Every step along the course of romance boiled down to a line in a book Selina had once seen years ago. The book was a bridal shower gift to her cousin, an album to be filled in as a keepsake by the bride, and the page that had caught Selina’s eye was headed “Our Courtship: How We Met and Married.” The subheadings, First Date, First Kiss, First Murmured ‘I Love You’, were all etched in her head on what she envisioned as a large blackboard, with fist-sized smudges of chalk beneath each phrase from her earlier erasures. Her First Date with the guy from across the hall (his name was Graham) was the dinner he bought her the following weekend at an ivy-covered pizza parlor where she felt so at home she could have camped out in one of its booths.
When Selina had gone back into the hall that first evening after calling her mother, his door was still open. She saw him through the doorway sitting with his back to her on an old couch that sagged under his weight. Some of his hair, which she could see now was more of a chestnut color, was tossed over the ragged back of the couch, and he was reading from a book propped open on one knee.
“Could I come in?” she asked from the hall.
“Please do,” he said turning slightly to her. “My name is Graham, by the way.” He leaned forward a little, like he was going to stand up, and she shifter her weight onto the balls of her feet.
“Oh, yes. Hi. I’m Selina.” His face was still white and smooth, even in the better light. He was wearing jeans and a button-down shirt made of faded blue ticking that reminded her of an old feather pillow. He was holding a worn paperback copy of The Wasteland and Other Poems upside-down in the hand that was dangling over his knee while he looked at her, patiently waiting for her to step into his room.
Three days later, they had finished eating and pushed their plates to the side when, during the first inevitable awkward pause in their conversation, she found him looking at her like that again. Then Graham slid his hand across the table to barely touch the tip of her left middle finger, and he asked her about the two thin silver rings she wore on that hand. One had been given to her by her grandmother, she said, and the other she had bought for herself. She studied the calloused ends of his fingers.
“Do you ever sing, too, or do you just play the guitar?” she asked. His hand was still half an inch from hers.
He seemed mildly embarrassed. “You know, since I waited that day for all of my roommates to leave, I stupidly pictured myself playing in complete privacy. But I guess the whole dorm must have heard me.” He smiled down at the table and said, “I do sing, but never in the room. Not even if I think I’m there alone.” He looked over to see how amusing she found the whole thing. Selina smiled back. Her fingers, which she hadn’t moved in several minutes, had gone numb. “I take voice lessons from time to time in the music department, so I have access to the practice rooms. They’ve started to frown on anyone accompanying himself on the electric guitar in there, though.”
“I guess using the shower for that would be out of the question, then,” she said. He laughed and she leaned forward to examine her own hand, still laid flat on the table.
“But seriously, do you think you’ll do anything with it? Professionally, I mean. I thought you sounded pretty good.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Hopefully, I’m not dumb enough to try. Hopefully.” He leaned back against the seat. “What about you? What are you planning to do with your philosophy degree?”
“Mathematical philosophy degree,” she corrected him. “My senior essay has to be approved by both departments.” She pulled her plate back in front of her and began breaking off pieces of leftover pizza crust. “Well… I’ve considered law school, but I’m not really that kind of person. You know… Driven and ambitious.”
He drew his head toward the back of the booth. “Writing a math paper must be very strange,” he said.
“It’s more about logic than math, really,” she said. “My papers are always very short, just a couple of pages. A good, tight proof in logic is described as ‘elegant.’ Isn’t that a lovely expression? You could never say tat anything about history or biology was elegant.”
“I suppose not,” he laughed. He pulled back his hand slowly to the edge of the table and let it drop into his lap.
She popped a piece of crust in her mouth and spoke around it. “I know one thing though. I don’t think I’d make a very good college professor, which would be the other way to go. Speaking in front of crowds makes me extremely nervous.” Usually, Selina avoided conversations about anything post-graduation. When she thought about leaving college, she felt a physical pressure from the inside pushing out, as though there were a quantity of blood in her greater than the capacity of her veins and arteries, and she was afraid that before long she would explode.
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