love her for it. She’s trying to drag me out of my dark place and back into the light.
She’s too good for me.
“Yeah, I have less grading to do now,” I say, trying to catch up as she bombards me with questions. “My professor’s cutting way down on it until after my hand is better.”
“How long is that going to be again?” she asks, stopping as we finally make it up to the base of the clock tower.
“I have a follow-up appointment in two weeks, but it’s probably going to be four to six until it’s healed.”
The chimes start to play the alma mater over head, and Maria groans.
“God, I hate that song so much,” she complains in disgust, and I laugh.
“I’m going down to the engineering library to work on my thesis,” I tell her. “Which way are you headed?”
“Oh, I’m heading back home,” she says, pointing down the hill. “I don’t have class until noon today, and then after that, I’m teaching some of the freshman researchers at my lab.”
I stare at her in disbelief. She came all the way up that atrocious hill for nothing?
“Then why’d you walk all the way up here?”
“I wanted to be with you for a bit,” she answers, looking shyly up at me but smiling brightly.
Her beautiful smile and glittering eyes warm my heart and make my knees weak. I feel my face get hot as I fail miserably at finding words to tell her what I’m feeling.
“See you later?” she whispers, her eyes wide, and I nod back to her excitedly.
She waves to me as she heads back down the hill, and I stand where I am and grin like an idiot as I watch her go. See her later? I can’t wait!
Friday, March 8 – 5:00PM
Maria
My phone rings and interrupts my thoughts for the third time in as many minutes. I don’t care who it is—I’m busy! If I didn’t answer the first two times, I’m not going to answer the third time either!
“Okay, now that you’ve got the slide stained and prepared,” I tell the wide-eyed freshman as she scrambles to take notes, “grab some fluorescent pictures and let me know what you see, alright?”
“Wait... how do I do that?” she squeaks nervously, twirling a strand of her blond hair around her fingers as she writes feverishly. Her lab coat is so big on her that the sleeves keep falling down over her hands.
“The fluorescent microscope is in the darkroom behind you.”
She stares at it as if she’s never seen a microscope before, and I sigh and try not to get frustrated with her. Was I this mind-bogglingly stupid when I was eighteen?
“Okay, I’ll show you how to use the microscope,” I tell her, and I wave for her to follow me. This is what I get for finishing my senior research project so early—I get to teach freshmen for the rest of the year.
My phone rings again from inside my jeans pocket beneath my lab-coat. This is getting ridiculous.
A faint, unearthly blue glow illuminates the room as I turn on the microscope and start calibrating the camera. My juvenile assistant hovers nervously until I’ve finally had enough of her and tell her to go get her slides.
“Put the slide on the stand, and now add one drop of oil,” I quietly instruct her. I'm almost certain I knew how to use a microscope when I was a freshman.
Her hands shake as she works, and she nearly jumps as my phone rings yet again. I reach under my coat to see who keeps calling me, and in the two seconds I’m not looking, the girl manages to break everything.
My head snaps up at the sound of crunching glass, and my idiotic freshman trainee is gaping at the microscope in abject horror with her hands over her mouth. Her slide is broken into dozens of pieces.
“Oh no! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to,” eeps out the tiny girl. She looks like she’s about to cry.
I sigh and point to the waste-bin. I’ve had enough.
“That’s it for the night,” I groan. “Clean up your mess, make a new slide, and we’ll do more on Monday, alright?”
“I’m sorry!” she stammers again. “I was just trying to focus in and I hit the macro and not the...”
“It’s okay,” I interrupt. “Just... don’t touch anything next time, alright?”
I excuse myself and head out into the hall to check my phone again. It’s Owen.
My heart skips a beat and a smile spreads across my