took me awhile

Year Written: 2017

Word Count: 7,300

Quick Description: College Fling

© Christina Hadfield

It took me a while to notice her. We didn’t have any classes together. Our friend groups and social circles never overlapped. It just took me a while to notice her. It was not until a quarter into the semester that I realized Chemistry was harder than I had originally made it out to be. I signed up for a study group, just a dozen of freshmen like me helplessly flocking behind an upperclassman for help. People came and went from the study group all semester, but not me. I became known as one of the ‘regulars,’ which consisted of me and two genius kids that certainly did not need the help, but enjoyed the extra practice. And I never really minded.

The first time I noticed her was after midterms at the Chemistry study session. She asked about a dozen questions, never seemed to be able to shut up. After her fifth question, an abnormality for our study group since usually, no one asked anything, I turned to look back at her. She was sitting behind me and to my right—us regulars filled up the front as we always did. When I saw her, I didn’t think a thing of her appearance, not her icy eyes or her dark chocolate hair, not the stubbornness of the few hair pieces that always seemed to tangle in front of her face, or her focused look, tapping her pen against her lips as she tried really hard to comprehend the Chemistry she was asking so many questions about. I didn’t notice any of those things that day. I just sighed at her inability to shut up and went back to working out a practice problem.

She quickly became a regular. A regular in the sense that everyone knew her name and could address her personally. A regular in the sense that she showed up at every study session and sat beside us other regulars up in the front row. A regular in the sense that she’d show up early, with us other regulars, and just talk with us, like we were all old friends in a superior mindset about Chemistry just because we were regulars. That was when I started noticing her more. Like her sense of style in the clothes she always seemed to wear, or what backpack she had, slung over her shoulder in a way that seemed graceful, and not worn down with stress like all us other students.

I also noticed her friendliness towards other girls.

It shouldn’t have meant anything, not really, in the way she spoke to girls. It shouldn’t have mattered that she’d lean in on her elbows, and stare into the other girl’s eyes like her life depended on it, like her companion was the greatest gift in her whole entire life. It shouldn’t have mattered that she was so friendly, girls have the right to be, after all, but it was just the fact that she set off my gaydar.

The day I realized she set off my gaydar was the first day I ever actually fully noticed her. She sat right down in front of me at Chemistry, because I had resorted to the back of the room that day just because I was a bit tired of being a regular, tired of being expected to know everything like the other genius regulars, when in fact I only went to the study sessions because I didn’t know everything. Another girl sat down next to her and I couldn’t help but notice their interaction.

The newcomer girl addressed the mysterious girl that always asked too many questions, called her Harper, and Harper leaned in on her elbows, staring at the other girl like she wanted to kiss her, their eyes locked on each other like no one else was in the room. I watched the way Harper moved to gently touch the other girl’s arm and I squinted in confusion. I never considered that Harper might be not straight, but the way she looked at the other girl, the way she touched her arm and smiled while leaning in only more impossibly closer, made me reconsider. Because those were the exact moves I used to flirt with other girls, and those were the exact moves that had been used on me, which led me to learn to flirt that way. I was one hundred percent convinced at that moment in time that the two girls in front of me were dating, and internally I cooed because they were such an adorable couple.

But they weren’t a couple; they didn’t even know each other. I learned this because nosey little me decided to listen in on their conversation, and Harper was asking the girl things like, “What’s your major?” and “What dorm do you live in? Where are you from?”

So they weren’t dating, but even so, Harper maybe might have been not completely straight. However, I didn’t much care one way or another. I came to Chemistry study session for one reason and one reason only: to learn Chemistry. And so I did.

By the end of the semester, I found myself sitting in my last Chemistry study session, studying for the final, and I realized, in that moment, that maybe I kind of thought Harper was just a little bit pretty. And maybe, I thought, I should talk to her, get to know her. Maybe we could be friends.

