Mama's boy

Chapter 4

I was wandering in the campus' hallways looking for the classroom I needed to be in in less than ten minutes.

I hated when they moved classes at the very last moment.

I left Gabe only half an hour before and my mind was right back on him as always, asking myself if he got ready yet and if Dinah was bringing him to preschool, if he was happy and all sorts of random questions I could ask myself instead of focusing on what I was doing.

I sat in one of the middle rows trying to take some notes as I noticed how nobody was listening to a word of what was being said.

At the end of the lecture a project was assigned to everybody, and it would have been cool if it wasn't for the fact that we were paired up with people we never even saw before that day.

I got paired with a petite girl that I honestly had never noticed, I felt like it was my first day of middle school all over again, forced to socialize by people who didn't care about us anyway.

"Hi, I'm Camila" she said in a tone that was warmer and much less high-pitched than I expected as she smiled. She was wearing a light pastel blue sundress that looked very inadequate for the season. Fortunately she had an elegant coat under her arm to compensate.

As a whole she reminded me of a doll, with her perfect outfit and make-up. A full contrast with my black band t-shirt, ripped jeans and leather jacket.

"Hey, I'm Lauren" I said back trying to smile her back, hers seemed so genuine, I din't want mine to seem too forced, but it was still a Monday morning after all.

We shook hands and headed together outside the classroom. The silence that fell between us was slightly uncomfortable and as soon as she noticed she spoke again.

"Where do you think we could work?" I thought about it, we had to prepare a debate against another pair and we needed to work hard on our case. A lot of researches were required and we had to be on the same page, that meant hours worth of working together.

My first thought was all the time I couldn't spend with Gabe but I had to focus again on the question.

"Are you staying at the campus dorms?" I asked and she nodded and shrugged.

"Yeah, but my roommate isn't quite nice, or open to strangers at all... I was thinking about something like the library or I don't know..." she spoke softly as she was ashamed of not being able to be more helpful.

The library in that period was a mess, it was freezing cold and the stupid office worker made everybody whisper all the time, there was no way we could do hours of group work in there. I sighed again.

"I'm sorry" she added and she looked sincere.

That made something click in me and I just gave up on my reservations "you know what? I live nearby, we could work at my place."

Part of me was deeply scared to expose a side of my life nobody knew, but she looked fine, she probably wouldn't even have cared, I just had to make sure Gabe wouldn't be around us when we worked and for that it was sufficient to have Dinah on board to babysit at her place like when I had to work. All of the kid's stuff at home didn't necessarily mean I had a child, I tried to convince myself.

She just nodded looking at her hands and I realized one thing, she was intimidated by me.

I never thought it would be weird to have somebody be intimidated by me as it was right then.

"Do you wanna start today? I mean, right now?" she looked up at me a little surprised.

"Sure, if it's not a problem for you."