Days 200 and 201

Writing Exercise

…

Love strikes you when you least expect it, and quite often, not the person you thought it would be.

The thing is, I wasn’t looking and had made up my mind that studies came first, then a good job, save some money, and be prepared for anything.

But saying you’re not interested, and what seems to be the woman of your dreams appearing out of left field, you have to wonder if fate has something else in store.

I thought it did for me.

It came in the form of one Maria Cagnoni, year two of a four-year engineering degree, diversifying into Space, and the second day of the first semester at the university, the astrophysics lecture.

She was late and made an entrance.

Professor Moriarty, yes, right out of a Sherlock Holmes detective story, was not amused. A normal student would just sneak on and blend into the back of the room.

Not Maria.

She was like a stick of dynamite with a burning fuse. Bright red skimpy dress, long flowing artificial curly blonde hair, and a supermodel manner. My first impression is a Marilyn Monroe lookalike.

Not a word was exchanged, but we all knew what the Professor was thinking, and as for Maria, I would have said she was oblivious to what was going on around her, except she knew and by the supercilious smirk on her face, all too well the effect she’d created.

Brenda Bailey, the girl whom I’d been duelling for best student every year since the start of grade school, just groaned. It was going to be very interesting to get her take on Maria’s arrival.

Maria was a new student, transferred from one of those Ivy League universities, one I would have liked to go to, and had been accepted into, but then my mother got sick. I seriously doubted Maria was here to do astrophysics, but I was quickly reminded not to judge a book by its cover.

Brenda had missed out, or so she told me, but being every bit as clever as I was, I didn’t question the story, I just had reservations. I might have considered at first that because I wasn’t going she wasn’t, but after she picked another boy to go the the prom, I knew that whatever I thought we had, it didn’t go both ways.

It had taken a year to get past that, and it still rankled, though I kept it to myself. But it did teach me one valuable lesson: don’t get tangled up with any girls. They were all tarred with the same brush.

I was having coffee at the nearby cafe minding my own business when Maria appeared in the doorway and quickly scanned the room.

Looking for someone? She saw me, the only face she recognised, and came over.

“I know you.”

“I beg to differ.” I gave her the trademark ‘go away’ look, which didn’t work. She pulled up a chair and sat down.

“I heard you’re the resident genius.”

I glared at her. Radkin was taking the mickey again. She was definitely his sort.

“You heard wrong. That would be Brenda.”

“Your ex?”

Yep, she’d been definitely talking to Radkin. He sussed the tension first year and figured we had broken up badly.

“There is nothing between us but air. I asked her to the prom, she turned me down, it took me by surprise, I stayed a month in Tuscany with my aunt and got over it. Go annoy her.”

“You always this prickly?”

“This is a good day. Try annoying me on a bad day. What the hell do you want anyway?”

Perhaps my brusque tone would get her to leave.

“What is your problem?”

OK, I finally got the response I was looking for. “What do you and Astrophysics have in common?”

“I would be here if I didn’t have the grades.”

She didn’t say it, but the intimation was loud and clear.

“Then I should be seeking you out as the resident genius. When I have a problem, I’ll come and see you.”

She shook her head. I don’t think the conversation went quite the way she had imagined it would. And if she were clever, the Professor would find some way of tormenting me. He had a reputation for creating groups of students and using them to create solutions to near-unsolvable problems.

Then she smiled and stood. “Challenge accepted.”

It seems I lost the first skirmish

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©  Charles Heath  2025