a little anxious about being places on time, so I make sure I'm early to being early."
"Interesting, I'm worried about being late too, but instead of doing something about it I just continue on my dysfunctional ways. It's horrible really." I picked my bag up and snuck around the final person leaving the class, the boy held the door open for me and I nodded to him, with a small smile on my lips.
I situated myself in my favourite spot in all classrooms, middle row, right in the middle. The boy chuckled, "You love this spot to eh?" and sat down right beside me.
"I guess we have more in common then we thought." I pulled my laptop out of my bag and opened up the class website. "Are we sure this is the right classroom? No one's here yet."
The classroom was bare, no TA's, no professors, no students, no one.
"I'm pretty sure that the syllabus said room 1111." He said, now pulling his phone out to check the syllabus again.
"Dude. It says a completely different building, the Leslie M. Barker Building." I threw my head back in exasperation, and put my laptop back my my bag. We stood up, crowding over his phone to get a look at the map of campus, trying to figure out where the Barker Building was. "Oh! There it is! Next to the Chemistry Building, across campus from here. Fuck."
He glanced at the clock, 9:10. "Class is ending in like 15 minutes we should hurry if we even want to make it."
"Why bother? It'll take us 10 minutes to get there, probably another 5 to find the room. C'mon, let's go for a drink. Celebrate the first day of class." I grabbed my bag and started out of the room. When I got to the door and I didn't hear his footsteps I turned to him, "Coming?" I inquired to the anxious boy.
He gave me a smile and skipped a few steps to come up behind me, "Sure."
As we stood underneath the cover of the awning looking back at his campus map for the campus pub I realized that I didn't even know his name, nor him mine.
"By the way, I'm Eponine, Philosophy major." I stuck my hand out, looking at him from under eyelashes dripping with rain water.
"Eponine." He smiled and took my hand, "Enjolras, well Aiden. But don't call me that. Ever, please only Enjolras. Political Science major."
"Nice to meet you Enjolras."
There was comfortable silence as we just allowed our hands to touch and forget about the rain and the missed class.
"Ready to go? The pub is this way." I kept our hands connected as I guided him in the direction of the pub, only disconnecting them to pull my hood up and to smile at him.