That I was going to marry Summer Thomas was a certainty. I just needed to meet her, and then everything else would fall into place.
Both of my friends thought she was plain, but they were looking at her boobs and ass and legs and hair and that sort of thing, completely missing her eyes and that elegant neck and those expressive hands with long, thin fingers. Summer was a beanpole, I couldn't deny that, long, lithe, and lean with little points for breasts and a straight drop from her shoulders to her ankles.
But those eyes!
You'd think gray eyes would be cool and composed, but hers were nearly explosive, pulsing with energy. Kind of like Storm, but not as scary. Her brows were wispy, dark like her hair, but her eyes were light, and they pulsed and crackled and danced.
And she was really smart in a way that Taco and Jez and I were not. I mean, sure, we could make any computer sing. Literally. For our first group project in InfoSci 200 we used one of the voice majors in the music program to code the machine to sing "Habanera" from Carmen. But Summer could take an idea and spin an elaborate web anchored on its fundamental meaning, expanded to its social implications, and cautioned about its unconsidered consequences. We may have been artists, but she was a fucking magician, and I could never see how she did her tricks.
I'm pretty sure I first saw Summer Thomas at the dorm social our freshman year. Taco and I had chosen each other as roommates. We were both just seventeen and majoring in what the university called information science but what was really kick-ass coding. I must have seen Summer, though at the time I wouldn't have noticed her. She is a beanpole after all, and my tastes before I knew her typically ran, like most boys, to the buxom.
It was the end of those three awesome months between high school and college, and though I gave my best efforts in high school I came to college not just a virgin but with lips yet unpierced by a woman's tongue. I asked a lot of girls out in high school, where I learned first-hand that dating is not a numbers game when you land on the husky side and you sport prominent acne and your interests tend to science fiction and fantasy. Playing the French horn didn't bring as much music cred as I hoped either. And while I can do a lot of quality thinking, my mind and my mouth pretty much refuse to work together in real time so I am not a great conversationalist. Still, I did have dates to three of the four homecoming dances and both junior prom and senior ball, though all of them were "as friends." And sadly my dates really meant that too. A handful of pecks on the lips was the sum total of my sexual history entering college.
I first noticed Summer Thomas when we had a second-semester 20th Century American History class together. She was an econ major, so we both needed the humanities credit. Everyone noticed her on the first day.
"We'll cover the Great Depression," the TA said, reviewing the syllabus, "and how World War II pulled America and the rest of the world out of the economic malaise -- "
"Excuse me?" A long arm and graceful hand went up in the first row.
"Yes?"
"Will we also be covering FDR's abandonment of the gold standard and the Federal Reserve's subsequent action to expand the money supply to provide liquidity and encourage investment?"
"And you are?"
"Summer Thomas."
"That might be a little too detailed for a survey class like this one, Ms. Thomas. Perhaps you can take an economics class that deals with the policy decisions of the Roosevelt administration during that time."
"But those were the critical actions that stopped the economic free fall and laid the foundation for the economic recovery, slow as it was. Shouldn't we know the entire context for such a critical time in history?"
"We can certainly address that when we get to it." The TA remained composed without committing herself or, more importantly, the professor to anything not already planned, but Summer had served notice.
I was so smitten.
Like most coders, I flatter myself an iconoclast and subversive, but I do all my chicanery in private, and my keyboard could care less what I actually type. Summer said things out loud and gave zero fucks about who might be offended. She wanted the real scoop, spin be damned, and that made me so hot for her.
Sadly I had Biology -- one of my science requirements -- right before history, so I could never get to class early enough to sit any closer than two rows away from Summer. And of course I never spoke in class, so she didn't even know I was there. I tried to accidentally run into her around the dorm, but I never got a handle on her schedule. Having just two friends -- especially introverts like Taco and Jez -- to use in my quest for an introduction didn't do much for my cause either. So the second semester ended with me just as far away from my hoped-for future wife as when it started.
And then . . . glorious serendipity!
I didn't have the patience to wait four years for my degree. I graduated high school in three years, which included enough AP credits to put me almost a semester ahead in college, and since the hard-partying social scene held no appeal for a too-young, physically-unimpressive specimen like myself, the sooner I could get through the learning part and on to the doing part the better. Which is a long way of saying I enrolled in the summer session.
There is absolutely nothing better than summer school in college. Except for maybe sex, but being a virgin I had to go with summer school.
The community of fellow travelers is pretty small, so your relationships get deeper faster. Students are motivated -- you have to be pretty motivated to give up your summer for study -- but there's still plenty of time for hanging out, because you're only in class for a few hours a week. Professors and TAs are far more laid back without all the extra people pushing on them. Even the parties are smaller, more intimate and more mellow, and they happen on the porch or the front lawn instead of crammed into a house. Plus the days are long, and the dress code is flip-flops, shorts, and t-shirts. Or, if you're a woman, spaghetti straps and daisy dukes, which is simply the best look ever.
I took two classes, Information Ethics, Law & Policy that would never have attracted enough students during the regular year -- coders are mostly an amoral bunch focused on impressing each other with radically creative code without regard to larger considerations like whether or not it helps real people -- and an English literature class to finish off my Humanities requirements. There were six people in my Info Ethics class and just four in American Lit.
But one of the four was Summer Thomas, if not proving there is a God at least registering a point in His or Her favor. Then again if there is a God there's a devil as well.
I was so stunned to see Summer in the class that I turned beet red and went mute. Of course she looked up to see me enter the room and caught my reaction in its entirety. And the casual flick of her eyes -- those beautiful eyes! -- back to her book just confirmed that she saw me and dismissed me in the same moment. I then stubbed the leg of a chair as I walked by and tumbled into a seat at the far end of the table. I hoped I made it look like I intended to sit there, but Summer ignored me.
Fred Baylor and Javy Martinez were the other students in the class, and assistant professor Temma Cort taught us. Temma realized the first day that none of the four of us were ever going to study literature once these ten weeks were up, so she went with the minimum demands while still honoring the syllabus. Fred was more socially inept than even me, and Javy seemed to be hot for teacher, so at least I didn't have to watch while one of them tried to seduce my future bride. Class discussions were miserable enough.
