We Were Almost

"Move."

Ethan looked up from his phone.

A girl was standing over him. Bag strap in both hands. Eyes locked on him like he had wronged her personally and deliberately.

He looked left. Empty seats. He looked right. More empty seats. He looked back at her.

"There are like thirty other seats."

"I want that one," she replied. 

"We just started. Nobody owns a seat yet."

"I came yesterday and sat here,” she said flatly." This is my seat."

Ethan stared at her. Then he said slowly, like he wanted to hear himself say it:

"You came to an empty lecture hall the day before class to pick a seat?"

“That is the whole point," she said.

"That is so sad."

She did not blink. Did not flinch. Just stood there looking at him like he was a mild inconvenience she had already accounted for.

"Are you moving or not?"

He moved. One seat to the right. Sat down slowly like he had planned it all along.

She settled in fast and brought out her notebook with two pens and one highlighter. She dated the top of the page before the professor had even set his bag down.

"You already wrote the date," Ethan said.

"Obviously."

"Class has not started."

"That is the whole point." She said. 

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Decided some battles were not worth fighting at eight forty five in the morning and faced forward as the professor walked in.

Four minutes later he leaned sideways.

"Can I borrow a pen?"

The look she gave him could have melted concrete.

"You came to the first lecture of the year without a pen."

"I have my phone."

"For notes."

"People take notes on their phones?"

"People who want to fail take notes on their phones," She said it like a fact. 

She reached into her bag and held out a pen without looking at him. Like a doctor handing over medicine they were not happy about prescribing.

"Do not lose it."

"I am borrowing it."

"Same thing."

He took it. Their fingers touched for half a second. Warm. Gone.

He did not think about it. He absolutely thought about it.

Twenty minutes in he leaned again.

"What did he just say?"

"Supply shifts right when production costs fall." She did not look up. "Write it down."

He wrote it. He watched her write faster than anyone he had ever seen… neat, certain, like she already knew what mattered before the professor finished saying it.

"You are staring," she said.

"I am looking forward. You are just in my forward."

"Move your forward."

He smiled at the whiteboard. He could not help it.

When the lecture ended she was packed before half the hall had stood up. Ethan grabbed his bag and followed her into the corridor without deciding to.

"What is your name?" he asked.

A pause. Like she was deciding if he deserved it.

"Maya."

A pause."Ethan." He replied. He held out his hand. She looked at it one beat too long then shook it once and let go fast.

They walked out into the September morning. Wide sky. People everywhere who seemed to know where they were going.

"See you on Thursday," she said and started down the steps.

He watched her go. And then he did something he immediately knew was probably a mistake.

"Hey. Maya."

She stopped. Half turned.

He should have let her go. He had known her for forty minutes. She had made him move seats and lectured him about pens and looked at him like he was mildly inconvenient the entire time.

He said it anyway.

"I think you are the most interesting person I have met since I got here."

The words landed between them and stayed.

Maya stood on the steps below him. Someone bumped past her across the quad and someone was shouting someone else's name. The world kept moving like nothing had happened.

She looked at him.

"You have been here for three days," she said.

"Yeah." 

"That is not a big sample."

"No. But I am sure anyway."

She looked at him one more second. Then she said: "That is a strange thing to say to someone you just argued with over a seat."

And she turned and walked away.

His roommate Jake, who had been his best friend for three years, appeared from nowhere and clapped him on the shoulder.

"Who was that?"

"Nobody. Girl from class."

"You watched her walk away for a full minute."

"I was thinking."

"About her." 

Ethan went down the steps. Jake followed grinning.

"What is her name?"

"Maya."

"Are you going to talk to her on Thursday?"

"We have class together. I will have to."

"That is not what I asked."

Ethan looked across the quad in the direction she had gone. Nothing there now. Just people and buildings and an ordinary morning.

Jake was still grinning beside him like he had just watched something very entertaining happen to someone else, which, Ethan supposed, he had.

"I do not know," he said. He meant it. He genuinely did not know.

He just knew that for the first time since arriving at this university… this major he had not chosen, this life that still felt like someone else's plan … he was actually looking forward to Thursday.

She made it three blocks before she stopped walking.

Not because she was tired, but because her chest was doing something it had absolutely no business doing and she needed exactly one second to deal with it.

She pressed her back against the wall of the humanities building and stared at the sky.

I think you are the most interesting person I have met since I got here.

She replayed it. The way you press a bruise to check if it still hurts.

It still hurt. Not hurt exactly. Something warmer. Something worse.

She pressed her hand flat against her sternum right there on the pavement with people walking around her like she was a rock in a river.

"Stop it," she said out loud.

A boy walking past glanced at her.

"Not you," she said firmly. He walked much faster.

Maya pushed off the wall. She had a nine thirty. She had a system. She had things to do that did not include standing against buildings thinking about a boy who showed up to Economics without a pen and had the nerve to call her interesting like it was a simple fact and not a grenade.

She had noticed him before he sat down. That was the part she was not going to examine.

She had seen him from three rows away …long legs stretched out, phone in hand, taking up the kind of space that people take when they have never had a reason not to. She had expected charming and easy and completely forgettable.

Then he said I do not know yet about my major, about my father's plan, in a voice so unguarded she had to look away.

That was the dangerous part. Not the compliment on the steps.

The “I do not know yet.”

She was still lost in her thoughts when her phone buzzed. It was her mom.

She answered immediately the way she always did.

"How was the first class?"

"Good. Fine. Normal."

"You sound funny."

"I am walking to my next class."

Her mother had a way of hearing things Maya did not say. It was a gift and deeply inconvenient.

"Did something happen?"

"Nothing happened. I will call you tonight."

She hung up and kept walking and refused to think about Ethan.

By the time she reached her nine thirty she had almost managed it. Almost.

She sat down. Opened her notebook. Wrote the date at the top of the page.

Then in the margin, very small, before she could talk herself out of it:

On Thursday.

She looked at it. Drew a line through it. Looked at it some more.

The professor started talking. Maya looked up and paid attention and was completely fine.

She also thought about the way their fingers had touched when she passed him the pen and how she had told herself it was nothi

ng and how nothing had never felt quite that warm before. She hated that.

She thought about it the entire lecture.