"Well, that's what we do, we fight. You tell me when I'm being an arrogant son of a bitch and I tell you when you're a pain in the ass. Which you are, 99% of the time." – The Notebook
After I finished my classes, the remainder of my day was spent in the lab. We had a deadline approaching fast, and of course, were way behind schedule because that's how it always went. Additionally, since it was the start of the school year new people were joining our research team to replace those who'd graduated. I tried not to think too hard about the fact that I'd be replaced by someone next fall.
Right now, I was training the latest addition to our team, Reva. She was a junior and this was her first quarter officially in the astrophysics major. It was exciting to have another girl on the team, there were only a handful of girls in the major, and our research team was made up of eight people. Two professors that were the lead researchers, then six of us undergrads got to help out. The only other girl on the team had graduated last spring, so I was thankful to have Reva now. We seriously could use some more women in the department.
I always tried to look on the bright side of things though. At least when it came to astrophysics, the gender gap wasn't as bad as it was with computer science. It still wasn't ideal, but it could be worse. I liked that I knew almost every girl in the department though, that was in some ways comforting. The department was small enough though that I also knew most of the guys at this point.
"So the biggest part of our job is really going through and analyzing data and going through and finding useful related literature. It's definitely not as exciting as it sounds, but it looks great on a resume, and the teams pretty chill about when you come in as long as you get enough work done," I tell Reva as I finish showing her around our lab.
The lab itself was pretty small, it was in the same building as all the big telescopes we had, but those were in a different room. The room we worked in was made up primarily of computers and other various workstations, and there were whiteboards covering almost every wall because sometimes it was nice to just grind out an equation on the board.
"Okay, cool got it," Reva said grinning from ear to ear. She reminded me a lot of myself when I first joined the research team. I'd joined my sophomore year when I was still in the pre-major because Steven had been on the team and talked me up to Professor Johnson. Reva still had a gleam in her eye that only went away after too many hours spent in the lab or working on assignments.
"And if you ever need anything, just let me know. It can be really overwhelming at first, and it's better to ask me or one of the other undergrads for help than one of the leads."
"I'll definitely do that, so should we start now," she asked grinning as I sat down by my usual lab computer and motioned for her to sit next to me. I was going to spend the next few hours showing her the general process of how we did things.
By the time I left the lab, it was almost 9:30, and I was exhausted, but I'd gotten some important work done, and now that Reva was trained, hopefully, I'd have a slightly lighter lab workload. We'd had a whole team meeting over dinner as kind of a welcome back, so the second I got back to my apartment I went into my room to relax.
It was a Thursday night, and the only class I had on Friday was kickboxing so instead of doing homework like usual I threw an episode of the office on, and grabbed my current crochet project.
I liked crocheting, I'd picked it up a few years ago, but had quickly learned that anything I tried that was more complex than a blanket ended up looking like absolute garbage, so I'd made a lot of blankets. At this point, everyone in my family, plus all of my roommates had blankets I'd made for them, so now I'd make them and then donate them to shelters. I liked having something to do with my hands when I listened to music or watched tv.
Currently, I was crocheting a blue and grey blanket, Seaport's colors, in honor of going back to school. I didn't always have the most school spirit, I hadn't been to a football game since freshman year, and if I knew something about our sports it was through other people talking about them, but a Seaport blanket seemed like a fitting way to start of senior year. Adrianna also liked to crochet, but unlike me, she was actually talented. Where I could only make blankets she was using the same shades of yarn to make a top and some hats. She wanted to go to football games this year in style.
The four of us had all agreed to try and live at least a little bit more this year than the past few, go to some parties and bars, a few games here and there. Solidify the college experience before it was over. Even though grad school would still technically be college, it wasn't the same. Especially since we'd all be different places.
The weekend went by fast since it was week one, the homework hadn't gotten too bad yet, and I'd convinced my roommates to watch The Notebook with me on Sunday night, which had brought all of them to tears. Not me though, I'd cried to a lot of movies, but for some reason The Notebook never brought me to tears the way I felt like it should. It probably didn't help that the whole time I was wondering if Hayden would actually watch it and if he was what he'd think of it. I was just assuming he'd never seen it before. He didn't seem like the type to sit down and watch romance movies.
