Andrew was not good at calculus. He had barely passed calculus 1 and now he was in calculus 2 in his second year of college. His calculus 2 professor had just put a problem up on the board and asked the class to solve it. Andrew tried, but he was convinced that the integral they were asked to solve was impossible, so he sat there in anxious silence, wondering why the instructor had given them an impossible problem but too afraid to ask about it.
"You forgot to substitute in du," he heard from the deck next to him.
"What?" He turned to find a girl smiling at him. She was short, maybe 5'6" and pale with bright red hair. Afterward, he reflected that she had been pretty, but his mind was not focusing on that at the time.
"You just changed dx to du. They are not equal. You wrote u as a function of x, right?"
"Yes, I got that here." He showed her his work.
"Good. Then, find the derivative du/dx and solve for dx. That is what you substitute in for dx."
She left his alone as if that explanation was sufficient. It was not. He made the same mistake during the next class, and the same girl noticed again. But she wasn't mean about it. This time she helped him through it slowly, and he understood it. But by then, the class had moved on to integration by parts, and Andrew was struggling with that too. She helped him through one of those problems, but he couldn't do the next one on his own.
"Hey, um... what's your name?"
``I'm Diana," she said.
"Would you be able to help me outside of class?" he asked. He really didn't want to fail calculus 2.
"Sure," she said. He suspected she said yes more because she like math than that she liked him.
So, she gave him tutoring sessions twice a week, and in the end, he passed calculus 2 largely because of her. When one spends that much with someone, you tend to talk about more things that just math. Diana was an only child who was really enjoying college. She was also on the volleyball team and was friends with a lot of other players. Andrew was enjoying the challenge of college, even math, but had only one other close friend, and that was someone he already knew from high school.
So Diana and he had become became friends and often hung out outside of class. They went out to dinner sometimes, went out to movies, went on a few hikes, and watched Stranger Things together too. At the end of the semester, Andrew learned that Diana had failed her writing class. She showed Andrew one of her papers on which she had gotten and F.
"Why did I fail?" she asked him.
"Well um..." Andrew was trying to find a nice was to say her writing was terrible.
"Did I hold back on you when I told you your math was wrong?" she asked. "I need to pass this class, Andrew. I need to know what's wrong with my writing."
"Everything," he said before he could hold it back. "Sorry."
"No, it's okay. I know I'm a bad writer. Help me."
``You ramble a lot. There's no organization. What's your thesis statement? There are typos all over the place."
She was frowning. She was probably disappointed in herself. ``How do I fix it?"
Andrew began to help her. Every time she had a paper, she would bring it to him and ask him for edits. The first time he asked her to write the whole thing over again with the paper organized around her thesis. He read it over and then nodded.
"Better, but it's still only like a C."
"How do I get an A?" Diana asked.
"Let's try to be more focused," he said. "You go off topic a lot. Be concise."
Andrew and Diana's relationship was purely platonic. Nothing romantic happened between them. And Andrew was okay with that. He only saw Diana as a friend, not a romantic partner, until a couple of months ago. He wasn't sure what changed. Maybe his hormones had finally kicked up a gear. Maybe it was that one time he walked in on her in her underwear. Regardless of what it was, he started to think of Diana differently. More and more often, he started to imagine what it would be like to take her to bed and pleasure her. He had never had sex before. Thoughts of Diana began to take over his masturbation sessions.
But he didn't act on these feelings. He was afraid of ruining what they had if she didn't feel the same way, and he didn't see any indication that she did. Then again, would he notice if she did? Probably not. He knew he was notoriously unobservant about these things. Women were often too subtle for him.
Then one day after class, toward the end of the semester, Diana came running to him down the hall. This time, he took in her beauty: her smile, her red hair swaying behind her, her perfectly round medium breasts bouncing as she ran. The way her skirt curved around her hips and covered her panties, which covered her womanhood.
"I got an A on my paper!" she exclaimed.
"Yay!" he said. ``I'm so proud of you." He immediately kicked himself. He had said it like he was her father.
"It's all thanks to you," she said. Her smile brightened. "I was wondering if you wanted to come to my birthday party."
"I'd love to," he said. "When is it?"
``Saturday," she said. "And it's a pool party, so dress accordingly."
"Okay," Andrew asked.
"I'll see you then," she said. Then she walked off.
She was about to turn the corner until Andrew called out, "Diana, wait!"
"What?" She came back to him.
"Um... I was just wondering if you would... like to... go to dinner with me.... On Sunday."
"We go out to dinner already. Is there something different this time?" she prodded.
"Well, yes, I was hoping it would be like a...."
"Date," she said, smiling.
"Yes," he said.
"Of course I would," she said. ``Took you long enough." Then she closed the distance between them and planted her mouth on his.
Andrew stood there not knowing what to do during his first kiss. Was he supposed to do something was his tongue? He pressed his lips back against hers gently. She seemed to like it.