After Math(5)

I shrug. “He wasn’t anything like I expected. He was… polite.”

Sinking back into the cushions, an ornery grin lights up her face and she scoops several noodles. “Oh, he’s polite all right.”

“Not like that. Kind of quiet. Other than a few slips into character, he was…normal.”

“Are we talking about the same Tucker Price? Blond with incredible blue eyes? About six foot? Stunning legs when he wears those soccer shorts? Guy who flaunts his good looks and his sportsmanship?”

“Good Lord. Is everything a sexual innuendo to you tonight?”

“Pretty much.”

“Well, it was the same guy. Different personality.”

“Shh!” She grabs the remote and increases the volume. “Chuck’s about to trade Blair for a hotel.”

My jaw drops. “You’re kidding, right?” I’ve never been able to get into Gossip Girl, despite Caroline’s multiple and relentless attempts to sway me to the dark side. As a poor girl from the other side of the tracks, I just can’t relate to spoiled rich kids. Or maybe it’s the spoiled, rich bad boys I’m trying to avoid. Why anyone would willingly subject themselves to that type of person is beyond me.

“Want to talk about anything?” I ask.

Tears fill her eyes, but she shakes her head.

“I’m here if you need me, okay?”

She gives me a tearful smile, and I wrap an arm around her shoulders, leaning my head into hers. I suspect her despondency is related to her breakup from her boyfriend, Justin. He broke up with her several months before, but she’s still not over it. She’ll talk when she’s ready, probably in another hour or two.

I force myself off the sofa, not an easy task since it’s so cozy under the afghan with Caroline. “I’ve got some equations to work on.”

Caroline fakes a snore.

I put a hand on my hip and look down my nose at her. “Don’t the nerdy-math jokes ever get old?”

She twists her mouth to the side as though she’s giving it thought. “Nope. Never do.”

“I could tease you mercilessly about your fashion design degree. Tons of fodder there.”

“Go for it.” She grins with exaggerated glee, the tears still in her eyes. My heart breaks for her, yet I don’t know what to do to help her get over this awful pain. For the moment, we ignore the elephant in the room.

“Turns out I’m a nicer person than you,” I call out to her as I walk down the hall to my bedroom.

“You just keep telling yourself that.”

I turn my desk light on then lie down on my bed and listen to the ping of the rain on my window, taking a deep breath. I try to do my relaxation exercises every night to help my overall anxiety, and the soothing sound of the rain helps.

One of many godsends about college was my access to free counseling. After struggling to control my anxiety since the sixth grade, I was grateful to find ways to not only cope with it, but improve my life. I can thank Caroline for making me go only a few weeks into our freshman year after she found me lying on my bed struggling to breathe during a panic attack.

My therapist taught me to use guided imagery to help reduce anxiety before a potential situation that makes me nervous, but I also like to do it after situations that upset me. I relive what happened and reimagine how I wanted it to go. I focus on the incident in Western civ and how I should have appropriately responded to being late—walking in without feeling embarrassed. When people turn their attention to me, I smile and walk to my seat. But when I think about how I should have reacted to running into Tucker, my anxiety rises. I know the situation would have been humorous to anyone else. Why do I have to make such a big deal of it? But whenever I try to relive how I should have handled it, I see Tucker’s face in the student union  . The disinterest. The sadness in his eyes. I hardly even know him so I’m not sure why I care.

Perhaps it’s because I see the same expression every morning when I look in the mirror.

With a sigh, I sit upright and take my long, dark hair out of its ponytail, then run my fingers through the strands. I’m imagining things. That’s the thing about people: you never really know where they stand. You have to rely on gestures and social cues, and still, you really don’t know.

I move to the desk and get out my homework. Anxious prickles have poked the back of my neck since I began thinking about Tucker. I pull out my book and study the equation for my linear algebra class. As I write the numbers onto the paper, my shoulders begin to unfurl, my tension fading away. Some people knit or read to relax. I do math problems. My mother and little sister never let me live it down when I was younger, making fun of my love of arithmetic. With math, as long as you have all the necessary factors, you can find the answer. Life, on the other hand, is so much messier.