Twin Flames, Two Souls Journey Through Time – The Professor - Chapter 1

                  Amelia Jenkins waited quietly outside of her third ever college course pretending to look at her phone as though her life depended on it.  At forty-three she was still feeling unsure of her decision to go back to school.  A lifetime of always being second guessed has a way of doing that to a person.  Thankfully, she is not the oldest person on campus, which was a relief.  Amelia was average height for a woman at 5’4”, more padding on her than what she would like, but the great thing with age is that you become more comfortable in your own skin.  Her curly light brown hair and peaches and cream complexion made her seem younger than her age.  She always liked to joke that it was because she was single and didn’t have any kids, therefore she didn’t have any wrinkles or gray hair.  It was already five minutes past the start of the class, “where is the professor,” she thought to herself, as more students started milling about the hallway waiting for him to unlock the door.

                  Just then, he showed up.  A rather unassuming man, who probably stood about 5’6”, he had a lean physique and wore a woolen cap.  He looked young, younger than her, but that was easy to do, considering Amelia was closer in age to most of her professors, rather than any of her fellow students.  Amelia preferred to sit at the front of the class, mainly because it made it easier for her to pay attention, but also easier to feel less self-conscious if her peers were sitting behind her.  She could forget how ancient she felt as compared to the zygotes also taking the course if she did not see them.  It was algebra, so it was a packed class, but experience has taught her that the size would shrink as students would eventually stop showing up, that first taste of adult freedom allowing them the ability to call their own shots.  As the class started and Mr. Daniel Hillard began speaking, the voice that boomed out of him was unexpected.  He had such a deep, and if she was being honest with herself, rather sexy voice.  It caught her quite off guard, she was always a sucker for a nice voice.

                  Daniel took attendance and went through the syllabus just as most professors do on the first day.  As Amelia listened, she couldn’t help but notice how very handsome he was, in a nerdy sort of way.  But that was Amelia’s catnip, she was a girl who found the nerd the sexiest of all men.  Sure muscles, a great smile, and a thick head of hair are nice, but so often the men that possess those things tended to be vain, and not the kind of man she would want to spend any meaningful time with.  “I’d take a kind smile and sarcastic sense of humor any day of the week, and twice on Sundays,” she absentmindedly thought to herself.  As Daniel continued speaking, Amelia became more comfortable in her surroundings.  She forgot about the probability of her being the oldest person in the class, and she didn’t understand why, but for some reason it seemed like she was the only other person in the room.

                  Daniel spoke about the different resources that Oceanview College had including mental health, a food bank, and tutoring.  For being a community college, it really did have an impressive list of resources.  While discussing these services he mentioned his mother, who had recently passed, he brought out a box of tissues, and he said, “just in case.”  He told the class how she suffered from depression, and he wanted them to know that it is ok to ask for help if any of them ever need it.  It was rather brave Amelia thought, to show so much vulnerability to strangers.  He mentioned that his office was in the same building and had all of them get up to go for a little walk so that they would all know exactly where to find him, if ever they needed to speak to him.  As they all walked out of the classroom, Amelia thought how funny it must look to see this man leading roughly fifty students to his office, it reminded her of being in kindergarten, and Mrs. Samuels leading the class to recess and back.  A smile crept onto her face, without her even realizing it.

                  As the class reached his office, Daniel asked that each student look inside and take a mental note of what they see.  Amelia looked at his office, noticed the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves, the folding chairs in the corner, and then made her way back to the classroom with the rest of the students.  “I want to see how observant each of you are,” Daniel said, “Who can tell me the things that were in my office? For every item you get correct, you will each get an extra credit point, and for each that you get wrong, a point will be taken away.”  Hands began flying up, and answers were being written on the board, “desk,” “clock,” “chair,” “computer,” etc.  Amelia, not one to ever draw attention to herself, kept quiet while the others kept rattling off different things.  “Four folding chairs,” one person said, and Amelia thought to herself, how that seemed oddly precise.  If it were wrong then that is a point taken away, as the seventh of eight children, competitiveness was a very strong motivation for her.  She wanted to say something but again stayed silent. 

                  When the board was finally filled Daniel started going through the list of items.  When he came to the clock, he smiled and said “Nope, no clock,” and before she knew what was happening Amelia blurted out, “they probably only said that because you were late to class and thought that maybe it was a good idea for you to have a clock in your office.”  She could immediately feel her cheeks burn red, and fifty pairs of eyes turn towards her, and she wished that the ground would swallow her up.  The kids laughed and Daniel turned to look directly at her, a wicked smile forming on his face, feyned injury and said “WOW – that was a wicked burn, I need to check for smoke.”  Amelia knew that he wasn’t mad at her, if she ventured a guess, the look he gave her was one of awe.  Amelia NEVER spoke out in class like that.  Sure, she would answer the professors’ questions, especially when no one else was saying anything, she always felt so sorry for them when they asked a question and the only response they received was the sound of crickets chirping in the distance.  But to tease a professor so openly and vocally that was simply not her, and certainly not on the first day of class!  At forty-three, she knew that sarcasm, while her favorite form of communication, was not appreciated by all, and in fact some people found in downright rude.  She wasn’t sure, but she even may have taken her hand to her lips in shock when those words literally fell out of her mouth, out loud, not even under her breath.  She muttered a sorry and the class continued.  As the bell rang, she never wanted to run away faster in her entire life.  What in all that is holy made her do that??  As she left, Daniel smiled at her sweetly, and nodded towards her and said “Ms. Jenkins,” and Amelia simply replied “Daniel,” and she darted out of the classroom.  His smile reached his eyes, and she could have sworn that she saw them glint at her, it appeared that she had made an impression on Mr. Hillard, much to her chagrin. 

