France, 9 a.m. on a particularly chilly Monday in January. Constitutional law exam. As I entered the austere lair of the lecture hall, my gaze swept across the rows stretching before me. In the third row, my eyes landed on Sarah, who waved at me with a quick gesture of her hand. I responded with a knowing smile and a wave as I made my way towards the board displaying the seat numbers for the exam. Mine was 253.
As I turned around, I clumsily bumped into someone standing right behind me, likely waiting to check their seat number as well. I quickly apologized and, as I looked up, I discovered a young man slightly older than me, maybe by two or three years. Delicate strands of hair framed his face, while his glasses gave him an air of intelligence. When I say I looked up, it was more like tilting my whole head, as his stature towered over mine. This young man was definitely not my type: he perfectly embodied the clichΓ© of the intellectual bourgeois with an angelic face. Too polished, too conforming to my usual environment. He apologized in return, smiling. I went in search of my seat.
The exam went splendidly for me. I escaped from the lecture hall about thirty minutes before the end and settled on a bench in front of the door, where Sarah could easily spot me. Engrossed in reading "The Ten Loves of Nishino" by Kawakami Hiromi, a book I had just borrowed from the university library, I realized how rare love stories were in my life. It was true that I was not very demonstrative, I admitted it. A bit shy, I had a penchant for solitude. Except for Sarah, I tolerated very few human beings around me. As I got carried away by the words of my novel, a male voice echoed above me.
"Madame is a reader, in addition to being a rugby player!" he declared with a hint of amusement.
Of course, it was the boy from earlier.
"Well, I am studying law after all," I replied with a proud smile.
"That may be true for reading, but less so for tackling!"
He laughed. I gave a polite smile.
"I'm Arthur, nice to meet you!"
"Nice to meet you, LΓ©a."
We exchanged a cordial handshake.
"Well, I won't disturb you any longer, but you dropped this earlier and by the time I picked it up, you had already gone into the rows," he returned my gloves, neatly rolled up, that I had clumsily dropped.
"Oh! Thank you, I would have been in trouble outside, with this cold."
He smiled at me and then walked away.
Over the course of the semester, our paths crossed a few times within the university, and we also found ourselves in the same basketball class. He turned out to be a talented player, and with his advantageous height, he was virtually impassable for his opponents. Mid-semester, during a training session, he collided violently with me as he turned around abruptly, forcefully throwing me backward. The searing pain radiating from my lower back elicited a muffled cry from me. Stopped abruptly in my tracks, I found myself lying on the floor, vulnerable, while the pain intensified with each passing second. Overwhelmed by remorse and concern, he rushed to my aid, expressing sincere apologies for this unfortunate accident. He helped me up carefully, supporting my faltering body until we reached the nearby bleachers. Lying on the stands, I tried to alleviate the persistent pain pulsating in my back. In a mischievous gesture, I joked that he was finally getting back at me for our previous eventful encounter.
"Nonsense, this time you got hurt, it really embarrasses me! I'm sincerely sorry," he replied.
Seeing that I was taking it lightly, he returned to the court and I remained seated in the stands. At the end of the training session, as twilight gradually settled in the gymnasium, he approached me with an unexpected proposition, a hint of audacity in his voice.
"I'll walk you home, if you're okay with that. I'd like to make it up to you for my clumsy gesture," he said, his eyes fixed on me with a glimmer of interest.
I wasn't expecting him to hit on me, both literally and figuratively. Despite that, I responded calmly, accepting his offer.