Copyright © 2006 Lusty Library
Ava stepped out of her dorm into the crisp winter air. The first snow of the season had come last night and the world was covered in white. The campus looked beautiful; everything sparkled. Snow always made her happy, always reminded her that life was good no matter what was going on at the time. It snowed only for her, she was sure of it.
Her footsteps crunched as she crossed the quad. She pulled her scarf up a little higher and her wool hat down a little lower to try to keep out the cold. There was a group of guys engaged in a snowball fight and she had to duck to avoid getting hit. She laughed to herself. It was a good day.
She moved her bag from one shoulder to the other. Too many books, she thought. She was certain she would have a dent in her shoulders where her bag hung by the end of the semester.
She was on her way to Deacon Hall for Professor Day’s class. She loved his class, even loved all the work involved. He was the most interesting teacher she had ever had. He somehow found a way to tie the Simpson’s in with everything he taught. It was refreshing to be taught by someone unafraid of change. Her other professors seemed stuck in an era of boring lectures and glassy eyed students, tweed coats and combovers. It was her earliest class, but still she never missed it. She wouldn’t dream of missing it.
Ava pulled back her glove to check her watch.
“Oh, crap,” she mumbled aloud.
She was running late. She picked up her pace, hurrying ahead. Professor Day was just about to start his lecture when she came bundling into the lecture hall. He smiled at her, and she took her seat.
There was a guy sitting next to her and she was briefly annoyed. Her seat was usually secluded from the others in the class. Most people sat several seats away from the other students with the exception of a few groups of friends here and there. It was early in the morning and people tended to like their space. She felt infringed upon and so she was scowling as she got out her notebook.
“Bad morning?” the guy asked.
“What?” she replied, startled that he had spoken to her.
She looked up from stowing her back on the floor and saw him smiling at her. She hadn’t noticed what he had looked like before, just that he was too near her favorite seat. Now she took him in and realized that she might have been too hasty in her annoyance.
He had bright blue eyes and disheveled curly dark hair. She wanted to touch his hair, to run her fingers through it. Ava shook her head slightly, trying to shake herself out of her little reverie before she did something stupid like actually try to touch him. She smiled at him, recovering from her moment of idiocy.
He held out his hand to her.
“I’m Aidan.”
“Ava.”
She shook his hand briefly, his grip was soft and light. guys never shook girls’ hands the way they did other guys. Ava always wondered about that. She had as good a handshake as anyone.
He let go of her hand and continued to look at her. She wondered what he found so fascinating. Ava thought she was rather plain looking, much to the frustration of all those who knew her. She was far from plain. She was small and pixie-ish, the kind of girl that all guys seemed to want to take care of. Ava was always blissfully unaware of these things, however.
Aidan couldn’t help but stare at her. She was a modest beauty and that was rare. Beautiful without knowing she was beautiful. Too many pretty girls knew always exactly how pretty they were and weren’t about to let the world forget it. Ava, though, she was different.
“So, um, how is this class? I just picked it up.”
“Really? I didn’t know you could add this late. Hm. Well it’s a great class. He’s a cool professor and totally not a dick. He’s covered a lot of stuff already, though, so you might need to ask him for notes or something to catch up.”
“What about your notes? Could I borrow them?”
“Oh. Yeah, sure. I guess so.”
Ava blushed a little, as she realized how glad she was that she had resisted her urges to doodle in her notebook. During class she would be paying attention and taking notes, but her mind would also start thinking about how cute Professor Day was and how much her pen would like to doodle his name, maybe draw some hearts around it…
Luckily, she had mentally slapped herself every time that urge came about and could now safely loan her notes to this new classmate of hers. Professor Day started the lecture, so they had to cut their conversation short. Ava was usually so enthralled with his lectures, but today all she could think about was how good Aidan smelled. She couldn’t tell if it was cologne or just guy smell, but it was good whatever it was. Musky.
The professor assigned homework and ended his lecture, telling the students he would see them on Friday. The noise of people getting their bags together and coats on filled the room. Everyone shuffled around to get out of the classroom and to their next classes or back to their dorms to take a nap. Ava didn’t have another class for an hour and usually used this time to get a coffee and do some reading.
She stood to leave when Aidan’s voice stopped her.
“So can I have those notes?”
“Oh. Yeah, of course. I’m sorry. I must have been off in lala land or something. Do you want to photocopy them or just borrow them?”
“I guess I could copy them, if you don’t mind running over to the library with me.”
“No, that’s fine. This is actually a free hour for me.”
The two headed out of the lecture hall and toward the library. It was the biggest building on campus by far, an old looming structure with columns and stones and gargoyles that looked like it had survived since the Middle Ages. Some students liked to tell stories about how it was haunted by the ghost of a sorority girl who had died in the stacks forty years ago. It was a tradition to try to scare the freshman and it usually worked. Freshman rarely studied in the library during late night hours.
Aidan held the door open for Ava as they stepped into the building. The old furnaces were working overtime and they were hit with a blast of heat. The library was always stuffy and nobody seemed to be able to regulate the temperature properly. Ava immediately wished she weren’t wearing her heavy camelhair coat or her wool sweater.
“Copiers are all over the place, but I usually use the ones on the fourth floor. It’s kind of out of everybody’s way and no one really uses them much so they are never broken.”
“Alright. You lead the way.”
Aidan gestured for Ava to go ahead of him and she complied. They made their …
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