These days, Xavier Martin couldn't help himself from walking around the place with a BIG grin on his face. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on who you were, he was a Jamaican gentleman, in the finest tradition of that phrase, and so when his friends asked him why he was so pumped, he wouldn't tell them a thing. The truth was that Xavier Martin, one of the biggest nerds on the campus, had landed himself a date with his dream girl.
Despite her name, or probably because of it, Xavier had not been able to find out which since he tread very carefully where she was concerned, Holly Ivey was a smart little addition to the first year MSc students, who was majoring in quantum physics. She looked like a young Halle Berry though, and so with two strikes against her peers taking her seriously, she kept a straight face, and had a cold, standoffish manner. As Xavier found out though, when he stayed back to help her to grapple with an extra credit assignment, in the lab late one evening, she was a very shy, down-to-earth girl. She warmed to him, considerably, after he tried out his quantum physics knock-knock joke on her, and he laughed at her Little Johnny, Planck constant joke, in return.
As an undergraduate student, Xavier had completed his degree without dating even once! He was overjoyed that this changed during his Master's, but that had only been a one-time event, since the girl in question was only after the answer key to an exam in the course that he had been tutoring at the time. In only two months, he would defend his doctoral thesis and he wanted desperately to do better than any of his friends in this department. For some reason that was unknown to the lot of them, none of them had managed to score even once. At twenty-six, though he had won many a scholarship and breezed through many a prestigious internship, and though he was a genuinely nice guy, and even though, remarkably, he looked like a tad-too-skinny Taye Diggs-in-glasses lookalike, he had still not manage to get laid; and he wanted to round out this aspect of his education before he left his student years behind him.
Given his previous experience with women on his campus though, he had not wanted to go out with Holly even after she invited him for a cup of coffee, to thank him for his kindness. It was only three months later, after he had been charged with presenting the David Bardeen prize to the final year undergraduate student with the highest aggregate score for the previous year; and he read the citation accompanying her award, that he recognised what sort of student she really was, and regretted declining that cup of coffee with what he had come to believe was a female version of himself. It was an inauspicious start, to say the least.
Things were a little awkward after that, because it seemed that, like him, Holly was a girl who didn't make the same mistake twice, and although polite whenever they met in the department, he could not say that she was friendly toward him, after their first evening. It seems that like everyone who had misjudged him, he was guilty of the same thing in judging her. He realised later, that he had not even thought to question the fact that she had been doing an extra credit physics project that night, and that his help, now that he thought about it, hadn't really been necessary!
It was all water under the bridge now though, since she had agreed to go out with him for dinner on Friday. It had taken some doing on his part. He did not relish being rejected again, and he had to admit to himself that if anyone had spoken to him the way that he had spoken to Holly then he would have fantasized strongly about hurting them badly. His thoughts would have remained fantasies it is true, but he would have been determined never to like them again.
He cringed at having to admit to himself that he had been rude in telling her that he wasn't for sale. It made him want to avoid her and to have her leave the school so that he could just forget about his mistake. Having her there and unwittingly tormenting him in his dreams were gut-wrenching. Despite this, he psyched himself up to face the music, took a deep breath, rehearsed his dignified exit when she insulted him as he deserved and presented himself to her. It had been difficult to swallow his pride, admit to her that he had been wrong, and invite her for a meal to make-up for brushing her off like that after her invitation for the coffee. He didn't go into details, but he explained that he had had a previous bad experience and that he was hasty in judging her. He apologised.
Holly had been startled by his apology, to say the least. She had looked at him appraisingly for a while; saying nothing. Eventually, she smiled graciously, told him that it wasn't necessary to take her to dinner; that she understood about the student who had tried to trick him, and that the apology was quite enough. She excused herself, and was just about to get up to leave when Xavier pulled out his piece-de-resistance, his 'Watt is love? Baby don't hertz me' line.
