If he never spoke to her again, he thought he could still be happy.
She was so cool and calm to him, so smart and self-assured. He couldn’t bring himself to completely describe it for fear of discovering her mystery. She seemed open, as she laughed with her head back, walked with her back straight, stood with her hips cocked, but he couldn’t help but feel that she was protected. In those moments in class, when he looked across the classroom to see her head down, her pen moving quickly across paper and her hair falling in a dark sheet, shielding her face – when he saw that, he always knew there was something more.
Selfishly he hoped he was the only one to see it. He hoped for a monopoly, for she was very beautiful, and he was sure he couldn’t ever have her; but maybe if he showed her what he saw, it could be different.
She looked as few of his classmates did – she was a woman, none of this girlish flatness that adorned his friend’s walls. She carried the confusing beauty of mixed races so that her body was an almost perfect hourglass, with wide hips, rolling thighs and a rounded ass that begged to be kneaded, cupped, fit to his body in what he thought would be a perfect match. Her face was eternally young and fresh, nearly free of makeup; he often wondered, when he saw any other girl whose face was caked with the stuff, whether makeup could improve a face as perfect as the one he saw in class. What could better the freckled, rosy cheeks, the long black eyelashes, her already red, plump lips? In class he imagined tracing the bow of her top lip with his finger, feeling her shudder and whimper in response; when he saw her bite her bottom lip in concentration, he imagined sucking on that bottom lip until she moaned. It always drove him to distraction, and it didn’t help the fact that he was already lost in their literature class. He just couldn’t pay attention to anything but her.
But all of this drove him away before he could get closer. He was merely a boy in her class, a boy she probably never thought about; that boy in her class with the awkward, stilted way of commenting, with the round glasses and long hair. He couldn’t imagine what she made of him. Worse, he imagined that she didn’t make anything of him at all.
It was why he thanked his lucky stars when he found an empty study carrel in the university library – or nearly empty, for she was there too, near the early-twentieth-century fiction. Obviously she needed to do the same research he did, and for the same class… Only she was not studying. She held her head in her hands, her eyes closed, her glasses on the table next to her.
He knew it. She protected this always, this vulnerability. She hadn’t heard him enter.
He set his books down and wandered over to her table. He gave himself a moment to collect his wits about him and to look down her shirt, which hung away from her body as she hunched over the desk.
He cleared his throat. “Are you alright?”
She looked up, startled. When she saw him she leapt to her feet, apparently uncomfortable to be seated as he towered over her, and smiled a soft grimace. Up went the wall. “Sorry, what?”
She hadn’t heard him. Now he could hear that his voice was hoarse from nervousness and that clearing his throat wasn’t really helping anything. Nevertheless, he tried again. “Are you alright?”
She smiled again, but this time it was more real, and he felt his lips curving to emulate hers. “Oh, yeah,” she nodded, slightly flushed. She rubbed a temple. “I’ve just got a headache. I’m already tired, and it’s only the middle of the week.”
He imagined that he knew her so well that he could see sadness there, not just the exhaustion she suggested. He wanted to envelop her small cushy body in his arms, smell her sweetness and tell her it would be okay. Instead he just said, “You’ll make it,” and he hoped she would hear what he really meant.
“I never know, by the time Wednesday comes around,” she chuckled harshly.
Wednesday – hump day. Not appropriate, he reminded himself.
She began packing up and he scrambled to think of something meaningful to say, something that she could remember him by as she reviewed their exchange in her head in the days to come, as he would be doing.
“Don’t forget to take something for that headache,” he advised.
“Thanks, I think I will,” she nodded, shouldering her backpack. She turned to leave, but then spun back. Her voice was quiet, low. He knew she was hesitant, but it just made the words she said all the more sexy. “Thanks for asking about me. It was really sweet,” she added, smiling a little into his eyes. He fancied that the smile was even truer this time, and it was all because of him, but he couldn’t be sure.
“You’re welcome. See you in class?”
She grinned again, nodding, and gave a small wave. She walked away among the musty books, trailing her small hand along their spines, caressing them before disappearing around a corner.
How he wished he was a book.
But he wasn’t, so he contented himself with sighing heavily and looking at the book that lay face-down on the table where she had just been sitting. He picked it up, felt the weight and heft of it, sniffed it a little as he envisioned her fingertips on each page. He believed he could smell a sweetness that was not just the dampish scent of an old book and he held the tome close to his chest. He would read it before class next week, no matter what it was; then he could speak to her about it, impress her with his intellect.
Who was he kidding? He might never gather the courage to talk to her again. He consoled himself with the thought that even if he never did, though, he could still be happy in the long lonely nights ahead, when it was only him and himself and her scent on the book.
He looked at the volume in his hand: Women in Love, by D. H. Lawrence.
He would definitely talk to her in class next week.