AN: Super Short!
1956
Other students probably thought he was smitten. Why else would he be vacantly staring at the back of her head in their shared premedical class.
He didn't worry over what they thought. He wasn't there to impress kids nearly five years younger than he was. All he worried about was proving to professors and the university administration that he was capable of the curriculum he was being hit with.
It might have been a mistake to take on so many credits, but he wasn't going to sit idle while kids just out of high school aced their way out of classes he was being forced to complete becaus he wasn't a recent graduate.
Sure he was older than most of the other kids, but he wasn't old. There was still a lot left in a kid only twenty-six years of age.
On the days his shoulder didn't pop incessantly, and he managed to keep a migraine at bay, at least.
Sure, he needed some refresher courses. Running shine back in Georgia didn't call for much academic achievement, but he wasn't dim witted in the least. If it meant he spent a majority of the night going back over his notes, pacing his small efficiency until he could recite back to himself a good portion of the lecture that afternoon then so be it.
His classmates thought he just stared at the back of the girl's head.
It's not that she isn't pretty. She's California pretty. Sun bleached hair, ocean side tan and green eyes.
Jesse stares at the back of her head for the better part of at least four classes, tapping his pen against the desktop softly so as not to draw attention to himself. Sometimes he catches himself and sits up quickly, other times he shifts uncomfortably after an hour because those chairs are hard and his body just can't handle that anymore.
Twenty-six and not old.
Right.
He gets ribbed by a couple of the guys he knows in a study group and shrugs it off. He's not interested in the girl two rows ahead of him.
While they think he's working up the courage to say hello. He's listening intently to the professor. Jotting down notes without looking at the paper in front of him so he can commit it to memory later that evening. The way he'd remembered a certain rule book way back in 1950.
It wasn't the girl that held his attention, but it was.
She was pretty, but not the right kind of pretty.
Girls named Ruth shouldn't have blonde hair. They weren't tan with green eyes.
Girls named Ruth had freckles in the shapes of the stars, their hair was dark and their eyes were blue.
Girls named Ruth looked like him.
No amount of staring could change the color of her hair.