After the study session, she burst outside, practically sprinting. I sped walked after her, watching as she turned off the main path and headed out to what I assumed was the dorm on the far side of campus. I contemplated running up to her, acting like I had to walk that way for some reason just as an excuse to strike up a conversation. But instead, I just watched her walk off, telling myself that since Chemistry was now over, I wouldn’t see her anymore, and maybe I was okay with that. So I pulled tighter on my hoodie strings as the evening winter air forcefully hit me, and walked off the other direction towards my own dorm, dreaming of hot chocolate and winter break.

I didn’t remember her name when school started back up second semester. I recognized her face, but a lot had happened over break and I had basically forgotten about her. She popped up in my calculus class, a class I just happened to have five times a week. I didn’t notice her the first day though. I was almost late the first day, which was probably why I failed to see her, and I grabbed the last available desk behind a friend of mine. The second day of class, I saw her though, sitting right beside me. I had glanced over there, ten minutes until class began, and was met with crystal blue eyes staring right at me. I gulped, slightly nervous, and looked away.

Someone she knew called to her from across the room, and she grabbed her stuff, moving away from me. I figured it was probably better that way, that she had friends over there and I had friends over here and we would just never communicate. But the next day, I found that she was sitting right beside me once more. I could tell, by the way she watched her ‘friends’ across the room, that they weren’t really friends. And I could tell she wasn’t too inclined to sit with them ever again. I would have spoken to her then, but I had forgotten her name, so I bit my tongue.

I learned her name the fourth day of class when my brain finally registered that hey, the teacher read out roll call at the start of every class. I paid close attention to the hands that went up in the air when names were called, and realized, as the teacher called, “Harper,” and the girl beside me shifted to raise her hand, that yeah, I shouldn’t have forgotten that name.

We did a calculator problem that day, which wouldn’t have been anything interesting, except that half the kids in my class had yet to purchase the hundred-dollar piece of technology. I happened to have a graphing calculator from high school, so I was fully prepared in class. But Harper, still next to me, did not have a calculator with her. Before I could say anything though, offer to share my calculator with her, she had asked a girl to her right and the two were off in conversation before I could even open my mouth. But it was fine.

It was still fine a week later when I realized Harper was growing quite close to the girl she shared a calculator with. It was fine when Harper moved back to sit beside the girl regularly, no longer right beside me. I could have moved seats; there was no assigned seating. But I didn’t. I bit my tongue and sat down in my regular spot day after day.

After two weeks, on Sunday evening, I fell into a major funk. I was upset by specifically three exes of mine, though I never really liked the term ‘ex.’ To me, they were still friends, still girls I could talk to, there would always remain a connection. But speaking with any of them left almost a bitter taste in my mouth, a feeling of things that once were but were no more. Usually, I could get over the feeling, push it aside and remain the good friend, the better person. But that evening I was particularly tired, having not gotten good sleep since second semester began, and after speaking to one of them, I felt completely drained. So much so that I lied down on my stomach on my dorm room floor, in the dark, and just lied there for an hour not moving.

And I decided, “Fuck it. I might as well talk to her.”

Every day, after calculus, she would always run out the second the teacher dismissed us. Being winter, I took time to slip on my coat, but by the time I had my coat on and zipped up my backpack, Harper was already long gone with her calculator sharing friend. One day, when I actually managed to slip out the same time she did, I saw her trail upstairs, and I figured she probably had a class immediately after calculus. I didn’t want to hold her up.

I went to calculus early Monday. I had a class before it, but I had a thirty-minute break between the two. Usually I’d just sit in the library for a bit, but Monday I went straight to calculus and found myself in a completely empty classroom. I counted back the seats until I found where Harper and calculator sharing girl usually sat. They usually sat with calculator sharing girl on Harper’s right, so I took the desk to the left of where she usually sat.

Eventually, kids started filing in. Calculator sharing girl arrived first, sitting down where I expected her to. Then in came the girl who usually sat where I was now sitting. She seemed confused at first, like maybe she had entered the wrong classroom, but then she just seemed irritated with me. I looked away from her. I didn’t care. Harper came in not long after, still fifteen minutes before class was to start. She said hi to calculator sharing girl, asking about her weekend. They spoke for a bit while Harper pulled out her things and sat down, but then they quieted down after both pulled out their phones.

