We met in October, the year the Cleveland Indians won the pennant
against the Baltimore Orioles, 4-2. I listened to the game on my portable
radio during lectures, silently cheering on my hometown while halflistening to my professor explain Kepler’s Third Law. I was a senior at
New York University, making up a history class that I had failed freshmen
year, already mentally out the door, dreaming of where my astronomy
degree could take me. Probably to the moon, but I would settle for a
control room. She quietly slipped into the classroom and came over and
sat next to me, fifteen minutes into class. Her cheeks were flushed and
she was breathing heavy, her untied shoes dragging their muddy laces
along the aisle, leaving a wet trail behind her. She was wearing a hat and
chewing gum, probably to hide her bedhead and unbrushed teeth. As
the professor droned on about Ancient Egypt and the Pyramids, I snuck
glances over at her. She was taking a lot of notes, but when I looked
closer, her words were written like a poem, a few words per line before she
started down on the next one.
That semester I spent every Tuesday and Thursday casting side-eyed
glances at her, trying to read what she was writing. She eventually caught
on, I think, because whenever I would look over at her she would do the
same, causing our eyes to meet awkwardly until one of us would smile
and look away. We finally got to talking, and I spent the majority of time
learning about her. I followed her around like a puppy, begging for her to
show me something she had written, thinking that maybe she had written
about me. She never showed me out of fear that my ego would become
bigger than it already was. I dazzled her with facts about the stars and the
moon and the planets. She finally showed me her work and I was equally
dazzled, jealous and in awe of her ability to create.
The summer that followed our graduation was the summer of
affectionate nicknames whispered through sunburned lips and cracked
radios playing broken love songs as background music to the tune of
fingernails across wooden picnic tables as we climbed on top to claim
Central Park as our own, king and queen of freshly cut grass and gravel
walkways. Freshly cut grass that left stains on our shirts as we tried
to channel our inner Oscar Wilde’s Cyril and lie on the grass, smoke
cigarettes, and enjoy Nature. Gravel walkways that deposited bits of rock
into scrapes on our knees as we fell over each other to make it up the
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