Novice in Love | on hold

Seven

As more of the foil is pulled open, I can see what the contents are. I let out the breath of air I was holding and sigh in relief.

It was just cookies. Albeit they were quite unrecognizable since a lot of it was squished together in a clump. The dark bits of what appeared to be chocolate chip were pretty melted.

"See, nothing to worry about," he says, seeing my relieved expression. "I told you I wouldn't make that kind of bad joke again, and I keep my word, remember?"

"Yeah, sorry for not believing you," I apologize, feeling bad. Jenna's words last night about his weirdness must've made me paranoid or something. "Thanks for these cookies. Did you make them?"

"My mom did," Bryan reveals. "I just took some to give you as a thank you. They taste better than they look." He scratches the back of his neck shyly. "My notebooks in my backpack must have made it turn like that."

"It's fine, as long as it's good. Thank you." I wrap the cookies back up in the foil and go back to getting my sandwich out of my backpack. "Let's hurry and eat so we can start working soon." I take out my simple ham and egg sandwich from the Ziploc bag and take a big bite.

He does the same and starts eating his bar.

+++

We finish relatively quickly and after throwing our trash away, we get down to business immediately. Bryan pulls out his notebook and the prompt for the paper that is due tomorrow morning. I scan the instructions and start to brainstorm on how he could approach it.

"Do you have any ideas on how to start?" I ask. "Have you started working on this at all?" I turn the prompt paper around to check if there were any notes but there was nothing. I didn't see any writing in his notebook that showed any signs of him working on it.

"No, I wanted to wait to work on it with you," he admits. "I didn't want to waste my time doing something wrong and have to scrap it all."

His explanation made sense in a way, but I still found it unsettling. Was it as simple as that? Or was he just depending on me to feed him most of the information he needed to complete this paper?

Bryan must be able to read some of the skepticism on my face and quickly adds, "I do have a general idea of what I want to write about though." He flips through his notebook and shows me a page filled with his writing. "Here."

I take a look and nod in approval at what I see. "These are some very good ideas. You should have started. You're probably not as confused as you think you are." I point at some of bullet points and explain how they could be tied into answering the prompt as well as giving suggestions on the organization.

We spend the next hour and half discussing and working on his paper. I was glad that I did not actually have to give him any "answers" in any way since he already came up with the content of his paper.

I draw a smiley face on the final sentence he writes onto his notebook and praise his good work. "You didn't really need my help all that much after all." I tap on the paper and look up at him, taken aback at how close he was. Unbeknownst to me, as were talking, he had shifted closer to me, closing the space I had deliberately left between us. His brown eyes were even deeper and bigger up close, filled with various hues of brown that seemed to be twinkling. I quickly clear my throat and break our eye contact.

"Sorry," he apologizes and scoots away. "That must have made you uncomfortable." He takes his notebook from my hand and closes it. "Thank you for your help, Ellie."

"Yeah, glad you think I still helped." He was pretty smart, smarter than I expected. The way he sounded on the phone made him seem lost but he pretty much guided the session today, just confirming things here and there.

"Of course," he smiles. "Here is your payment for your time." He hands me a white envelope. "I even included tip for eating lunch with me and joking with me."

"Oh, you didn't have to."

"You deserve it. Besides, I went over time last night," he winks at our inside joke. "Can't owe you."

I take the money and thank him with a light laugh, surprised he still remembered. "Thank you for your mom's cookies too. They were delicious." I ate them all except the one I gave to him as dessert.

"I'll bring you more tomorrow if you'd like. They won't be so ugly looking next time."

"It's alright, I don't want to trouble you." What if his mom got any ideas?

"No trouble at all. I'll bring some tomorrow. You can share them with everyone else at the Center too."

"Then I'll thank you in advance," I smile at him gratefully. This was the side of him I liked.

We pack up all our things and walk out of the Student Union together. I only remember my promise to Jenna about trying to take a picture of Bryan when Bryan slows down to a stop for us to bid farewell. I hastily take out my phone from my back pocket and open my camera app while pretending to be scrolling through my Facebook news feed. Now, I just need the right timing.

"Well, thanks for your help again, Ellie." We have stopped by the trees a few steps away from the entrance of the Student Union. "Hope I didn't take too much of your time."

"You're welcome, Bryan. Glad to be of any help." I gradually tilt my phone's camera up and press the shutter button repeatedly, hoping at least one picture will turn out okay. I had better things to worry about like getting caught than the quality of the pictures.

"Bye," he waves. The wind blows lightly at his hair, making him look as if he was posing for a photo shoot. I continue pressing to take pictures and wave back.

Once he's gone, I check my pictures and cannot believe what I've taken.