Sunkissed Love [ON HOLD]

une nouvelle amie

a m b r o s e

We had fallen into a routine—Winnie and I. I would wake up earlier than her to put together her lunch and either get ready for work or for classes at the university. I would wake her up forty minutes before her bus arrived and I'd let her sleep for another ten before dragging her out of bed. She would brush her teeth and change her clothes and then come down for breakfast. While she ate, I would go to change and grab the bag that I had packed the night before. I'd wash her dishes while she put on her shoes and I'd grab myself something from the pantry to snack on while we left the apartment and walked to the bus stop that would stop in front of the apartment complex.

I'd get her on the bus and wave her goodbye until I couldn't see the bus anymore. Then, I would walk farther down the road to get to the city bus and head down to the local university for classes, or I would take a nice long walk down the road to get to the public library for my shifts that day.

Today was a university day.

I had two classes, Victorian Literature at 9 in the morning and Advanced French Conversation at noon. In other words, it was a long day and by the time that I got on my shift for work at the library, my brain was sure to be overheating enough to fry an egg. It was fortunate enough that Emmie would be working with me, but she only saw me once this week because her course scheduling was a bit denser than mine.

It would take me half an hour to get from Winnie's school to the University which meant I had enough time to eat breakfast on the bus. Today's breakfast was a banana ripe enough that it could be considered more brown than it was yellow. It was less than half a dollar per pound so I ended up buying too many bananas; maybe making banana bread with it would work better. I'd have to ask Emmie for some flour.

Anyhow, the reading material that we were assigned for Victorian Literature was insanely dense, and without annotations and highlighting and frequent rereading, it would be nearly impossible for me to understand and read. Advanced French Communications was slightly easier than literature only because of the fact that my mother was of French descent and I had taken it throughout high school. The dining hall itself was already bustling with the noise of the chatter of students filling the tables, buying lunch, and shuffling around the room. I appreciated my spot at the long bar-like counter facing the large windows with a street view of the campus, and tall spinning seats that let me sit undisturbed by anyone else.

A light tap on my shoulder brought my attention away from the pages of my book.

"Is that The Woman in White?" I found myself face to face with the excited face of a rather small girl. She was beautiful: warm umber skin, kinky hair that sat as an afro on her head, a soft round face, gold round glasses that sat on the low bridge of her nose, and speckled acne scars that sat on the apples of her cheeks.

I nodded my head slowly, unsure why she was approaching me.

"We're reading the same thing then. For Professor O'Connell's class—Victorian Literature, right?" Her voice was soft, but not like she was unsure or uncomfortable about herself. It was stable, certain, yet soft-spoken, something I found rare in such a setting.

"Yeah, I was trying to read through as much as I can now before the next seminar. It's dense and Collins tends to write a lot on just one object of interest, so it's taken a little longer than I expected."

She sat on the stool next to me, setting down the small plastic cup of coffee in front of her, the ring of condensation marking the light grey table, and setting the backpack on the floor in front of where her feet dangled off the stool.

"I haven't even picked up the book yet, but I ended up hearing some things about it." She took a sip of her peanut-colored drink. "It was very much disappointing considering they ended up spoiling part of the book for me—not that I'm going to do the same to you."