I tried to glance at Harper’s phone screen. It looked like she was just browsing social media. I contemplated my moves, never one for just random and sporadic social interactions. I didn’t know how to just start small talk. I never spoke to random people unless spurred on by some type of conversation. So I made a completely rash decision, pulling out my calculator and purposefully typing in an equation wrong so that my calculator gave me an error message. Then I turned towards Harper and leaned in ever so slightly, just so she’d know I was trying to get her attention.

“Hey, your name is Harper, right?” I asked, and Harper turned to look at me. She nodded, a questioning smile on her lips.

“My name’s Natalie,” I continued. “I um… was just trying to get this one problem to work on my calculator, but I keep getting this error message, and um… well you seem pretty smart so I was just wondering if you could help me out?”

“Oh! Of course!” she exclaimed, taking my calculator from my hands. I slid my chair closer to her, to seem interested in how she fixed it. Her tongue stuck out of the corner of her mouth while she concentrated. “Here, I think you just entered the problem in wrong,” she said, easily finding my faked error. “It can be tricky sometimes; you have to really watch your parenthesis. But here, I think it should work now.” She hit the graph button to prove that it would work, and it did. I sighed in fake relief.

“Thank you so much!” I gasped in awe. “I was stuck on that one for hours last night!”

“Of course, it was no problem,” Harper nodded. When I turned to look back at her, after taking back my calculator, I found her eyes intensely on me. She had such a strong glare accompanied by just the biggest smile. She moved, as if she were going to turn away from me, but I quickly spoke up again. “Have you taken calculus before?” I asked. “Like, back in high school?”

“Oh, um, yeah,” Harper muttered, and she actually blushed. It was adorable. I shook my head, trying to rid myself of those thoughts. “I did really good in calculus in high school… I just didn’t get college credit for it, so I have to take it again.”

“Me too,” I wanted to say. I wanted to say that, “Yeah, I took through calc two in high school, but didn’t get the credit for it, so here I am, set back two years.” But I didn’t. Instead I said something completely ludicrous because I didn’t know how else to maybe become Harper’s friend.

I said: “Lucky, you have such an advantage! I didn’t get to take calc in high school and already math is a bad subject for me. Honestly, you seem like a natural. I would absolutely forever be in your debt if you’d tutor me? It doesn’t even have to be serious; we could just meet up a few times throughout the week and work through problems together? If you have time, I mean.”

I could tell Harper greatly considered this. I felt like maybe randomly asking someone to tutor me was a little forward and needy sounding. I sighed.

“I’m sorry, that was really forward of me,” I confessed. “I just really struggle in math and you almost seem like a natural. I could pay you back in… dinner, once a week? Maybe like, Friday night, just as payment for putting up with me? We could be study buddies.”

“Um… okay.” Harper nodded. “Honestly, the extra studying would probably really help me! How about… Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and then my dinner payment Friday, of course!” At that, she giggled.

“Sure!” I agreed. “How does seven at night sound?”

“It sounds good. Where do you live? Maybe we could meet up somewhere more convenient than the library.”

“Oh, um, I live in Riverdale,” I answered, naming my dorm.

“Cool. So do I.”

I wasn’t expecting that. I assumed that last semester, on the last day when I saw her take off for the other dorms, she lived in those dorms, not my dorm.

“Really?” I asked in genuine surprise. “What floor?”

“Second,” she stated with a smile.

“Ah, that would explain why I haven’t really ever run into you. I’m on the eighth floor, end of the hall.”

“We could meet up in one of the lounges, but… it might be a bit distracting,” Harper brainstormed. “I know! I have a single room, we could just meet up there! That way we won’t get distracted!”

“Oh, yeah. Sure.” I nodded, completely and utterly surprised.

“Good.” Harper grinned as our teacher walked in, greeting the class. “208,” she then said, turning away from me. “I’ll see you tomorrow at seven.”

I nodded. 208.

