Through Time and Space and Stars and Sky

June 604
PSU Honors Dorm
Narrated by Julia Jones.

Julia is 19 years old, a freshman.  Ophelia Nigmos and Abram Carver are juniors.  Hattie Granger, Amulius Archer, Cleo Benson, and Circe O'Brien are freshmen, and Emma Roberts is a sophomore.


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Honors Dorm, Peninsula State University, Spring 604

One beautiful, bright spring day, Phi and I decided to go downtown to the East End of the Central Park.  I had heard there was a new sidewalk cafe with especially good food, and Phi just wanted to get off campus and away from cleaning up after drunk students for a few hours.  As the RA, it's unbelievable what she has to put up with sometimes.

Phi had also convinced me to invite Abram Carver, the upperclassman who is the advisor for our Global Business cohort, to meet us there.   We had a date in the fall, and it has been really hard to keep from flirting with him during our cohort project meetings; he comes over to the dorm to see me a couple times a week and we get to study by ourselves, though, and we've flirted a lot then, but we haven't kissed again.  I was worried he would say no when I asked him to meet us, which Phi, for some reason, thought was hilarious.  Sometimes she's just weird.  He said he would meet us at the park, which made my heart skip a beat.

While we were waiting to meet Abram, I thought it would be fun to ice skate.  It is just so cool that the city keeps the ice rink going year around, I couldn't resist!

Abram arrived, waved at me, and I came off the ice.  He said, "hi," I love his deep voice.  After a few minutes I noticed, Phi was nowhere to be seen.  Abram asked if I'd like to get a table; he said he was starving.

He said he was going to order the lobster, he had heard it was good.  But after I gave my order (the lobster), he ordered a hamburger!  Over the months, we've both  talked a lot about being foodies, so I was surprised he got a burger, but maybe he hadn't really budgeted for two lobsters.

Just after my food came, a kid in a baseball cap came up, took my lobster, and walked away with it!

 I was so flabbergasted I didn't even report him or try to take it back.  Maybe he needed it more than me?   But that was so weird.  We shared Abram's burger.

After we ate, we decided to get a photo of ourselves, which was really fun.  Sitting in the itty bitty space right beside Abram, he had to put his arm around me, it made my skin tingle where we touched.

Then we found a bench and waited for Phi to come back.  We were so confused about the whole Lobster Heist, we talked about that for quite a while.

Then we just sat and kind of enjoyed the spring day, the water, the flowers, the birds singing.  And enjoyed not writing papers for a little while, although there were certainly some we could be working on.  A few times I thought Abram was going to kiss me again, but I'm kind of glad he didn't, since we were right in the middle of the park in broad daylight.  Otherwise, I think I might have kissed him.

Phi called and said she would meet me at 9:30 at the bus stop.  It was really hard to say goodbye to Abram at a certain time, although I was looking forward to getting back to the dorm and raiding the kitchen.  

At breakfast the next morning, Cleo wanted to know all about the "date."  

Phi looked at me very seriously, like she does when she's really joking, and said, "Yes, how was the "date"?"

I told them all about the Lobster Heist, and what a gentleman Abram was about ordering lobster for me, sharing his burger.  They thought Abram sounded really cute, of course, Cleo knows him from the cohort, but that's different.

Later that day, while I was working on a google drive for our group project, Abram IM'd me.

"I'm checking facts on a recent case of a lobster nabbing, and was told you may have been at the scene.  Did you see anything unusual?"

"No, I was with Abram Carver, so it was a little hard to concentrate on paltry details."

"Just the facts, ma'am."

He asked if he could take me out, to make up for the Lobster fiasco.  I was really excited about seeing him again, and he said I should dress up a little.

When the taxi slowed down at the Hub, I knew this was going to be fun.  I'd never been, but I'd heard the food and dancing was great.

Walking in, I was so excited!  We were one of the first couples to be seated, I guess our reservation was on the early side for dinner.

This time, we both got the salmon, and baked Alaska for desert.  And no one stole our food!

