We drove through for our dinner, and ended up talking about absolutely nothing Zoology related for the first two hours of our evening together. Eventually, we managed to get down to business. We began designing flashcards. Terminology on one side, definition and illustration on the other. Flagella. Nemotode. These are words that arouse me, even now, purely for the association. We came up with silly and lewd mnemonic devices to help us remember the terms. I was having fun.

Then we decided we’d studied long enough, and we deserved a congratulatory drink. Which I had on hand. Toasting our bitchin’ flashcards, we downed the hard lemonade. He bummed a cigarette off me.

As he lit it, he smiled, “My girlfriend hates it when I smoke.”

Girlfriend.

Glass breaking. Tires screeching. My heart ventricles shut down for five seconds, and I felt like my brain was about to implode.

The next time I saw him in class he was different. Not cooler, like I might have expected after the way I completely closed off following his unexpected reveal. Just the opposite. He touched me more, touched my back when he said hello, touched my arm when he made a joke to tease me.

We walked to our cars afterward. He drove a huge, ancient, rusty Oldsmobile. I thought it was downright sexy. We sat in his car and he asked me for a cigarette. I probed about the girlfriend. Long term, almost five years. They’d broken up on a few occasions. He liked her okay, but didn’t plan on marrying her. My break was over, and it was time to shuffle off to Political Science where the best-looking guy was the pretentious professor, who always had to say, “I’m being facetious!” when making a joke. Tim hugged me goodbye.

Part of our final grade were two reports (hooray!) on trips to local wildlife havens. We had a whole list to choose from, and could make the trips at any time. Tim asked me if I’d like to join him when he went to the tide pools down in San Pedro. Knowing I would otherwise indefinitely procrastinate on this assignment, and still afflicted with the crush I’d been suffering from for weeks, I agreed.