So today when I’d parked and gotten out of my Jeep, it had felt right, like coming home.
“Mom! I know you’re teaching, but I had to leave a message. I just walked by the tennis court where Dad played. This is so cool! Anyway, I’ll call you tonight to let you know how it went. Love you! Bye!”
Walking to my Intro to Algorithms class (I was definitely a geek) I was excited to continue with my degree of becoming a software engineer here at Hallervan. When I got to the amphitheater where my class was held, I saw it was packed (guess there were lots of other computer geeks here too) and walking up the middle aisle through several other students, I made it to the fourth of the five rows of curved tables and found an empty seat next to a really cute guy who I smiled at shyly. He smiled back then kind of made a show of reaching to his right to hold the hand of the pretty girl next to him. Well, all right then.
I rolled my eyes as I got out my notebook then thought about my boyfriend Jared who I’d left behind at Berkeley. Well, I guess I should say ex-boyfriend now. He and I had dated for almost a year but for some reason I just hadn’t been feeling it. I mean, he was nice and all, attractive with a great body, but it had always seemed like something was missing. So when I decided I’d be attending Hallervan, we’d talked about how it didn’t make sense for us to stay together and we’d had a fairly amicable breakup (I think he’d felt the same about us which was why he didn’t get too upset) but we promised to keep in contact. Matter of fact, he’d texted me this morning to wish me luck on my first day. His classes didn’t start until tomorrow, so I’d wished him the same. He’d also reminded me that he had some friends here so if he made it up to see them, he’d call so we could get together and have lunch or something which had made me happy that we could be so chill with each other.
As I smiled at this, Dr. Lykins, the professor, came in, took a look around the full room then jumped right into his lecture about asymptotic analysis and Big-O notation. Of course, there were the usual snickers at the mention of “Big-O” and Dr. Lykins even chuckled a bit saying he knew that was coming and his pun made everyone laugh even more. Then he got right to it and before I knew it, I had an entire page filled with notes.
I flipped my notebook page over ready to scribble more and had the weirdest feeling that someone was watching me, so bringing my head up I glanced around the room for a moment, looking first to my right through the sea of faces busy listening to the lecture or furiously scrawling on their paper as I’d been, then to my left and was instantly met with the most gorgeous pair of chestnut eyes surrounded by long, sable lashes gazing back at me which almost made me drop my pencil.
Holy smokes!
And the guy the eyes belonged to was hot! His dark caramel hair was short on the sides but longer on top which he’d combed back and I could tell he hadn’t used any gel or pomade in it because it lay softly in an array of fashionable messiness. He had a perfect, straight nose and his hollow cheeks and chiseled jaw made me think he might be a model. Dang! I stared back watching completely mesmerized as his mouth slowly tipped up into a smile. It was only then that I realized I was gawking at him, and I became flustered, my eyes going huge as I whipped my head around to face the front. I then let out a little gasp of surprise as my pencil flipped out of my hand and over in front of Cute Guy next to me. I could sense his frown as he turned toward me and handed it back. Glancing sheepishly at him as I took it, I pushed some hair behind my ear in embarrassment which made him squint his eyes at me in disapproval then turn away.
For the rest of the class, I did that thing all women do, you know, where you act like something’s so much more interesting other than what you really want to be looking at, which in my case was to see whether Mr. Hottie McTottie, who may very well have been the most handsome man I’d ever laid eyes on, was still gazing at me. Instead, I found myself taking notes with such forced concentration it was almost as if the state of the free world rested on whether I crossed my “T’s” just so. Lame.
When class was over and Dr. Lykins had told us class wouldn’t meet Friday, I made a note of it then gathered my things and as I stood to go I had to wring my hand a bit to get the cramp out of it from gripping my pencil so hard. Then turning to leave, I ran smack dab into a wall of white t-shirt covered by a faded blue denim button up with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
“Sorry!” I exclaimed then my eyes went big when they landed on the tee that clung to well-defined pecs. Nice! I next noticed the muscular forearms that were attached to hands that were resting on my waist. Whoa! My eyes shot up to see who was being so bold as to put their hands on me that way (even though he’d probably done it to stop me from running into him) and also to see who this amazing body belonged to and I swear, if I’d still had that stupid pencil in my hand, it probably would’ve flown up to stick in the ceiling when I realized it was Smiling Model Guy who was all up in my space. Gah!