Part of what I like about summer classes is the fact that the campus isn’t over crowded. There is always a parking space and the classes are smaller and filled with more attentive people. They also give me a chance to get noticed. I don’t know if Kristen noticed me when we both got out of our cars at the same time, but I sure noticed her. I remember thinking “man, I hope she’s going to the class I’m going to.” And in fact, she was.
My first glance at Kristen made me skip a breath or two. Her eyebrows were pronounced, both pointing to her sleek nose which was fixed above her mouth that, even in a frown has a way of smiling. She had a devious beauty that I found irresistible. I watched her walk toward the building in a white tee shirt and a pair of red athletic shorts and noticed that the girl had curves. It’s safe to say that she drove me nuts from the get go.
This class was an even more condensed class than the usual summer class. It took a little over two weeks to complete and we spent the majority of the time observing criminal court cases downtown at the courthouse… it was a wonderful class, one of my favorites. I arranged a carpool for a few of my classmates and myself to get downtown in tandem and after a few days Kristen made her way to the back seat of my car to and from court. We spent a lot of time in each others vicinity during the class but no time doing what I wanted to be doing, talking to her. It was almost all group talk, as it should be after all, we were being graded. One of the conversations, per Kristen’s input, stuck out in my mind.
The court was taking a break so by default the class was taking a break as well. We chatted about random things, I tried to keep it as court related as I could, but one young man mentioned a friend, I think, who had Crohn’s disease and how he had lost a ton of weight because of it. I’m not sure why it was brought up or what the relevance was but I took note to Kristen’s response. Actually I took offense to it.
“I wish I had Crohn’s disease,” she said “that way I could be skinny.”
Now I could tell it was a throw away remark but as the cliché goes “there’s a little bit of truth behind every ‘just kidding.’” I remember thinking “if this girl doesn’t know how drop dead sexy she is, than someone in her life isn’t doing their job.” I felt compelled to tell her this, but not right away… when the time was right.
Over the next few days class and court went on as scheduled. The carpool put me very near, but not alone with Kristen and I found no opportunity to address something of a personal nature. By the end of the first week I had pulled her quickly aside and said “at some point, I have something to say, kind of in response to something you said the other day.” She was clueless as the remark for her was a throw away, but it stuck with me. ‘Okay’ she told me and we went back to the class. And for the remainder of the time I waited until the opportunity was right. But the chance never presented itself. I had to make one.
One conversation that I overheard during the carpool was how Kristen and another carpool member lived literally a couple houses away from each other in the same apartment complex. Had she known I was paying as close attention to her personal details as I was, she probably wouldn’t have blurted out her address so quickly. It’s also quite possible that because after the class was over she was done with school and leaving the apartment for good and didn’t care. I prefer the version where I was sly.
So on the last day my car unloaded the pool for the last time and we went our separate ways. After fifteen minutes or so I found myself parked next to Kristen’s car outside her house. I walked up and knocked on her door. She answered, surprised. I had to reassure her that she told everyone where she lives, I did not stalk her. At this point she remembered that I had something to say.
I quoted her earlier remark about Crohn’s disease and the part about being skinny. She smiled upon remembering the remark and said quickly about how it was just a joke. I gestured with my hands for her to hear me out, because if she didn’t believe that, even slightly, then she wouldn’t have said it. So I told her,
“A remark like that undermines how truly gorgeous you really are... and I mean that.”
She thanked me but apparently didn’t fall head over heels in love with me which left us just standing there. My task was done. I had said what I wanted to say, which pleased her but it was time to move on. She didn’t say goodbye so we chatted. And in case you didn’t know, I’m a talker. We talked and I let no awkward pauses fill our conversation, but with her leaving for home, where was it going to go? We exchanged numbers and agreed to make an attempt to hang out again. My attempt was whole hearted, hers was not I’m sure, and that’s not derogatory. It was a weird situation in which I refused to let it be weird. Had it gotten awkward I’d probably be ending this story with the proverbial ‘never heard from her again.’ It wasn’t and that’s why I still have the hope that I will get to see her devious beauty again sometime.
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