Tuesday, as always, I went to class until I got out at four, spent an hour in the library working on homework until I met up with some friends for dinner. Then I went back to my own room and just absently waited for a bit. Neither my roommate nor my suitemates were around. I knew a couple of them had late labs, but regardless it wasn’t uncommon for kids to be out until ten or so on school nights (particularly if they signed up for evening classes and didn’t have a single class before noon which would require an early bedtime). Then, at five minutes before the hour, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and headed off towards the elevator.

I had almost forgot to bring my class materials. And by class materials I meant two pieces of loose-leaf paper stuck in my book which I had scribbled down a few homework problems on. The work we were currently doing in calculus I could do in my sleep. Which maybe, in hindsight, would help me fake not knowing anything, since I’d hardly taken half a note in class.

While waiting in the elevator—to take me down six floors, which in hind sight I could have walked but I wasn’t really thinking that clearly—I realized that I was kind of peeved about the whole ‘I’ve gotta act like an idiot’ situation. I wasn’t used to pretending I didn’t know things. I wasn’t even really sure how to approach the topic. I didn’t have to be a complete idiot though, as I realized, I could know how to do the things we were taught in class. If I had paid attention in class. I groaned.

When the elevator awkwardly stopped on the second floor, I stepped out onto the foreign floor, convinced that the elevator hadn’t stopped on this floor since move in day. Kids that rode the elevator up and down from the second floor were excessively scorned, and since the first week no one ever used the elevator for the lower half of the building. I felt kind of self-conscious about the fact that I was stepping out of the elevator. But then again, I was coming down from the eighth floor, not up from one floor below us. I shrugged off my awkwardness and went off in the direction of 208.

The second floor was laid out the exact same way as the eighth floor so I knew where room 208 would be. It was just one doorway in from the elevator, extremely close to the lounge where all the action on the floor would be. Second floor had a much different vibe going on from my own floor. Unlike my floor, where everyone knew everyone but we kept our distances, busy studying away in the solitary of our own rooms, no one was in their room on second floor. People ran by, yelling and shouting, chanting, dancing and playing music. Doors all down the hall were propped open, people casually floating in between rooms like an open floor plan.

As I reached 208, five people tumbled out of the room, two boys and three girls, and I just caught the tail end of a conversation, “Okay, fine, Harper. But you’re telling us about this tomorrow because nothing has ever been so important that you’ve kicked us out!”

I stood there awkwardly beside the doorway as the people tumbled out. The girls gave me sideways glares and odd looks before pushing past me and running down the hall to catch up with some more kids. In that moment, I realized that Harper was hot shit on second floor. She was in the same room as the most popular girl on my floor, which I figured was partially because of location and partially just attractive, outgoing college girl. I sighed. So basically, the farthest personality type from who I usually made friends with.

I looked in towards the room, which from my perspective was just a hallway past the shared bathroom, and couldn’t spot Harper. I reached over to the opened door and knocked, hard, several times. “Hey, Harper?” I called in.

Harper’s head popped into view from around the corner. “Hey! Natalie! Come in!” She walked over to me, urging me in, and then closed the door behind me. I walked into the center of her single room, quite spacious, and just sort of stood there. “Sorry, I hope you’re okay with me shutting the door,” she muttered, walking over to me. “I just… some of the kids on my floor are a bit invasive and well… I didn’t want us to get too distracted from our studying.”

“No! Of course! It makes perfect sense.” I nodded.

Harper gestured towards the floor. “Sorry I don’t have a table or anything to work on,” she rambled. “I mean, I used to have a desk, all our rooms came with desks, but Collen, he’s a kid on my floor, was joking around the other day and slammed Chris into my desk, and Chris is like 400 pounds of pure muscle, so my desk kind of got shattered? I mean, it’s okay, the university is supposed to be getting me a new desk, but that was only yesterday so right now, well… I hope you’re okay with working on the floor.”

“Of course!” I nodded earnestly, taking off my backpack and sitting down cross legged. Harper soon followed, pulling over her calculus book and papers. She focused in on her work, biting her lip as she flipped through pages.

