Parker And Jones Are Big Bois

Chapter 1 - Late from a Lecture

The time was exactly 16:17 PM (the 24th of November, to be unnecessarily exact) and Peter was hurrying through the windy park of his college. Normally he would have appreciated this moment since it was one of the rare occasions when the place was almost absolutely empty of the thick groups of his fellow students who were usually occupying it, having an uncommon calmness, and beauty to it, but he didn't have the time for any of that at the moment. Typical...

Peter remembered the first time, he set foot on that grass at the end of August. Seeing all the other students greeting each other again, after a long Summer vacation, or – when it came to freshmen, like him – for the first time, felt scary and exciting and overwhelming at the same time. Now, more than three months later, he learned his way around the college and could have easily passed through the park with the look of a confident veteran of the place, if he wasn't late already. But for now, he had to go with the scared-lost-puppy-style, in order of efficiency, as he pulled his hat even lower on his ears, to protect them from the cold.

It wasn't his fault, he was late. Well... Wasn't entirely at least, for sure. Ned – his roommate, and bestest pal, ever since they met each other during moving in – needed help with the building of his new lego Star Destroyer. Come on, it was a two-man job, and he couldn't let him down in a situation like that. He had no regrets, even though he hated to be late because the people who were late were left with only the worst seats in the back of the auditorium, from where you couldn't tell what was written on the blackboard if its size was smaller than two inches – so basically none of the words.

Peter entered the building and headed for room 501 when a coffee machine caught him off guard. It was around 16:20, he already had two classes before, and he drank nothing which could even remotely remind him of coffee – besides he was already late, anyway. Yes, this was definitely a good idea. He needed a little boost to help him not to fall asleep, while he was trying to make some meaning of the professor's handwriting. So he changed course, put a coin into the coffee machine, waited for the product to be made, and finally headed towards his original destination with the prize on his hands.

There was an upside of being late from a lecture too, though: literally nobody gave any second thoughts to you. You arrived when you wanted, and you left when you wanted, and Peter just loved that. He stepped into the auditorium and looked down at the blackboard. The professor just finished filling up the first one, so he really didn't miss out on a lot. Now he had to decide where to sit, which was a crucial part of his operation: he saw a couple of empty seats in the better side of the room, but there was no way, he was gonna climb through a dozen people just to get those. He just had to take one of the last lines, which were almost all empty as always.

He finally chose the second one, which was occupied by only one girl, who wasn't even paying attention to the class but read a book instead. She was pretty, actually, now that he gave her a second glance. And she was all by herself. In an ideal world, Peter could have just sat right next to her, and start a conversation with some clever one-liner. However, he knew, that it would have been really weird, to sit right next to the only other person in an all-empty line, and he definitely had no clever one-liners at all.

So, eventually, he entered the line, and picked the closest seat to her, he still felt reasonable and comfortable with, which meant two places away from her. He saw in the corner of his eye that she looked up at him as he settled down on his seat, and started unpacking his things, then returned to her book in a second.

Come on, Peter, focus! he told himself, as he flipped open his computer and opened a new word document. He already missed the first ten minutes, and he really should have paid attention to the actual class, over a girl, whose name he didn't even know, and who clearly paid no attention to him at all.