“If I sleep, I’ll dream, and it might not be of you,” I whispered. “Stop it,” she said and hit me with a pillow, “it’s been a long day, and I’m leaving in the morning for Thanksgiving break.” “Without me,” I moaned. “I’ll be so lonely here. I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to miss a second of us. We just met, and I can’t imagine being without you by my side.”
“Stop, we discussed this,” she said. “I can’t take you home with me. No one would understand. We haven’t just met, anyway. You’ve been calling me Ms. Anderson, for two months, now. It’s hasn’t even been a week ago that I became Betty to you. That you really saw me – as the adult I am.
“I had seen you. Noticed you,” I whispered, sleepily, a different seat, every class, seemingly looking for a home, not a chair. Always prepared for my lecture, never shying away from an answer, but I never knew where I’d find you..”
“Until last Thursday.”
Last Thursday she made her move to the end of the third row, just as a classmate did the same. It is a coveted seat. One where you are close enough to the front to be seen as studious, but not too close to be seen as a brown noser. Close to the door, for easy exit if the need arose, and across the room from the windows, so day dreaming could be discreet, as I was in between.
Last Thursday, though, that was the clash of titans. A guy who wants to be my TA came to class – her to learn, him to see if I was worthy. I am. But that’s not the point, but it is why he shouldn’t have even appeared in this story.
Anyway, the got there at the same time, each with a hand on the chair. Betty dropped her bags on the chair, like she was moving in, like she had finally found her home, when he, of all people, said “NO!” She looked at him and said “WHY?” “It’s mine,” he said. She whipped out a Sharpee, and before he could do anything but blink, she had written, in big black block letters, BETTY, on the seat back.
He gasped, astonished. She smiled and smirked. I read, “Betty, hmmm, wow,”
As she sat in front of the stunned TA wannabe, I started my lecture.
At the end of the lecture, I asked to speak with her a second, I saw him coming, out of the corner of my eye, and thinking quickly, I said, “I need a TA for some of my classes, would you be interested?”
He stopped in his path, mouth agape, she turned to see him, picked up what happened immediately, smirked again, and said, “I’d love to.”
Since that moment we have been inseparable. Not as a couple, but as a one. Two pieces of a brain, a heart, a soul, became one.
“I don’t want to sleep. Not until I have to, you should, though. Stretch out on the couch, and I’ll rub your feet.”
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