Freedom, Flowers, Books, and the Moon

Chapter 1

The apprehension was evident on the girl's face as she looked around her dorm room. After spending the last several hours unpacking her belongings into the small space, she sat down on her bed quietly and began to question her decision to move so far away from home. "New experiences, Aurie, new experiences," she reminded herself and picked her phone up off the bedside table. No texts or calls. She wasn't entirely surprised; her parents hadn't been happy that she packed up her life and moved to New York to go to a tiny college no one had ever heard of. "You haven't even chosen a major, Aurelia! How did you decide it would be suitable for you to move almost a thousand miles away from home?" Her father had yelled at her sufficiently when he found out. Her mother had just scoffed and walked away. Only her older brother Sebastian had been supportive in her decision. She sniffled at the memory before deciding not to think about it. She stood up and made her way to the small bathroom attached to her dorm. I'm not going to complain; most dorms don't even have one on the same floor, let alone in their room, Aurie reasoned. When the water had warmed up, she stripped down and stepped into the steaming stream, standing for a moment and letting the warm water calm her mind before washing her hair and body. With finger-brushed hair and her brother's old t-shirt, she climbed into bed and shut her eyes, silently hoping that tomorrow would go well; it was her first day of classes, and typically she didn't do well with change.

Aurelia awoke the next morning to the screeching of her alarm. She rubbed her eyes, stretched, then slowly slid out of bed. She walked to her closet and slid the door open, glancing around sleepily before pulling out a soft floral skirt and a cropped sage green shirt, then pattering to the bathroom to change. She brushed her short red hair, threw on a slight amount of mascara, and brushed her teeth. A few minutes later, the door was locked, and Aurie was making her way onto campus with her tote bag slung over her shoulder. The girl checked her schedule as she walked; her first class was pre-calculus with Professor Angevin. "Great," she muttered to herself. Math was definitely not her strongest subject, and having it at 9 in the morning certainly wouldn't help. She climbed up the front steps of the Wagner building after a short walk across the campus and found the lecture hall she would be spending most of her mornings in with ease before pausing briefly in front of the door. 8:47 wouldn't be too early, right? After a deep breath, Aurie pushed the door open to find no students. She turned to walk away when a baritone voice stopped her.

"You can go ahead and find a seat."

Aurelia paused and looked to find a man sitting at a desk in the front of the room. The girl wondered how she hadn't noticed the man with his dominating aura. She walked slowly into the room, trying to avoid eye contact. When she chose a seat in the middle of the room, her eyes drifted up at him, and she noticed that he was already looking at her. She swallowed shakily as she noticed the man's looks. He looked to be in his mid-30s, with ash brown hair and eyes that were such a dark green they seemed almost black. His sharp jawline was accentuated by his clenching as he felt her eyes roaming him. He sat up straighter, and her eyes trailed along his broad shoulders, visible even beneath his suit jacket. His fingers tapped on the table in front of him, and Aurie couldn't help but notice the lack of a wedding band. She glanced down, intimidated by her professor's intense beauty and embarrassed by her thoughts, before pulling her spiral notebook and a pen out of her bag and gently placing them on the desk in front of her. She opened it and glanced at her phone for the time. 8:50, and still nobody else had walked in. At 8:55, a few people began to filter into the room. When the clock struck 9:00, the professor rose from his seat and approached the students.

"Welcome to pre-calculus. I'm your instructor, Professor Angevin. I'm aware that math is a difficult subject for many people, but since this is a small class, none of you have any excuse not to use me to your advantage." The girl looked around and realized that there were only five other students in the room. I guess that's what happens in morning classes, Aurie thought before tuning back into what her professor was saying. "I expect all of you to excel in my class. Now that that is out of the way," He put his hands in his front pockets and continued, "We will go around and quickly share names."