“Okay, let’s see,” she muttered absent mindedly. “Is there anything specific you’re having trouble with? Or do you just wanna review everything since we have that quiz Monday?”

I answered with a, “Let’s just review,” and we dove into problem after problem, which we worked through on a small whiteboard Harper had, leaving me to scribble down what I deemed ‘appropriate notes’ whenever Harper corrected a mistake I had purposefully made.

The reason I was there was because I was trying to befriend Harper. Which was why I brought up normal conversation whenever I could, trying to make it flow easily like I wasn’t purposefully derailing our focus. In general, this was difficult because we were doing math, which doesn’t leave room for much other topics. But when we started to do a few word problems, I came up with more material.

For instance, one problem mentioned a zoo and I went off on a tangent about how I loved animals and all the animals in the zoo which I liked the most, sharing childhood stories of my own zoo experiences. Harper was easily distracted, as I quickly discovered, and she shifted easily into discussing whether Koalas or Red Pandas were cuter.

Eventually, I reached for my phone to glance at the time. It was five before nine; I had been with Harper, sort of studying math, for two hours. Harper seemed to notice the time just as I did, and she opened her mouth as if to say something, but before she could, her phone started chiming incessantly with several incoming text messages. She reached over to grab her phone, studying it closely.

“Is something wrong?” I asked politely, noting the slight frown etched in her features.

“I… no,” Harper muttered, setting her phone off to the side again. “I just have some really nosey, needy friends that want to know where I am and why my door’s been shut for so long.” She sighed, and I could tell she wasn’t enjoying the high maintenance qualities of said friends, but it wasn’t my place to comment.

“Should I go?” I asked.

“Oh, you’re fine.” Harper waved her hand dismissively. “They’ll get over it. It’s not like they don’t see me every day anyway.”

I laughed slightly. “Are they good friends? Have you known them for long?” I asked. “One of them wouldn’t happen to be an overbearing boyfriend, would they?” I then added as a joke.

Harper laughed and I considered my joke a success. “I’ve known them since college started, and no, there’s no boyfriend in my life right now,” Harper answered with a shake of her head. “I had a boyfriend from high school and we tried to make it work, going to different schools and all, but the long-distance thing just wasn’t working, so we broke up about a month into the first semester.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“No, no, it was mutual, everything’s fine!” Harper assured me. “What about you? Any man in your life?”

I snorted, only slightly, just because it had been awhile since I talked with someone who didn’t know my sexuality. “No, I’m not really interested in guys,” I answered. “But there’s not a girl in my life either. I’m single for now.”

When I said this, Harper leaned in towards me, similar to the way she often did around other girls: the she’s way too close for casual conversation, why is she like this, stance. “Really?” she asked, and her eyes nearly glistened like a kid on Christmas. “I… that’s kind of another reason my boyfriend and I broke up,” she continued, now diverting her eyes away from me almost as if she were shy. “I just… once I got to college I started noticing girls more, is that weird? I’d never really thought about it much, but maybe… I don’t know. I find girls extremely attractive and amazing to be around, and well… I guess I wouldn’t be opposed to being with a girl.”

“Have you been with a girl?” I asked softly, just curious. I didn’t mean to pry though, so I quickly added, “You don’t have to share with me if you don’t want, I just… well I have a bit of experience on the topic if you want someone to talk to about it.”

Again, Harper looked up at me with eyes glittering in awe. “I haven’t,” she went on, “been with a girl before, I mean. It’s not that I don’t want to!” she exclaimed quickly before realizing her loudness and shying down again. “But… it’s foreign territory to me, I don’t… I… I don’t know how to approach the topic…”

“Have you ever kissed a girl before?” I then offered, because maybe she had memories from middle school which was only adding to her curiosity. However, to my surprise, she bashfully shook her head.

Oh! I thought. Oh. So here was Harper, a girl who I considered to act the complete opposite of straight when in the presence of other girls, telling me that she was questioning things and wanted to figure stuff out, but was obviously extremely shy about the idea, especially when around other girls.

“Would you like to kiss a girl?” I asked softly, gesturing at myself. “Just to know what it’s like. It might be helpful.”

