Never Say Goodbye or A Love Story in Hellos

Two.

The line in the cafeteria is long. Sasha steps from one foot to the other. This is what you get when you are too lazy to get off campus for lunch.

Anyway.

She puts a fork and a knife on her tray and lines up behind an absurdly tall guy. He is wearing an Einstein badge on his backpack.

Sasha twists her body, trying to catch a look of the buffet. Pasta or rice? There is enough time to decide. Friday is Sasha´s pasta day though, so probably that. The line moves forward.

Sasha is in the middle of balancing her tray on her left hand while trying to fish out her phone from her pocket when a hand touches her shoulder. Sasha whips around, hand still in her jeans and comes face to face with Nia. “Hi.” She is smiling. “Hey” Sasha responds, uncertain.

She takes her hand out of her pocket and grasps the tray with both. Moves a step back and twists lightly to stand back in line. “How are you?” asks Nia. So no turning back around then. Nia is still smiling. Sasha scrunches up her nose. “Good. Bit tired, but everyone is I guess. And you?”

The line moves forward again.

“Oh yeah, me too”, Nia answers, “tired - but at least the weekend is near.” She chuckles. Sasha grins. Turns the fork over on her tray. Looks back up to Nia who cocks her head and brushes a strand of her brown curls out of her face.

Nia keeps talking. “You know, I decided to study to get away from numbers. Like as far as possible. And now I have to attend Introduction to Econ anyway.” She shakes her head, laughing. Takes another step to follow the line. It makes Sasha grin. She agrees. “Yeah, I really thought studying languages would get me out of everything maths but - a bit naïve I guess.”

Nia bobs her head. Her curls shake with the movement. Then she gestures to somewhere behind Sasha who promptly turns around. They have almost reached the buffet. So pasta it is.

Once she has placed the full plate back on her tray she steps away from the buffet. Before she can decide if she should wait for Nia or not bother her, the other steps up next to her. “Let´s go over there” Nia determines and uses her full tray to gesture in a vague direction.

Sasha follows her. Purple vans today.

They sit on the edge of a table right in the middle of the cafeteria; across from each other. Nia points at Sasha´s plate. “Pasta day?” she asks. Sasha looks down on her plate, the spaghetti glued together with a bit of green pesto on top. “Yeah, Friday is pasta day. Weekend treat.” She smiles. Nia grins back and grabs her fork. “Enjoy then” she says and digs in.

She eats her spaghetti the Italian way. No knife. She laughs when half of it falls off her fork again.