After we ate, Abram asked if I'd like to dance....of course!  I had actually been dreaming of dancing with him for months now...when we were at the park, I kept thinking about him holding my hand, his hand against my back, pressing me to him.

He has such a good sense of humor, he was really making me laugh for a while with his funny faces.

Then we were both laughing because this guy, Douglas, who had been at the park and come up to talk to us at the restaurant, the lake, and the photo booth, seemed like he was following us again.

He left after a while, and Abram requested a slower song.  He said he'd been looking forward to a chance to dance with me too for a long time now.

The night was heavenly, but I paid for it in the morning, when my alarm still went off at 6:00 AM.

And all the things on my "to do" list came back into my mind.  

The next month went by so quickly.  We worked on our group projects several times a week, usually at one of the student centers or the library.  Most of our cohort works really well together -- Hattie Granger works hard, 

and Emma, Cleo, and Circe are easy to get along with and carry their own weight.

But nobody likes Amulius.  He's started two fights in our dorm, and just the other day he yelled at me when I reminded him about our cohort meeting.  

When he gave Cleo a hard time and refused to do his part of the work, I'd had enough, and I told him so.  I told him I'd write on the evaluation at the end that he hadn't done his part, if he didn't get with it.

 Hattie's actually the only person I know who likes him; in fact, she thinks he's really cute, which is beyond comprehension.

Most of us are like Emma, we're repulsed by him.

Sometimes I wonder about Hattie's judgement when it comes to guys.  She told me about how Seiki Ono treated her this year, being all sweet, and even sleeping with her, and then going on with other girls right in front of her.  She said he even made out in a hot tub with another girl when she was there.  I didn't know Seiki was like that, but I guess I don't know him as well as I thought I did.

She also talks to the mascot guy, who most people just ignore, and then she ends up being furious with him, too.

Phi told her she should just keep her distance from guys for a while, because it seems like she's having a hard time reading the ones she's hanging around.  Not that she thinks it's Hattie's fault she was treated badly; maybe she's just been sheltered and needs to develop a little more discretion.

I finished the term with a 4.0.  After exams, Abram asked me to go to one of the new Memorial Day weekend blockbusters with him at the campus theater.

 I really don't remember much of the movie, except sitting so close to Abram, and kissing through most of the third act.

After the movie, he asked me to go with him to the Academy Tower.  

The Academy Tour is the spot where guys take girls to propose, but I didn't figure that was his plan.  I'm only a freshman (well, officially a sophomore now I guess), and he knows it is really important to me to be competitive for the internship slots next Spring.  

While he went to the restroom, I thought about it, and I realized how excited I was about going to the tower with him, no matter what.  

 When we got there, he didn't even leave the middle of the street, before he took me in his arms, brushed his lips against my ear, and whispered, "I love you."

He wanted to go up to the very top of the tower.  You can see all of Port Prominence, and much of the bay, and ocean on both sides from there.

Almost as soon as we caught our breath from the climb, he went down on one knee.

He said he loved me and he wanted us to be together.  

He said he knew I wasn't ready to think about engagement, and he needed to graduate and get a job, but that he did know, for sure, that he wanted to be with me.  I was speechless.  I was practically breathless.  

I told him, I loved him too, I just couldn't believe it was happening so fast, but I'd thought about wanting to be a couple, too.  After a while, we went back down the stairs and found a soft spot on the grass.

He laid out a picnic blanket, and the balmy night wrapped around us.  

“I was falling. Falling through time and space and stars and sky and everything in between. I feel for days and weeks and what felt like lifetime across lifetimes. I fell until I forgot I was falling.” 

― Jess Rothenberg, The Catastrophic History of You and Me

My heart felt like it was going to explode, to have someone of my own, to have Abram as my own.  I don't know how I'm going to keep my feet on the ground, I feel like I'm going to float away, and to think, one day, when we're ready, we might be a family, is a great daydream, but for now, this is good.

Outtakes:

Both of them kept heading to photo booths (ACR), ever since the date at the park, but I kept cancelling it out.  It just didn't seem like Julia's style, she is completely serious.

Both have the want to be engaged; Abram is afraid she'll reject him, she's afraid she'll be uneducated.