7
HARRIET
"You've got to give us more than that!"
Jon and Jason sat across the table from me in our favorite little Cambridge cafe. They were sharing a bowl of fruit chunks and a chocolate crepe, picking tiny pieces one at a time like they were ladies in an 18th century dinner party. I, on the other hand, had a full breakfast spread across three plates. Well, the remains of a full breakfast. The bacon and sausage links were gone, as well as the giant Belgian waffle. I was finishing up the scrambled eggs now, and then would tackle the two slices of buttered toast.
I didn't drink often. So forgive me if I chowed down like an animal.
"We made out in the Uber ride back to his place," I said around a mouthful of eggs.
Jon raised his eyebrows at me. "Honey, that is not the part of the night we want details on."
I shrugged. Even just the thought of gossiping about a night with a random bar hookup made me blush. Or maybe it was the memory of his lips on my skin, kissing down my belly while his fingers...
"We did... stuff," I said with a cheerful smile.
Jason and Jon reacted like I'd told them RuPaul's Drag Race was canceled: Jason tossed his napkin down with disgust, while Jon groaned and looked away.
"I'm sorry. I'm just not the type of girl to gossip about that." Hell, I wasn't the type of girl to do that with a random bar guy. It still didn't feel real, even now, just a few hours later.
"At least tell us how big it was."
"No!"
Jason held up two flat palms an inch apart. "I'll make it easy for you. Tell me when to stop." He slowly moved his palms apart, until the gap was four inches, then five. "Really?" he said when they were seven inches apart. "This? Or this?"
"Stop it!" I said. Then I paused and said, "He was on the high end of that spectrum."
Even that tiny detail, vague and nonspecific, was enough to make me giggle. Not waiting to see if their curiosity was satisfied, I said, "He's out of town, though. Had to catch a flight this morning."
"That's convenient," Jason shook his head.
"No really!" I said. "I thought so too, but he texted me from the airport. We had a nice conversation."
I slid my phone across the table so they could huddle over it and over-analyze the entire thing.
"I'm just saying," Jason began again, but Jon slapped him on the hand.
"Stop it. Don't ruin Harriet's fun night out with your negativity."
I gave him an appreciative look and finished my food.
After I'd kissed them on the cheeks and said my goodbyes, I thought about Roland on the walk back to my campus apartment. It was actually freeing that he was gone for a week--or at least I assumed he'd be gone a week, since I didn't really know. Normally I'd stare at my phone and wonder when it would be okay to text him. Debating with myself over the right amount of time to wait in order to appear interested, but not too desperate. That same stupid game men and women had been playing for centuries.
But with him gone, I had no choice but to wait. It was freeing! It allowed me to relax and savor last night for what it was: a fun interaction with a hot guy. It might become more, but for now it was an event in isolation.
Yet even with that comforting knowledge, I struggled to think of anything else. I kept replaying the night in my head, starting with him approaching me at the bar, and ending in his tiny bedroom. I blushed to myself and hoped the other pedestrians in Boston thought it was because of the cold.
I let myself savor it for the walk, and then forcefully pushed it from my mind. With him gone for a week, I had a big block of time to worry about more important things. It was time to focus on my growing to-do list. I wanted to get my thesis outlined today--I was the type of person who needed to have a paper outlined to death before I ever wrote a single word, and that fact was true whether it was a one-page cover letter, a five page paper on Jane Goodall, or a 100 page thesis.
Once the outline was done, then I could start breaking it up into manageable chunks. Then put those chunks on my calendar, with expected completion dates and pacing guidelines to make sure I didn't fall behind.
I nodded to myself. There was nothing as satisfying as having a plan.
My apartment was four blocks west of the MIT campus, a cozy little building nestled between a park and the Star Market. I stopped to check my mail, even though I didn't want to, and sure enough it was what I expected: half a dozen bills, and the rest junk mail or clothing catalogs. I tossed the latter in the recycling bin and put the former under my elbow; I'd worry about them later. It was time to focus, and I couldn't do that while worrying about my finances, and whether I would need to find a part time job in the coming months, and how I would be able to juggle my time while working on my thesis and...
No! Stop it, Harriet! It's time to focus on your thesis.
My apartment was a studio, clean and nice but only 500 square feet. Plenty of room for little old me, though. I dropped the bills off on the corner of the countertop and sat down at my tiny work desk.
I checked my email, because that's what you did these days--you checked your email first and foremost, and then moved on to more important tasks. A chain email from my study group discussing next week's exam. An email detailing the many campus bookstore deals this weekend.
An email from the MIT Conservation Department Head.
I blinked, then quickly opened the email. My heart sank as I read: it was a request for an in-person meeting at her office next Sunday. She wanted to discuss my thesis topic.
It was only four sentences, with no detail whatsoever, but I read the email four times. Discuss your thesis topic. My thesis topic.
Thesis topic.
The words echoed in my head. Students chose their thesis topics and submitted them online for approval, but they were almost always just rubber-stamped without discussion. Mine certainly was, almost four months ago! Why was there an issue now?
If there were a question, or suggestion from the Department Head, she could have just asked in an email. Requesting an in-person meeting was a bad sign. It had to be. Especially a meeting on Sunday, when professors rarely worked.
There was only one possibility I could think of: she was going to request I change it. Either it was a subject already covered by a previous student, or too similar to one presently. What else could it be?
Heartbeat racing, I accepted her meeting request and shot back a response asking her what it was about. Then I stood and paced the 15 feet of open space in my apartment. I got a glass of water, even though I wasn't thirsty. I pulled up the original thesis submission portal and made sure it actually did say approved and that I wasn't remembering wrong.
It took two hours--two terrible, awful hours--before she responded with a single line: It'll make sense when I speak to you in person. No reassurance. No details.
Oh my God. This was bad, wasn't it?
I started thinking of what else I could do my thesis on, but that was a line of thinking I'd already exhausted months ago. I couldn't reignite that now, out of the blue. My brain didn't work that way.
I was screwed. This was the worst thing that could have happened to me. No, really: if a giant meteor crashed toward Boston, I would look up at it and say, "This sucks, but at least it's not as bad as having to completely redo my thesis topic."
Despaired at these new circumstances, any excitement I'd had about Roland vanished into the cold Boston air.