Lovelanguage: Baking

Chapter 2 - Little Notes

Independence is Strength, but loneliness is weakness and sadly I recently had to learn that I wasn't independent as I so proudly thought all those childhood years, I was just lonely. Loneliness is like a deep wound, it is so painful, but if it's permanent you forget the pain. You don't realize that other people don't have to live with this horrible feeling, but sometimes something happens that feels like crushing that wound into furniture, it makes the pain flare up and impossible to ignore. And failing to find anyone who can tolerate a disgusting fat guy such as myself around them during the first week of college and now sitting alone in a row of seats in a pretty full lecture hall hurts way worse than bumping an open wound into furniture.

Nathan sat in the third row of the lecture hall, deep in thought, tapping his pen repeatedly against his chubby hand, contemplating if he'd manage to complete this history degree he's just starting if he has to get through it all alone like he got through school, when he was startled by careful footsteps that sounded like they were near. He looked up and his heart jumped for a second, a gorgeous girl was standing near him, looking back and forth between the seat next to him and the one that left the space of one seat between them. He was starting to wonder if smiling at her would make her want to sit closer or further away from him, but she had already decided for the one further away and shyly rubbed her upper arm.

Something about her presence endeared him, he felt honored that she would've even considered sitting next to him when there were easily 12 other seats left in the row.

No, I shouldn't get carried away. I'm not even sure if I saw her looking at the seat next to me. Why would she? She's beautiful, like an elven noble with her incredible posture, the way she carried her head with this lovely light brown hair, but she still seems shy and as if there is something wise about her. No, why am I even thinking this? Why am I thinking about her? There's no way she would spend any amount of time with me or give me attention. Should I say something to her? WHAT NO!!! Where did that thought come from? It would be nice having a friend for once and not being lonely and I know I should try to approach people to achieve that, but all I'd achieve by talking to her, would be her packing her things and go somewhere where she wouldn't be bothered by a weirdo, or even worse she'd be too shy or polite to go away and feel uncomfortable the entire lecture. I never want to make someone feel bad or uncomfortable or worst of all unsafe.

Nathans thoughts were rudely interrupted by the professor entering the room. She was going to tell the students stuff about taking notes, the way the exam is going to be structured and graded, how no sound or video recordings were allowed, which book the lecture is based on and a broad overview about the ancient civilizations they're going to learn about. Hopefully listening to the professor for the next 90 Minutes is going to be interesting enough to keep his brain occupied, despite the organizational topics. But it only took 5 Minutes until his hands mindlessly started doodling on his paper. From the corner of his eye he caught the girl curiously watching onto his paper. He immediately stopped drawing and took a fast, scared look down onto his paper... thankfully all his hands produced were some spirals and circles.

She also tensed up on her chair, probably because he caught her looking at his paper. It also sounded like she stopped breathing, which worried him. With shaking hands he decided to write the word "Hi" onto his paper. That should be easy enough for her to ignore, if she didn't feel like communicating with him. However he had never wished to have a prettier handwriting more than in this moment. For a few Minutes nothing happened, apart from her starting to breathe again. He wasn't sure if she hadn't seen it yet or if she just wasn't interested in a conversation and he desperately tried to convince himself that he was okay with both options. Finally he saw her pen move out of the corner of his eye. Calm Down He told himself, she could just be writing notes about the lecture, he didn't even know what the professor is talking about at this point, but when he glanced over at her paper the word "Hey" was written with a lovely little Smiley next to it. Her handwriting had lovely subtle swirls to it and it looked like a masterpiece compared to his. He hadn't thought as far as what he would do if she answered, and because his brain was blanking on what else to say he just wrote "I'm Nathan" underneath his first message.

She answered "I'm Julie" and before he could panic about what to write next, she started writing again, after a little while the words "Thank you for saying Hi to me, I missed the first week and don't know anyone yet." appeared on her page.

That makes sense, I didn't recognize her. And that's probably why she settled for sitting next to me for the first lecture, I'm sure she'll make other friends quickly. He thought to himself. He started to write "Don't worry, you didn't miss much", while being a little worried it might make him appear lame or that it could make her recognize the reason why it was awful for him but she smiled a little which made him feel better.

"Haha, that's good to hear. ...Sooo... you like History? What are you looking forward to the most?" After reading this answer he smiled, she was asking questions, she wanted to keep talking to him. At least he seemed to be more interesting to her than the organizational stuff the professor was talking about and he felt genuinely happy as they kept talking, or rather writing about why they study History and what they're most interested in going forward.

He wanted this lecture to never end, since he didn't know how to interact with Julie afterwards, if she'd still want to continue talking to him or if she was going to go, looking for different people to be friends with. When suddenly his belly let out a loud growl. He looked at it shocked, having instinctively grabbed it with his arm. He felt like crying. The last thing he wanted was for her to notice his enormous gut, he didn't even care about the thoughts of the other people sitting around him, their judgment that he might've been worried about if he'd been sitting there on his own, his thoughts were completely focused around the thoughts Julie might have. Why couldn't he just not be hungry, just for once?

Julie however took something out of her bag and a wonderful smell immediately found his nose. She took off the lid of a plastic box and he was looking at the best looking cookies he had ever seen, that she was showing him with a smile. Nathan looked at her, perplexed, not knowing what to think, but without really knowing why he felt a little tear at the corner of his eye, that he tried to hold in.