Econ 201 met Tuesdays and Thursdays at nine in a lecture hall that smelled like radiator dust, and for sixteen weeks I sat in the same row, third seat in from the aisle. Darius sat next to me. Not behind me, not two seats down after the first few weeks when people figured out where they were supposed to be. Next to me, on my right, every single class. I know it was every class because I counted. I counted the way you count things you’ve already decided mean something.
He always took the right. If the row was half empty he still took the right. Once a girl who usually sat there got to the row first, and he stopped in the aisle and just looked at her, and she moved without him saying a word. I noticed that. I filed it.
We didn’t talk much at first. He had a laptop with a cartoon fox sticker on the lid, and he took notes by hand anyway, in a green notebook, drawing small neat boxes around anything Professor Halvorsen said twice. By October he was leaning over to ask what she meant by marginal propensity to save, his shoulder warm against mine through my sweater, and I answered him for twenty minutes without once looking at the slide. He didn’t seem to mind that I was looking at him instead. Neither did I.
The lavender set, mostly. The stockings when it rained. I sat through sixteen weeks of marginal utility wearing lace under a crewneck for a man who never once saw it and never once stopped me from doing it, and I understand exactly how that sounds, and I’d do all of it again.
Midterms came and went. We compared scores on the way out of the hall and he always got the higher one by a point or two, and he always pretended it was luck. We ate lunch at the same sad sandwich place on Wednesdays because it was the only spot with a booth big enough for two people who weren’t pretending to study. Nobody said anything about the booth. Everybody on campus knew it was ours by week six.
By finals I knew his coffee order. I knew his older sister’s name was Imani and that she was the only person alive who called him Dee and got away with it. I knew he tapped his pen against his front teeth when a problem was almost solved, and that when he laughed he turned his face away from whoever he was laughing at, like the laugh was something he didn’t want to hand over directly. I knew more about him than I knew about most of the people I’d dated. That should have told me something sooner.
The last day of finals was a Friday. The exam ran long, and when we walked out into the parking lot the sky had that flat late-afternoon look, and he asked if I wanted to come over and actually review, since neither of us had managed it all semester. We’d said we’d study at his place, a two-bedroom off campus with a kitchen the size of a closet and a radiator that knocked every four minutes like it was on a schedule. I said yes before he’d finished the sentence, which he noticed, and which he didn’t comment on. The problem sets came out of my bag once, got opened to page one, and went back in. He poured two glasses of wine into mismatched mugs, one with a chipped handle, and then he stood at the counter with his back to me and didn’t turn around right away. The textbooks stayed exactly where they were.
“I’ve been thinking about this since October,” he said, and I’d been thinking about it since September, so we were both late.
“September,” I said.
“Earlier.” He turned around. “First week. You came into the library with that terrible umbrella, and I thought, oh no.”
I laughed. He didn’t. He looked at me the way he looked at a problem he’d finally cracked, a little disbelieving, a little pleased with himself and trying hard not to show it. Then he set his mug down and crossed the kitchen, and the radiator knocked twice, and neither of us said one word about the review session again.
He kissed like he took notes, careful at first and then not careful at all. My dress was a wrap style and he got it open without fumbling, which I noticed and liked more than I should have. Then he stopped, both hands on the lapels, looking down at what sixteen weeks of Tuesdays and Thursdays had been under the sweater the entire time.
“You wore this,” he said. “To class.”
“Every class since October.”
“Every —” He didn’t finish it. He exhaled through his nose, one sharp breath, and said, “God,” and then he kissed me again harder, and I understood that I had just cashed in every single lecture for full credit.
I had him backed against the fridge, and then we were both on the kitchen floor, because the tile was cool and the cabinet door was in the way and neither of us wanted to find out whether the bedroom was closer. The radiator, for the record, did not stop knocking the entire time. It was the only thing in that apartment with any sense of timing.
I was still in the dress, the wrap hanging open to my waist and the hem pushed up over my knees, when he sat back against the cabinet and I understood what he wanted. He still had his shirt on. I didn’t mind. I liked watching him work out what he was allowed to ask for, and then deciding to ask anyway.
“Look at you on the floor,” he said, low, like he was reading it off a page.
“Get down for me. Yeah, right there. Hands on my thighs.”
“Tell me what you thought about in lecture.”
“This,” I said. “This, mostly. Every one.”
“The whole class,” he said. “Sitting right next to me in that sweater. In this.” His hand was already in my hair, gathered at the back, testing the weight of it. “My pretty pale girl. Look how you’re looking up at me.”
“Now the rest,” he said, “I practiced, so give me a break on it — I thought about your mouth every single class. Every one. Don’t make me say it twice.”
“I won’t.” I meant it. I don’t think I’ve ever been given anything more honest than a boy admitting he rehearsed.
