Covalent Bonds
Page 30
He’d memorized it.
“You see, when we look at Eliza Stein’s poetry, what do we see? Beyond beauty, of course—that much is obvious. But what makes it work?” He looked nervously around the class, his eyes occasionally darting to hers.
No one spoke.
Without waiting for an answer, he took to the board and began underlining the modifiers. “Adjectives. Adjective-noun pairings that contrast, that are at odds with one another. ‘Gaunt petal’ is one.” He circled the phrase. “It’s these little sorts of details that make Dr. Eliza Stein one of our greatest living poets…”
He dropped the pen heavily on the front table then, and faced the class once more. “But you know as well as I do that this poem is beautiful without ever knowing what an adjective is. It can help your reading, your writing, to look for this structure and see the glory in it, but it’s not necessary to enjoy this or any other poem.”
He walked closer to the class, his voice low. “If this class frustrates you, and you never learn what an independent clause is, or how to diagram—if I’ve failed you—that’s unfortunate. But you can still be a writer. Some of you, like Eliza Stein, have a natural instinct for words, an internal blueprint for the structure of language, and you can still write brilliant things without knowing why they’re brilliant.
“But,” he added, his eyes finding hers, “I’m here if you ever want to learn to diagram… or anything else.”
Eliza felt tears prick her eyes, and along with them a big, sloppy smile spread across her face.
Kunal swallowed. “Happy Thanksgiving, class.”
No one moved.
“This means I’m letting you out early for your break. Have a good holiday.”
The students exchanged glances, some of their hands tentatively hovering to put their books away.
“Go.”
Quicker now, the students grabbed their bags and made for the exit. Most stared at Eliza as they walked past her with open curiosity. But she only watched Kunal.
When the last student left, she stood to walk down the aisle.
He rushed to meet her in the middle.
“Eliza, I’m so sorry, I’m—”
She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him down to her, her lips upturned to his warm mouth, their kiss swallowing his sibilance.
After a few long moments, they parted to catch their breath.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I’m sorry for not trusting—for not really trusting myself. This whole time I’ve been so scared that I’m not cut out for this job, or being a poet. I felt like I had to act, or not act, in certain ways. Be some kind of… professor or something, I don’t know. I wanted to feel like I was worthy of all this.”
“You are worthy. Of this and so much more.” His hands found her waist, and he held her there, pressing her body close to his, not letting her run away again. “I’m the one who should apologize to you. I was such an ass. After you left that night, and when I saw you with that Neil Scott, it drove me crazy.”
She hesitated. “I should never have left—or avoided you. I was just scared I’d disappear somehow, under your reputation and opinions, if I was ever with you in some non-colleague-like capacity…”
His brown eyes shone. “Do you want to be with me in some non-colleague-like capacity?”
“Yes,” she said. “Very much. Completely. Utterly. All the adverbs.”
“Well, then.” He exhaled, tucking a strand of blond curl behind her ear. “I suppose I should admit that I’m powerless before you. Completely—and in ways they haven’t even created words to describe yet.”
He kissed her harder, holding the sides of her face in his strong palms.
“I wrote poems last night,” she whispered. “All night long.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, they were about grammar. Not using grammar, exactly, but comparing what I sense and what you’ve taught me to my body.”
“Ah.” He kissed the top of her head. “This was all part of my master plan.”
Giggling, she pushed him away gently and watched the expression on his face turn surprised. She took his hand.
“You said your apartment was seven minutes away if we walked fast, and four minutes if we ran there?”
“Yes.” He was starting to smile.
“How about if we run?”
G.G. Andrew writes quirky romantic comedy—stories about people who fall in love with the most unlikely person, and who stumble through some awkwardness and ill-advised kisses along the way. An avid nerd, she is a book blogger and host of the Writers Who Read interview series, which features writers sharing what’s on their shelf.
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About the Anthologist
Trysh Thompson has written just about every form of non-fiction you can think of—everything from news, movie reviews, magazine columns, marketing hype, software manuals, and was even an editorial assistant on a gardening book no one has ever read (The 7-Minute Organic Garden—see, you’ve never heard of it, have you?). To keep from being slowly and torturously bored to death by her day job, she turned to fiction as means of escape—reading it, writing it, and editing it.
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