Kerry- The Semantics of Lunch

I recently returned to college after a large hiatus.  I put myself into an environment in which I knew absolutely no one.  My compositions professor said “I chose these topics (for papers) to get the kids out of their comfort zone.”  I excelled at these assignments because as I told him…

            “I have no comfort zone.”

            The first step in his editing process is to have the class divide themselves into small groups and engage in a ‘peer-edit,’ with the groups being limited to three or four students.  A student in my row initiated that our row of four would suffice as a group and we started to exchange papers.  I noticed that two attractive young ladies had convened, and were calling themselves a group, breaking the ‘three or four’ rule. 

            “Nothing personal,” I said to the group as I excused myself, got up from my seat and joined the smaller group consisting of only females.  “I noticed you don’t have three, hi, I’m Joe.” I initiated.

            “Emily.” The first one said with a glance.

            “I’m Kerry.” Said the other and offered her hand in a formal hand-shaking fashion.

 I sat, we exchanged papers, and we read.  We were all a little generous with the reviews as no one wanted to start off a relationship negatively. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt the feelings of the first two names I had learned at that school.  Not to mention I didn’t feel I was any reliable source, at the time, for critiquing anybody’s writing, as the semester went on… that changed.

We got our papers back about a week later, after a few more personal edits and rewrites, and I decided to use this as an opportunity to talk to someone outside of class.  I caught up to Kerry a few meters outside the building; her face buried in her graded paper and asked how she did.  We walked and talked about our grades for a bit, and then I inquired as to her schedule for the day in a very broad, unassuming way.

“I’m done for the day.” She said.

“So now what?” I said a bit prying, but still casual and still walking.

“I usually meet some friends and we have lunch.” She answered.  

“Well maybe sometime we could grab some lunch?” Lunch to me is the most unassuming plan one can make. I offered a question that clearly she wasn’t expecting, but wasted little time in answering.

“Yeah, ok…sure.”

            I kept my reaction very loose and casual.  I left plan decision of when up to her, and she offered next Friday (one week) as the time and place for my socialization at that school to commence. 

            “That works,” I replied. I took a step in a perpendicular direction as I had to go to my car, stopped and said as I walked “And I have a car so we don’t have to keep it local if you don’t want. I know a lot of really good places to eat.”

            We parted for the weekend, me very happy, her very confused I’m sure.  She didn’t know exactly how old I was, but she knew I was older.  I let that slip inadvertently in class one day, never to be done again.  When class let out on Monday, I walked by Kerry at the foot of the steps leading out of the building.  She was engaged in a conversation with a young man.  Jealousy was not even a twinkle in my eye; I smiled and passed a silent wave good bye never breaking stride.  I ascended the steps and greeted the air outside the hall where class was located.  This time somebody hurriedly snuck up on me. It was Kerry.

            “About our lunch,” this was not good, “I was caught off guard when you asked me to lunch on Friday, and I was hoping that we could keep our relationship… academic.”

            My stomach sank.  I had not attached any romantic assumptions to our lunch; it was merely a jumping off point for socialization, clearly she had.  But I had to be as cool, if not cooler than when I requested lunch in the first place. After all, it was a long semester and we had a lot more of each other’s papers to read. 

            “No worries,” I offered with a single swipe of my hand.  “But hey, let’s consider it an open invitation.  If you change your mind…let me know.”

            “Ok.” She said, and then we parted. 

            I felt this pit in my stomach, because everything had been misconstrued.  I attached only small romantic aspirations to the lunch with Kerry as she was cute, but not assumptions.  I am older, she is young.  I was new at school, she was established.  I just wanted to talk, have a bite, and then who knows, one step at a time.  I felt like I wanted to clarify this to her, but after thinking about her ‘academic’ response I averted.  She obviously spent the weekend planning what to say to get her out of her obligation, so I let it go at ‘no worries.’

            The semester went on, we read each other’s papers like nothing had happened, critiqued each other with a little more bias and both got good grades (as did the third member of our peer edit group).  I have not encountered Kerry since class ended, which I thought was bound to happen at some point on campus, but if I do, I’ll make sure to tell her “the lunch offer still stands.”