Harper stared into my eyes intensely for several beats before nodding with confidence. I slid my calculus book back away from me, readjusting the way I was sitting, then reached over for Harper’s arm and beckoned her closer to me. She crawled closer to me and I smiled at her, considering her eyes. She was so beautiful. And as she got closer, I realized she smelled amazing too, like cupcakes and apples.

She was shaking, ever so slightly, as if she were a little bit nervous. I glanced between her pink lips and crystal blue eyes several times and we leaned in towards each other. When we were close enough, I pulled her down a bit so that her forehead was resting against mine. “You okay?” I asked softly.

“Yes,” she answered, and then she went in for the kiss, our lips connecting.

She tasted like spearmint, probably from the gum she had been chewing earlier, and I realized quite quickly that I wanted more from this kiss than just a peck. So I opened my mouth, looping my hand around the back of her neck to pull her closer. To my surprise, she was the one to run her tongue against my bottom lip, and instantly I gave her curious tongue access to my mouth. We lazily kissed each other, her, exploring all aspects of this curiosity she had, and me, exploring the familiarity of the softness of girls, yet the new feeling of Harper.

We broke for air, Harper sitting back away from me on her haunches. The grin on her face was impossibly large. “Well?” I cockily asked with a smirk, silently laughing at her huge smile.

“I really liked that,” she smiled larger, but then her grin turned almost predatory. I knew that look well. Quickly, I shoved away our calculus papers and dove for her, latching our mouths together again.

It wasn’t long before I was hovering over Harper, the girl pinned on the floor under me. She was surprisingly less shy in this situation that she had been talking about things earlier, which was understandable because sometimes, talking about things is way harder than doing things. Finally, my heart kind of got the better of me, and I pulled away from Harper, but her hands on my back kept me from going very far.

“You’re really beautiful,” I muttered between pants. “And you’re very smart and super sweet. You’re an amazing girl.” I watched proudly as a blush settled on her cheeks. “And I would happily make out with you all day, but if we don’t stop, this is going to go places that you might not be ready for.”

Harper’s response to my statement was to push me back so that she could sit up. Then she quickly jerked her shirt up over her head, tossing it behind her, before quickly reattaching herself to my lips. We made out some more before I felt her lifting my shirt up, then I pulled back again.

“Hey, are you sure about this?” I asked her seriously.

“Yes, I am,” Harper stated with complete confidence. “Now take your shirt off.”

I did as I was told, tossing my own shirt in the general direction that Harper had tossed hers. I reminded myself that Harper had dated guys in the past, so this area wasn’t completely foreign to her. And obviously, she found something she liked and was eager for more. Truthfully, I was eager for more too. It had been practically seven months of admiring her features from afar, and I was ready for something a little more up close.

As Harper crawled up to straddle my lap, I laughed slightly toward her before saying, “I have a little bit of a confession to make.”

“Hmm? And what would that be?” Harper hummed, sucking on my bottom lip.

“I’ve taken calc before and I don’t really need tutoring. I just… wasn’t sure how to start up a conversation with you.”

Harper pulled back from my mouth to burst out laughing, burying her face against my chest. “I know,” she laughed, pulling back to look into my eyes.

“What? You did?” I questioned, completely surprised.

“Yeah,” Harper nodded. “Remember how on the first day of class our professor asked who had taken calc before? You raised your hand.”

“Oh,” I frowned, squinting my eyes. “Hey, wait! Why were you watching me so closely on the first day!?”

“Maybe I might find you really attractive,” Harper stated before reconnecting our lips.

I woke up to an odd combination of sounds: an incessant beeping and a light melody. Groaning, I rubbed my eyes, waking up a bit more before I realized the light melody was my alarm clock on my phone going off, and I shot up in a panic. When I did, I realized several things.

