Waiting for a Star to Fall

The Safe Zone

From Autumn in Kensington

"Okay...what do I do?" Chrissie asked me. I sighed.

"You take this stack of flyers and you pass them out, you also put them up anywhere you can!" I instructed her.

"What if no one takes them?" Chrissie asked.

"You force the flyer on them..."

"No, Lydia...I can't do this. I can't just shove these things on people!' Chrissie fought me.

"...Do if for Brian, Chrissie." I told her. She blushed.

It had been a whirlwind month. October had bled into November before anyone had realized it. It was now barely November and the semester was coming to a close. There were less than four weeks to go before finals. Brian sat at his desk as his graduate assistant Erin came into the room. "Okay. Okay, yes. Yes, I'll call you after I'm home from my parents' house. Oh, I can't wait. I can't wait to tell them all about you. Okay, sure, Be careful going to work. Alright, talk to you soon." Brian hung up the phone and looked up to Erin with an enormous smile.

"Well, hello there Professor May. You seem to be in the best of moods." Erin said, pulling the chair out on the opposite end of the desk.

"I met a girl. I met a girl, Erin. She's absolutely amazing. I'm going to my parents' house tonight to tell them all about her." Brian beamed to his graduate assistant. She giggled and smiled at him.

"Oh my god! I've never seen you like this!" she said, opening her notebook. It made Brian blush horribly.

"I...I really like her. I'm seriously thinking about asking her to be my girlfriend." Brian shared with his graduate assistant. Erin smiled back at him slightly.

"Well since you've found someone I guess I can tell you how...how very attracted I am to you. I know I have a boyfriend and everything but...you're rather enticing Professor." Erin blushed and looked down into her notebook. Brian, felt his heart stop. His graduate assistant thought he was enticing and he had met a girl whom he thought was enticing. Brian was living large today.

And down at Kensington Market, Mary folded clothes from Brenda's latest batch of new arrivals. "I'm seeing him." She said to Brenda out of nowhere.

"I'm sorry, what?" Brenda asked of Mary. Mary gave her friend a nervous smile.

"He's...he's I guess my boyfriend now. The guy I told you about? We had a long talk. We had a really long talk in fact. He wants more with me than...than you know, just being friends. He asked if I wanted that too and...well, I said yes!" Mary said excitedly and nearly dropping what she was folding.

"Oh my god! Are you serious? You've been...hangin' out with this guy for a long time! Mary!" Her stall mate stopped what she was doing and demanded more details. "I saw him the other day down here at his stall. He was yellin' at his friend about somethin'." Brenda gave her a big smile, demanding to know more. "We're going to need to discuss this over lunch, you know?" She insisted. Mary looked away and tried to hide her smile.

"It's really not that big of a deal." She tried to convince Brenda.

"It is a big deal! You've barely even dated anyone since I've known you! Oh my god, this is quite exciting! Mary smiled at her friend.

"Now don't go gettin' all excited. I'm not even sure where things will go between us. There are days when I think Freddie can't be anything more than a friend to me. BUT we're going to try and see how this goes." Mary insisted to her friend. The truth was that Freddie was just as panicked as she over their new relationship that was technically less than three days old. Freddie would now have the challenge of keeping his new girlfriend under wraps until he was well and ready to introduce her to his circle of friends. Now that they were more than friends, and each of them had to determine the extent of their feelings for each other. Mary wouldn't dare tell her friend that she and Freddie had a date tonight. Mary was tickled because their date was at a bingo hall. She had never played bingo for money before but Freddie made her promises of hot tea, foods carried in by the bingo board members and all the shouting she could handle. How would she ever say no to something like that?