When I'd seen that that was our assigned genre, I'd been far from happy. Spending the entire quarter watching romance movies with one of the most insufferable people I'd met sounded pretty awful, but then I'd seen his face as he read our assignment, and how annoyed he'd looked, and I suddenly didn't mind as much. If it pissed off Hayden West after all it couldn't be that bad.
I didn't know what it was about him exactly that just sent me off. There was just something so irritating about him, and it didn't help that he took every opportunity he got to be rude to me. I just felt like the worst version of myself whenever I was around him, it was like I couldn't control the urge to just be a total bitch right back. Every conversation with him felt like verbal kickboxing.
So, I tried to walk into class on Tuesday morning with a positive mindset, I told myself I wasn't going to let Hayden West bother me. I got there twenty minutes before class started and smiled to myself when he wasn't there yet. Okay, maybe I'd let him get to me a little bit, but there was no way I'd let him beat me to class twice in a row.
He walked in three minutes after me and scowled when he saw I was already there. We were the only two people in the classroom. I decided to start off being civil.
"Since we're both early, do you want to compare notes on The Notebook," I ask him as politely as possible.
"Oh shit," he responds, "I was swamped this weekend and uhh didn't have time to watch it?" "Bullshit," I respond without pause, "I know for a fact there was a hockey party this weekend, one of my roommates went."
"But you didn't? Oh right, it wouldn't have been a party if you'd show up," he snarls in response.
"Look I get it, you're probably not used to having to actually do school work being the 'big man on campus' and all, but my schedule's packed too, and there's no way in hell I'm doing all this on my own."
"Look I'll watch the movie at some point," he says.
"At some point isn't good enough, we have to watch at least nine more movies, and this whole thing's gonna be a lot easier if we're both at the same place with them."
He's silent for a second and then, "Look I'm sure this is the last thing you want, hell it's the last thing I want, but why don't we just watch the movies together? Then you'll know I watched them, and I won't have you on my ass about it. I can't have this same fucking conversation every class."
It takes me a second to process what he just said, is he seriously suggesting that we, two people who probably couldn't dislike each other more, watch ten romance movies together? That sounds like hell for both of us, but he has a point. Now that he didn't watch The Notebook, I'm almost positive he'll just google the plot of each movie and pretend to have seen it instead of doing the work, and I care about my grade too much for him to half-ass this project. I'm too busy to do it all alone, but I still want it to be done well.
"Fine," I reply, "when do you want to get together?"
We spend the next few minutes comparing schedules until we finally settle on watching the movie at his place tonight. I don't like the idea of going over to his place, but the interrogation I'd get from my roommates if I invited him over is worth the pain of stepping into whatever gross frat-house-like hockey bro place he lives in.
It was possibly the first and most civil conversation we'd ever had, but after he texted me his address, we both just went silent, and he did something on his phone, while I added our plans to the calendar on mine. We didn't say another word to each other all of class and I made sure to pack my things slower than he did so we wouldn't have to walk together towards our next classes.
I took refuge in lab for the next few hours, working alongside Reva to analyze some of the more recent data. She was quiet, but seemed to be getting the hang of it, and it was a very comfortable silence compared to the awkward silence with West from earlier. I salvaged every second of the rest of my day until I had to leave campus to walk over to his apartment.
I knew a few other people that lived in this complex. It was similar to the one I lived in, but where ours was closer to North campus, this one was close to South campus. I passed the ice skating rink on my walk there, so I assumed that was why they'd chosen to live here.
I texted him when I got to the front door of the building so he could come down to let me in, I was both intrigued and terrified of what the next few hours would be like. It'd been hard enough to have a civil conversation earlier today for ten minutes, let alone multiple hours together, on his turf, watching a romance movie. I didn't consider myself religious, but God help me.