First, I wasn’t in my room. This was good, because upon leaping up in a start I tumbled off the bed I was lying in and onto the floor, which had I been in my room would have been disastrous since my bed was lofted, but luckily this bed was not. Second, I realized I was naked as I was instantly hit with the chill air. Then third, I realized I had been in bed with an equally as naked Harper, who sat up on the bed rubbing at her eyes. Harper yawned and looked down at me while I simultaneously looked up at her from my position on the floor. A moment of calm settled in on us while our brains caught back up with knowledge of what we had done last night.

Harper smiled impossibly large at me and I smiled back. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her dark lashes and how they complimented her icy blue eyes. The area around her eyes was tinted ever so slightly purple against her pale skin, an effect of our minimal sleep last night. But I thought that in that moment, her hair dishelmed from sleep, that she was more beautiful than anyone I had ever seen. And that was saying a lot coming from me.

Eventually our gaze was broken by Harper leaning across her bed to grab her phone, on which the beeping alarm was going off. “Oh, crap!” Harper huffed, jumping out of bed.

In response to her sudden panic, I leapt up as well. “Crap!?” I gasped. “What time is it!?”

“It’s seven forty-five,” Harper said as she ran around her room searching for clothes. I myself bent and picked up my clothing articles that were littered around Harper’s room. “But that was my alarm for my Tuesday/ Thursday classes, which don’t start until nine. But Wednesday I have eight am lab and I can’t miss lab! You don’t get excused absences from lab even if you’re sick, let alone you slept in!”

“I know how lab works!” I stated in response, spinning around. Harper dashed out of her room to her adjoined bathroom and I tugged on the last of my clothes. Spinning around, I spotted her backpack, lab notebook, and safety goggles, all of which I grabbed. Checking to make sure her lab work was indeed in her lab notebook, I shoved everything into her backpack just in time to have her race back into the room. “Here,” I said, shoving her backpack into her arms and pushing her towards the door. “Go, so you won’t be late.”

“But, but… what about you? I mean, what about last night, I—.”

“Stop talking, we can talk about this later. Just, go!” I gave her an affirmative push out of her door, tossing her coat after her. “If you walk fast you can get there right on time!”

We were now standing in the hall, Harper’s door closed behind us. Facing me, she slung her backpack over her shoulder, stared at me for a beat, then quickly stepped to me giving me a tight and quick hug before turning and dashing for the stairs, calling back, “Thank you! I’ll see you in calc!”

Once the door to the stairwell closed behind Harper, I fell back against the wall and sighed. What had I done? It was a good thing I didn’t have class until ten because I needed to do some thinking. Groaning, I pulled myself up straight before walking towards the stairs myself, opting to walk back up the eighth floor to buy me more thinking time.

I had slept with, as in had sex with, a questioning straight girl. True, Harper might not be straight, but the point of the matter was, she had no lesbian experiences before and she was experimenting using me, something I had vowed in my younger years to never do. There was too much opportunity for hurt.

I figured, it took a special kind of person to have casual sex and never get attached to their partner, to never want more. Those were the type of people who could get the romantic, relationship feelings from friends, people they knew they could always go to and always trust. I was not one of these people. I was never good with sex without feeling and I probably never would be. I tended to give too much of myself away to people I had sex with. I didn’t figure Harper was like me though. She had dozens upon dozens of really close friends, girls and guys, and based on how she acted last night, I was pretty sure casual sex was right up her alley.

I felt slightly upset, just because I did really find Harper attractive and smart and fun company, but I knew that we would never have something. Last night was fun and I needed to accept it at face value and move on. Easier said than done, but I was determined to not get attached.

When I got back to my room, all my roommates were still asleep, having class at ten like me. I should have showered, but I couldn’t find the energy to. Instead I just sat down in the dark of my room and looked through the Facebook profiles of the two girls that always managed to consume me. Sure, not letting go of them was harmful and only hurting me in the long run, but I knew they could get my mind off Harper and keep her from becoming a problem, so I chose the lesser of two evils.

I arrived to calculus class twenty minutes early. It wasn’t as if I had planned it, I just left my last lass and went straight over to calculus. There was no one in the room when I silently pushed open the door. I chose to sit in the back corner, nowhere near where Harper or her friends usually sat. After pulling out my books, I pulled out my phone and buried myself in meaningless apps. People filed in, slowly and steadily, but I kept my head down.