I got my hands on his belt and he helped me, which I appreciated, because he was already hard and the buckle had decided to be difficult. He was thicker than I’d let myself guess from the back of the lecture hall. I wrapped my hand around him, slow, and he sucked a breath in through his teeth and didn’t let it out for a while. I put my tongue flat against the underside and worked up to the head, then did it again, slower, until he swore under his breath and his hand came down into my hair, loose, just resting there.
“Take your time,” he said.
I took him in a few inches at a time, getting my jaw used to the stretch of him before I tried for anything deeper. The first time I went down far enough that my nose hit the hair at the base, my throat locked and my eyes flooded, and I pulled back gasping and coughed once, spit running down my chin and onto the wrap. He didn’t flinch away. His hand tightened, not pulling, just holding on.
“There you go,” he said, when I went back down without being asked.
I went back down. Down, hold, off, breathe, down again, the way I’d figured out he liked it by the third pass, my cheeks hollowing and the wet sound of it loud in the small kitchen. By the fourth time through my jaw was aching in the way that tells you you’re going to feel it tomorrow and you don’t care. He was moving under me now, small thrusts up into my mouth that he wasn’t entirely in control of anymore, and every time he pushed up I felt him tense a little more.
“Look at me,” he said. “Look at my hand in your hair. My dark hand, on my pretty pale girl, and you’re taking all of it.” His hips jerked, small and unplanned, and he hissed and pressed me lower than I had any business going, and kept me there, one hand flat on the back of my skull. “This is what you were doing in econ. Sitting there like this under your sweater. While I was trying to take notes.”
“Don’t stop,” he said, when I came up for air. “I want you to feel how long I’ve wanted this.”
“Hold still for me.” And I held still — no hands, no working, just open and steady and his to use, which is the single best instruction I’ve ever been given and the only one I’ll still be thinking about in ten years when the rest of that semester is gone. He used the last minute of it exactly how he wanted, hands fisted, breathing through his nose, the radiator knocks marking time like something out of a metronome.
He came without much warning, his hand fisted in my hair and holding me there, my throat full and my eyes streaming and my hands flat on his thighs for balance. He groaned something that wasn’t a word anymore. I swallowed around him, throat working through every pulse, and stayed right where he’d put me until he finally eased his grip and let me breathe.
I sat back on my heels on the tile, cleaned my chin with the back of my hand, and looked up at him. He looked down at me for a long second like he was filing something of his own. Then he reached up, pulled the dishtowel off the oven handle, and handed it to me without a word, which was the most considerate thing anyone had done for me all semester.
I got up, fixed the wrap where it had gone sticky and see-through at the front, and went to rinse my mouth in his bathroom. He didn’t follow me. Through the wall I could hear the radiator knocking again, right on schedule. I stood at his sink for a while listening to it and telling my reflection that my face looked normal. My reflection did not agree — swollen mouth, hair wrecked, one stocking twisted around my ankle where I’d kicked it loose on the floor — and I decided the disagreement was acceptable.
When I came out he’d already cleaned up the table — mugs rinsed, problem sets stacked, the room restored to something that looked like review happened in it. He was very normal about all of it, which I understood was its own kind of consideration, and also its own kind of statement: whatever this had been, he wasn’t going to make it weird by making it fragile. Men who act like a thing is breakable usually break it. Darius just put the dishtowel back on the oven handle like the kitchen had gotten a grade and passed.
The grade posted Monday at noon. I’d gotten a B+, which I was going to be annoyed about for approximately a week. I texted him before I’d even finished reading the email: “B+. You?”
His reply came in under a minute. “A-. Told you the fox would carry us.”
I typed three answers and deleted all of them. Then I sent, “Congratulations, Dee.”
“Dinner Thursday?”
Two words, and he’d still put a question mark on the end, like it was a real question and he was prepared for me to say no. I looked at the screen for a long time, long enough that the barista asked whether I wanted anything else. Then I typed yes, and then I typed what time, and then I put my phone face down on the counter and realized I’d been smiling at nothing for a full minute.
I told my roommate that night, and she wanted every detail, and I gave her almost none, which she said was how she knew it had been good. I didn’t correct her. I didn’t need to. Thursday was four days away, and for the first time since September I wasn’t counting the days until I got to sit next to him. I was counting the days until I got to sit across from him, and I already knew which side of the table I’d be on.
I’m not going to pretend I hadn’t already picked out what I’d wear. I’m also not going to pretend I’ve forgotten exactly how that tile felt on my knees. Thursday, for the record, he opened the door and looked at the wrap dress and said, “you planned this,” and I said “since the syllabus,” and he laughed and pulled me inside, and the radiator was knocking before the door was even shut, right on schedule. Some things you don’t need to study for. You just show up dressed and let the curve handle itself.
