lip. I raised an eyebrow at her, but she was too busy drooling to notice. Apart from the drooler, most of the class had definitely opted out of today’s lecture.
I turned to Michael and whispered, “I’m guessing that’s a common theme today.”
He smiled and said in a near whisper, “I’m glad you made it.” I felt a small shudder go through me as his voice dropped into a smooth, lower octave.
I smiled back at Michael and caught his eyes. I felt my stomach drop, the way it does when you’re on the top of a really high roller coaster. I could feel heat rise from my chest, into my cheeks, undoubtedly making them flush, and wondered if this cold was turning into fever. As I took a deep breath to get my ever-rapidly climbing heart rate until control, I immediately felt a tickle in my throat. Before I knew it, I began uncontrollably coughing again. Perfect, I thought. I put my hand over my mouth to muffle the sound as much as possible. I was petrified Dr. Van der Stein would kick me out for interrupting his lecture on the myth of phrenology. Just as I was about to get up and run into the hallway, Michael tapped my shoulder and without saying a word reached into his pocket, pulled out a handful of cough drops, and placed them on the desk in front of me. We made eye contact but I couldn’t speak to thank him, fearing any use of my voice would trigger another coughing fit. He turned back to face the front of the class but I continued to stare at him. I then stared at the cough drops.
Why was this affecting me so much? I felt a strong sense of panic come over me, followed by a moment of clarity.
I was in love with Michael.
The next day my apartment buzzer went off at exactly 8p.m. Without asking who wanted in, I buzzed back, opening the downstairs entrance, unlocked my door, and plopped back onto my couch. My best friend Cassandra had made me re-tell every moment of yesterday’s class with Michael ad nauseum over the phone that afternoon. By the end of it, I chalked up my new-found love for him as nothing more than fever-induced delirium. Even if I had found Michael momentarily attractive, I was looking forward to a nice relaxing evening on the couch with Nicholas. I finished the conversation with Cassandra by telling her that Nicholas was coming over that evening because he wanted to “nurse me back to health”.
Cassandra let out a long sigh into the receiver, and almost threateningly said, “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”
Two minutes after the buzzer had rung, my door opened and Nicholas Anderson had materialized. He was just standing there, smiling warmly at me. He was wearing his traditional torn jeans, plain white sneakers, and a dark-blue T-shirt with a hoodie over it. He topped the look off with a worn-out gray baseball-style hat that I remember him buying four years ago at Abercrombie. Nicholas was always a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy, he never dressed to impress anyone, always appearing completely comfortable, and he effectively pulled it off. It was one of the things that had drawn me to him in the first place.
We had met four years ago, freshman year of college at Rutgers when my roommate Dasha had introduced us. We clicked instantly and became fast friends, bonding over our mutual hatred of our economics professor and our love for Dashboard Confessional’s music. Even though the economics class would be the only class we would take together, me being a combined Biological Sciences/Psychology major, and him being a Communications major, we still made it a point to spend nearly every day together. At this time, four years ago, I was still involved with my high-school sweetheart and didn’t think of Nicholas as more than just a good buddy. By the time we finished undergrad, I came to think of him as one of my best friends. It wasn’t until one rainy Friday night two years ago when Nicholas insisted on coming over to talk and said that it was extremely important. He refused to tell me any details over the phone, which only made me imagine the worst. I was so nervous from his evasiveness, figuring something horrible had happened, that I immediately grabbed and hugged him when he arrived that evening. I nervously looked him up and down for some sort of clue as to what was going on. He quickly realized my frantic state and let out a chuckle.
“It’s nothing bad, Amalia,” he said, leading me to the couch. “I’m sorry I scared you. I just had to talk to you in person, and it had to be now.”
Dying of anticipation, I put my hands on his shoulders and commanded, “Tell me now.”
He took my hands off his shoulders and held on to them tightly, all the while keeping strong eye contact. Taken aback by this gesture, I was beginning to feel nervous. He let go of my left hand and stroked my out-grown bangs away from my face.
Without breaking eye contact, he said “I know we’ve been friends for a long time.” Nicholas paused and finally broke eye contact. He sheepishly looked down at the floor, almost too embarrassed or afraid to continue with his obviously well-prepared speech.
I opened my mouth to break the silence when he said, “But I’m crazy about you, and I have been since the first time I saw you.”
My initial reaction was to bypass this type of emotionally charged contact with a joke, but I was too stunned to deflect with my usual sarcasm. Nicholas then proceeded to proverbially pour his heart out to me, recapping every moment of the first day we met, from the smell of the perfume I had on, right down to the green laces in my sneakers, and everything in between. He ended his pontification perfectly, declaring the words that every girl longs to hear from a man.
He cupped my face in his hands and softly said, “Amalia, you’re the one”.
I was petrified. No one had ever told me I was “the one”, and certainly never with such conviction and confidence that Nicholas had presented. He spoke as if the alternative, me not being “the one”, was impossible. After taking a few days to think about this proposal, of him and I taking a huge leap into a full-blown relationship that could end badly, ultimately causing us to never speak again, I decided it was worth the risk if it meant I got to be with someone who loved me so intensely. It was now two years later, and I had never felt happier.
Remembering that night only made me feel more relieved and comforted by his familiar presence when he walked over to me tonight.
“I come bearing gifts!” he said as he excitedly reached into a plastic Duane Reade bag.
I wrapped the blanket around me and sank a little lower into the couch, fully preparing myself to be taken care of. Even with his cap on, I could see that Nicholas’s dark hair had grown out well past the point of needing a haircut, but somehow it only made him look sexier.
“Nyquil, tissues, organic green tea, and Vitamin C,” he proudly presented as he systematically placed the contents of the bag in a line on my coffee table.
After emptying the contents of the bag, he took off his hat and threw it on the table, revealing his perfectly straight, gorgeous jet-black hair. He then leaned over me and put his hand on my forehead; his hands were always warm and comforting. I immediately closed my eyes in reaction to the warm rush of what I could only recognize as love. True love that formed when you knew someone perfectly for years before you even began dating them, not the kind of quick lust that was elicited when a near-stranger offers you a lozenge. Having been raised by an atheist mother, the notion of faith to me was as well received as believing in the tooth fairy. However, when it came to Nicholas, the cynical, black-and-white realist that had been ingrained in me from an early age seemed to disappear. I firmly believed that we were meant to be soul-mates. I opened my eyes and stared into his. His eyes were by far his best feature. They were perfectly round and impossibly wide and youthful, a light chestnut color with flakes of deep brown, which masculinized an otherwise feminine trait.
“Hi, baby,” I purred dreamily, slipping further into bliss. His strong arms were exactly what I needed to fall into after a day of feeling awful.
“Hello, darling,” he answered