Someone sat down near me, next to me I figured but I didn’t look up. I didn’t think anything of it until I heard one of the louder girls, who claimed to be a friend of Harper’s, call from across the room. “Harper! Harper! Come sit with us!” I glanced over to my right, where the girl was exclaiming quite vocally, and noticed her waving.

The chair to the other side of me slid closer to me, and I felt a presence to my left. When I looked that way, I found Harper leaning so close to me she was practically on top of me, acting like she was trying to hide from the girl calling her name. When I saw her, I leaned back slightly, giving away Harper’s cover, and Harper sheepishly acknowledged the girl.

“Hey, Katie,” Harper called out politely. “I already sat down, but… I’ll sit with you guys another time, okay?”

“Come on, Harper, sit with us!” the girl, Katie, exclaimed with a more adamant wave.

“Later, I need to talk to Natalie anyway,” Harper answered with a slight huff, before looking down to dig around in her backpack. Eventually Katie gave up on her verbal attack and I just stared at Harper as if she were an alien with two heads. I could not comprehend what had just happened.

Harper, once pulling out her books, continued to avoid making eye contact with me until I finally said, “You need to talk to me?”

Harper looked over at me with a shy smile. “I just… I wanted to sit by you, not them,” she stated, then added, “Is that okay?”

“I… sure. It’s college, you can sit where you want,” I answered.

Harper smiled her thanks at me before turning her attention to our teacher who had just walked in.

After class, I moved to talk to Harper, but she was up and out of the door before I could do so much as shut my notebook. This was new territory to me. I wasn’t sure how Harper felt about what had happened, or what she wanted to be outside of what had happened, like during class. I decide to not chase, to not try and talk to her or anything.

Considering I had confessed to Harper that I indeed did not need any help in calculus, I kind of expected our previous arrangement to be canceled. That was why, on Thursday, when Harper trailed into class, she surprised me so violently when she bent over and told me, a little too close to my ear, “I’ll see you at seven, study buddy.” Then she turned and went to sit next to Katie.

That evening I felt very conflicted. The way she had said, “I’ll see you at seven, study buddy,” had implied that there was not going to be any studying. But was it rude for me to assume that there would not be any studying just based on what had happened? And if the connotation was indeed true, did I feel comfortable continuing on with our, what was it even? Our arrangement? Harper’s experimentation?

I groaned for not the first time that night. Then I uttered to myself, “Fuck it. This is college. I should be hooking up with girls and just enjoying myself. Whatever. Maybe I can learn to be casual and not get overly attached this way.”

And so it came to be that five before seven I was walking my way down to the second floor with only my phone and room key stuck in my back pocket, no calculus to be heard of. When I pushed open the door to exit the stairwell, I was nearly run over by three kids that were yelling loudly. One of the girls I recognized as Katie, one of Harper’s “friends.” I didn’t think much of it, Katie could live anywhere it was none of my business. I continued on my way into the hall once the group had passed.

But then someone grabbed my arm and pulled me, tugging my attention back behind me where I came face to face with Katie, the others long gone down the stairs.

“Hey, you’re Natalie, right?” Katie asked me.

“Uh, yeah,” I answered, confused and not even remotely in the mood for talking to Katie.

“Are you friends with Harper?”

I frowned at Katie. “I don’t know, maybe,” I answered, shrugging myself away. “We kind of just met in calc class, so I don’t know if you could call us friends, but I mean, I know her.”

“Okay, see you in calc,” Katie answered, a slight nod to her head before turning and disappearing down the stairs.

I was so utterly confused by the exchange that my brain didn’t even register my trek to Harper’s door until the door was open in front of my face and Harper was pulling me in by the front of my shirt.

I was speaking before I even realized it: “Katie stopped me in the hall and asked if we were friends? Isn’t that kind of weird?”

Harper kicked her door shut, looking towards me. “She’s a weirdly high maintenance friend,” Harper stated, and then she shoved my back against the door

© Christina Hadfield 2020