Holly had actually laughed, explosively, at his unexpected, corny joke; and Xavier could not believe how beautiful she was when she let herself go a little. He grinned back at her, completely captivated by her smile, and by the twinkle that lingered in her eye when she looked at him. He felt an overwhelming urge to kiss her and to adjust the sudden tightness in his jeans, but he managed to control these impulses. Somehow, lunch for the next hour at Pages had never been so pleasant before.
***
Dinner at Akbar's was nice. They had hit it off well, and had a lot to chat about, their mutual acquaintances in the department giving them much fodder for animated gossip as a start, but this segued into discussing their ideas about the place for physicists in the world and the bright future that they had at the university if they could only finish their research. It surprised them both that they had not met before that night. It turned out that since Xavier had eschewed human contact for the past year in order to finish his work on time, and successful, was in the final stages of his writing, he had not been around much since the time that she had transferred to the university to complete her undergraduate degree. She had been vague about why she had left her old school three years into her programme at UTech to come to UWI; and Xavier, sensing a bit of drama, did not want to pry.
Eventually, though it was time to take Holly home and Xavier helped her out of the restaurant so that they could walk the two hundred metres down the street to catch a taxi. They did not see when a man emerged from the shadows to their left. He stank of rum, and held something in his hand.
"I want that," the man said, menacingly.
Xavier and Holly just looked at him, uncomprehending.
"Give me your watch and your wallet," the man demanded, annoyed; his voice rising dangerously.
"W-what?" Xavier stammered.
He could not believe that he was being held up during his date with Holly! To his credit, he had the presence of mind to pull her behind him so that she wouldn't have to stare down the man from close range.
"Just give it to him, please, Xavier!" he heard Holly plead from behind him as she threw some money over his shoulder at the man. He chucked his watch and wallet at the man, and stepped back, pushing Holly behind him, firmly. When they got a few metres down the road and Xavier saw that the man had apparently lost interest in them, and was just picking up their money from the street, he whispered to Holly to run. She turned and fled, and Xavier was just behind her. He turned the corner down the street but peered back just in time to see the man lift the package in his hand to his head and take what looked like a long drink.
He stopped running and called out to Holly that they were safe after all.
"I think he's going to blow our money on alcohol!" he said, disgusted. "I don't think he's armed. We could go get our money back."
"Forget him! Let's go home," she said.
"Naw man! We can't just let him get away with this! We should a least tell the police! He's going to blow our money on alcohol and probably drugs! We can't let him get away with that!"
"You don't know for sure that he doesn't have a knife or that he won't throw stones at us," Holly argued, reasonably.
Xavier was working himself up into a temper, angry at this display of his impotence in front of this beautiful woman. He was so angry that he wanted to cry, but he reasoned that that would have been the worst thing that he could do.
"And besides," he said running out of steam, at last, "he's just got the last of my money. I can't afford a taxi and my roommate's not there to spot me the money if we just take one now; sorry."
What happened next was unexpected. Holly laughed! At first Xavier cringed. Then he realised that she was holding on to him for support, and that she was giggling, uncontrollably, between fits of laughter. He began to laugh too. Could it be possible that this girl was so cool? Xavier decided that she really was, when smiling at him, she linked her arm into his, and leaned against him, exhorting him to walk her home.
This time, Xavier didn't fight the impulse to kiss her. He did so many times during their walk back to her townhouse. It was well over two hours later when they reached Holly's townhouse complex. They had strolled, arm-in-arm, the entire way. She lived with three other girls in rented accommodations in Mona Heights, near the UWI Campus. Xavier had wanted to enjoy her company a little longer; hear her giggle again, and feel her feet nestle against his in the grass in the park across the street from where she lived. She had begun to tire though and had had to take her shoes off for the last bit of their trek.
Their date had been a disaster. Not only had they been robbed but they had also had a run in with a security guard when they had tried to stop for a few minutes to rest.
"You two have to move away from here," the guard had said. "I don't want you loitering in the plaza.'
