More than one ball gets rolling

Roughly half an hour into the lecture I heard the back door on my side of the room open. The professor paused for the briefest of seconds to assess, then continued seamlessly thereafter. I admired his ability to stay focused and keep the flow; I’m sure the last thing he or the person opening the door wanted was to have it be a spectacle. I made a note in my personal tutoring book to get more practice with that.

A soft series of steps came closer, until their owner sat down in the empty spot next to me. Ah, that explains it even more. Certainly didn’t want to draw attention to a late student. Between notes I shifted some of my books to give them extra space. I checked to make sure I was leaving them enough room.

???: Sorry about that. Thank y- Oh, hey Emery! Fuck, am I happy to see a familiar face here!

Her whispering my name in such a warm way stopped me in my tracks. Did I know a girl in my department that I was on such friendly terms with? Surely not, but the voice sounded familiar. I turned and was surprised to see who the late student was; it was Rina! I had no idea we attended the same classes. I don’t remember ever seeing her in any of them before — in fact, I could’ve sworn she told me at some point she was in general studies.

I smiled and gave her a small wave of my hand.

Emery: Hey Rina, good to see you too!

Rina: Did I miss anything important yet?

She unzipped her bag and set up all of the papers and materials while asking. She organized it all neatly and quickly started copying what the professor hadn’t erased from the board yet.

I tilted my hand back and forth in a so-so gesture.

Emery: Nothing too major, but I wouldn’t say nothing important either. We just got through the introductory portion. Mostly some fundamentals, a few definitions and a smidge of history related to those.

Rina: Ah shit, I hate not having notes for material like that.

She scratched the back of her head and looked at her paper nervously. I felt her pain. Missing core concepts like these made it hard for me to do referencing down the line. I didn’t know she was so diligent about her study work.

Emery: Hey…don’t worry about trying to catch up to everything. He already erased some of the board earlier anyways. You can just copy that portion of my notes when the lecture is over.

She beamed at me like I had literally just saved her life. She moved to hug me but stopped, I assume she thought that wouldn’t be appropriate at this time. She settled instead to put her hand on my thigh and gave it a gentle squeeze. I felt myself freeze up at the rather intimate touch. I questioned if doing that was actually the better call, but didn’t say nor do anything about it.

Rina: You’re the best dude, thank you! I’m so glad you were the one sitting here!

Emery: …Happy to help.

She let go and immediately got to work on her notes. Upon our separation an unintentionally held breath seemed to escape me.

I returned to my notes as well and continued working. Every now and then, however, I found myself stealing glances at Rina without meaning to.

Rina had clearly been sweating hard before she arrived. I wondered if they had basketball practice beforehand and ran later than expected. She had her hair — which was much longer than I remembered — tied up in the wrapped braid she tended to use during training, so that would track. That wouldn’t explain why her casual clothes were covered in sweat though, would it? Teams typically take showers after their activities, and even if they don’t, they practice in other sets of clothes. I’ll ask her about that later when we’re exchanging notes…

I stopped and thought about what I was doing. Sneaking peeks at her again and again? Overthinking about her schedule? Eugh…almost positive I was being creepy right now. We might’ve been friendly for the last two years as I was helping the team with everything, but this still didn't feel quite right…

I couldn’t tell why exactly I was so drawn to her at the moment. My thoughts did tend to wander, but as far as I knew my habit of overanalyzing things wasn't usually this unsavory. Was the combination of her arriving late and accepting a favor with no hesitance throwing me off harder than I thought? Something was tugging at the back of my mind about her — like I was working on a nearly resolved math problem — but I couldn’t parse it while trying to focus on the lecture…

I made an active effort to stop and intensified my attention on the class. Time flew by, ink sprawled across pages, and sure enough, the lecture was over before I knew it.