Infatuated

              It was a Friday, last Friday to be exact, and instead of getting dinner with my friends, I was stuck going to a study session hosted by the Teaching Assistant. I would have skipped it and celebrated Zana's twentieth birthday with her, but the study session was being counted as extra credit and I needed a good grade. Either way, I was planning to go to her sorority's party to celebrate with her later in the night.

So in the ten degree weather (Fahrenheit, not Celsius), I made my fifteen minute trek from my dorm to the classroom. There wasn't a cloud in sight, but I kept my hood over my head to keep my face warm and shield me from the wind as much as possible. You can bet my earbuds were in and the music was blasting.

The class is about two hundred students, the professor, and two TAs. The classroom that the study session was in, on the other hand, fits roughly forty people. The professor has taught the class enough times to know how many people show up.

And when I arrived, five minutes late, there had been about fifteen people. I sat somewhere in the middle, unable to sit in the back since I had left my glasses on my desk. Who needs 'em? Well, I do, but that's not the point.

The discussion didn't cease when I walked in the room. Something about scales of measurement. The TA, a graduate student, was writing on the whiteboard about Freud's and Jung's views of psychoanalysis. The boy sitting next to me, who I assumed to have asked the question based on his speedy typing, wore the Greek letters Tau Kappa Tau and smelt like Hollister.

I took out my laptop and opened my notes. I had actually come prepared with questions since it was review for the midterm. I'm no degenerate. And when the TA was done, I raised my hand.

"What's enactment? Professor Belany didn't talk about it a lot, but said it was important for the exam."

The TA, Andrew, nodded (like all TAs do when they think for some reason) and said, "Enactment is when the client and therapist have internal schemas. And schemas, if you recall, is the way a person views the world. Enactment also says that people are influenced by non-verbal communication."

I typed everything down, word for word.

"Does that answer your question?"

I gave a thumbs up. Someone else raised their hand and the discussion continued. I'll spare you the boring details because you have better things to do than read about psychoanalysis.

I watched Andrew, checking the time on my phone every few minutes, hoping the study session would end early. Zana was the last in our friend group to turn twenty and I wanted to be with her the whole day.

I raised my hand again. And again. I happened to know that if you participated more, you'd be given free points on the final. A friend that took the class last semester gave me the hint and it was confirmed when Andrew started asking those who participated a lot what their names were. I was one of those people. My name's Amelia by the way.

Frat boy, Spencer, was a close second for participation. If one of us had a question, the other had the answer. It almost seemed choreographed, but I had never seen this boy in my life. Andrew seemed to get a kick out of it, leaning against the whiteboard and watching everything unfold. You could easily see that he was sleep deprived, as most graduate students are, but he still looked attentive.

His hair was dark – maybe chestnut? I wasn't sure, I was too busy telling Spencer that you couldn't have a therapeutic alliance without genuine human caring. Either way, his eyes, hair, and beard were all the same color. He rocked the sharp jawline and short beard, his hair a little crazy from the day's wind.