Grapes Upside Down

52. Frac Cookies

~Madisen~

"¿Quieren venir a almorzar? Podemos estudiar para el examen de film."

Daria invites Clara, Flora, Daniela, Jonie, Noah and me to her house after our film history class to have lunch and study for our upcoming exam. There's not much to study, because it's an open-note test, but it's a good excuse to hang out.

Noah winds up directly across from me at the table, and for whatever reason, we make accidental eye contact an embarrassing number of times while devouring lentejas con arroz. I feel exposed and vulnerable; he has yet to utter a word about the letter I wrote him. I'm almost certain he read it last night, because I can sense a difference in the way he's looking at me right now. 

"¿Estás en otro mundo, Madisen?" Daria's host dad Luis calls, waving his hand in front of my face from where he's seated to my left. 

"¿Qué cosa?"

The giggles that follow confirm that I was apparently oblivious to someone addressing me. I glance compulsively once again at Noah, heat rising to my face as his green eyes dance into mine.

"¿Dónde estás, Madisen?" Luis continues to tease me, jostling my shoulder. "Yo sé que no estás enomorada." His joke about me no longer being in love as a cause for my distraction seems a tad harsh, but it doesn't pain me too much. I'd rather have people tease me over what happened and make light of it than treat it as some dirty, unspeakable secret.

I catch Noah gazing my way again, and this time he blushes as his eyes hook into mine. The color spreading through the middle of his cheeks is mirrored by a ballooning kaleidoscope of butterflies inside me.

It continues to baffle, scare and anger me just how quickly my feelings for Ignacio have evaporated into thin air. On the one side, it's almost too good to be true; at the same time, I'm still having a hard time coming to terms with how deeply I lost myself during that episode.

"Studying" consists of making fun of ourselves for a solid half hour, recounting the most humiliating things we've ever said during class or to our professors. Daniela, who is fluent in Spanish and doesn't find herself in our language barrier predicament, howls with merciless laughter as Noah tells of the time he asked his female architecture teacher if she was on her period while attempting to secure a ruler.

"How does that happen?" Daniela demands to know, cackling.

"¡Es la misma palabra!" I defend Noah, pointing out that "regla" means both "ruler" and "period."

"Right, but how did you phrase it?" Flora chimes in, her voice sweet and simple as a freshly-plucked daisy. In contrast to Daniela, she displays much more tact in her reactions to our mortifying stories, giggling with soft, twinkly eyes.

Noah, unbothered by the mockery, recreates the question with total composure:

"Disculpe, ¿usted tiene la regla?"

Daniela howls like a hyena again, and the rest of us quake hysterically along with her.

"What did she say?" Clara asks, wiping tears from under both her eyelids.

"Just, like, 'Perdón?'" Cool and collected as he spotlights his own humiliation, Noah's one-word imitation of the professor is animated with a perfect impression of bewildered dismay.

"Wait, what should he have said?" I inquire, glancing from Flora to Daria.

"I think it was the use of the definite vs. indefinite article," Noah supplies in the most adorable, academic manner. "Maybe, 'tienes una regla?' would have worked. Not that I've thought much about it," he deadpans with nonchalant sarcasm, shrugging.