Page 5 of How We Began
We got lost. Got to class fifteen minutes late, and had to squeeze into seats in the back right corner while everyone watched us clamber through.
Slumped in my seat and trying very hard not to sweat, I focused on what the lecturer was saying. He’s crazy. At one point he jumped on the table to wake us all up.
Everyone had to tick boxes of the options they wanted to pick.
Meredith and I and a few of the others are single honour students so we aren’t combing the hot bed of fun that is History with anything else. We get to do all the courses and so ticked all the boxes instead of choosing what modules we liked the sound of.
Easy! If all I’ve got to do for the next three years is tick some boxes, I’m going to nail it.
The most irritating guy sat in the chair behind me. His toe tapped the leg of my seat the whole time.
Eventually he tapped on my shoulder. I turned, ready to give him a mouthful for being so bloody annoying, but then I saw his face.
Good God above.
His face was a masterpiece: lips perfect for pouting or kissing, and eyes the colour of cornflowers in summer fields. It all combined to create a stunningly symmetrical work of art. Inky black hair was tousled around his face and shoulders like something out of a magazine, and there was a dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose that dotted like a constellation of stars.
Yep, one look and I’d almost lost my mind.
Summer fields? Stars? I’m almost writing poetry and I think this diary alone is testament to how bad my literacy is.
Anyway, I sat there and waited while he evaluated me, my chair tipped back onto two legs.
“What do you want?” I eventually asked, my words were a little breathless even to my own ears.
I don’t believe in fate, or love at first sight, or any of that mumbo jumbo magazines tell you is waiting for you around the corner. But I swear on my life, the earth shifted, something happened beneath my feet.
And I’m pretty sure he was feeling it too. His plump, kissable lips parted slightly, the moment stretching between us, agonizingly perfect, until a blonde smelling of Eau de Popstar came and levered her way into the spare seat beside him.
“You’re the guy from the band, right? You played at the Fresher Ball?” she asked him, ignoring our silent but ultimately profound conversation. He snapped his eyes away from me and shot her a lazy smile.
He’s in a band… Sweet Jesus. He played the Fresher Ball… and it was this moment I wanted to know why the fuck could I still remember exactly nothing about that night.
“Ben,” he nodded and moved his stuff over to his side of the desk.
“Oh my god, you were amazing.”
Turning back to face the front, I tried to ignore their conversation. Failing miserably, may I add.
“Oh my God,” she whispered loudly, and I swear I could just imagine her fake-fanning herself. “It’s hot in here.”
I rolled my eyes at her dramatics, determined not to listen to anymore, knowing exactly what she was getting at.
I’m here to study and that’s all.
(Before bed)
We’ve got a shared bathroom in the dorm and there’s a thing where we put our stuff outside the bathroom door when we want to hold our place in the queue. Six of us live here but so far, I’ve only seen Meredith and one other girl called Jayne. The first two days here, an angry looking girl in all black had been around, but I haven’t seen her since, so I wonder if it was a rare sighting? Like seeing a spotted snow leopard or something.
I digress. Seriously, I swear Meredith and I will be taking out shares in the local off license up the road at this rate, because I’ve needed wine since my trip to the bathroom.
A lot of it.
After we got back from our slightly disappointing first lecture, no one else had left their stuff outside the bathroom door, and as I didn’t have much else to do to kill time apart from stare at the ceiling, stare at a history book, or stare at Meredith painting her nails cherry red, I decided to wait for the person in the shower to come out.
Which they did. Eventually.
It was him. Toe tapping, cornflower-blue eyed Ben.