                  As Amelia made her way to her car, the feel of the cool winter air gave her warm cheeks a bit of respite.  Her mind was quite a flurry as per her usual MO of overthinking, she just replayed that awful moment repeatedly in her head.  Had she ever been more embarrassed??  If she thought seriously about the subject the answer was a resounding YES, of course, but she was hard-pressed to remember any instance at that particular moment.  She had to make her way to work, so her mental gymnastics would just have to wait. 

                  As she pulled into the parking lot of her office, the image of Daniel’s wicked expression made the corner of her lips turn upwards into a half smile.  She was relieved that at least he didn’t seem upset with her for her outburst in class today.  She resolved to stop thinking about it, but for some reason her brain just kept playing the scene on repeat.  What had gotten into her?  Amelia didn’t show her true self to anyone, let alone a stranger, let alone one who had a very real impact on her educational goals.  Guilt began to rise into her chest, what if she had offended him?  She had clearly embarrassed him, the tinge of pink in his cheeks told her that, however, she could swear he liked it. 

                  Amelia thought about the circumstances that brought her to his class in the first place.  A rational person, when it came to school and work anyway, Amelia had decided that she was going to get all her English and Math out of the way, and then she could focus on her career choice of becoming a Zoologist.  The prior year she had decided, on a whim, that she was going to go back to school to get her degree.  She signed up, took the entrance exams, and even took a couple of classes before this one.  She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t sign up for Trigonometry, so she went to a counselor who had told her that she had to take Algebra first.  Having already spent a summer session taking a statistics class, that it would turn out was taken in error, she was annoyed at the thought of having to spend another semester on a class that would not go towards her degree.  “If I were thirty-three instead of forty-three, that would have been one thing, but at forty-three, I don’t have the luxury of time on my side,” she grumbled to herself.  If the first counselor had given her the correct information, she would already be done with Algebra, but “it is what it is” she thought to herself.  That expression used to drive her up the fucking wall whenever her ex, Matt, would say that to her.  It was his not-so-subtle way of telling her she could either deal with his cheating or move on.  Matt was her first everything, and for better or worse she just couldn’t imagine a life without him, so for far too many years she accepted less than she deserved.  She was finally done with him, it took fifteen years, and having another child with his current ex-wife to finally close that chapter once and for all.  She wasn’t sure why, but that was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. 

                  As she made her way to her desk, her work bestie, Leah asked about school, and Amelia began to regale her with everything that happened in class that day.  She spoke of how he was late, his voice, the trip down to his office, and then the awful, humiliating words that spewed out of her mouth.  Leah, who was slightly older than Amelia, laughed and then uttered the following words that would wind up changing her life forever, “sounds like you have a little crush on your professor.”  Amelia stopped typing whatever inane memo her boss had her working on, and replied, “NO, that’s not possible.”  Leah simply looked away with a knowing smile and said, “OK Amelia, if you say so.”  A crush, that is simply preposterous, “I was simply embarrassed, I don’t have a crush on Daniel” Amelia thought. 

Amelia told her sister Lucy on the ride home from work about her day, Amelia and Lucy are exceptionally close despite their thirteen year age gap.  Amelia used to call Lucy, “Momma Lucy,” as a child.  Lucy was the one that spent the majority of time with her, and their younger brother John.  While Amelia loved her family, when you are so much younger than your siblings, they tend to treat you more like a child than a peer, they seem to forget that she is forty-three and only see the bratty teenager she used to be.  Lucy was different, sure they fought when they were younger, but Lucy was her best friend and confidant.  They had lived together basically their entire lives, except for those six years when Lucy was married to Gabe, years which they both preferred to forget.  And there was no one on earth that knew Amelia better.

Lucy was number five, their parents had had six kids in six years, Sally, Benjamin, Kenneth, Edgar, Lucy, and Kyle, followed twelve years later by Amelia and then finally by John two and half years later.  Eight kids, twenty years difference between the oldest and the youngest.  While having a child in your late thirties is not uncommon today, back in the seventies, it was unheard of.  Amelia was actually closer in age to her nieces and nephews than she was to her siblings.  She grew up with three mothers and five fathers, and honestly the two parents she had was more than enough.  Amelia was much closer to Lucy than her younger brother John, who of the eight siblings was the only one her parents deliberately had, so that she wouldn’t grow up like an only child.  “He was supposed to be a girl,” her mother said, but life had other plans.  John and Amelia were like oil and water, they did not mix.  They fought like cats and dogs as children, the only time they didn’t fight was when their favorite cartoon would come on.  “SHUT UP, Transformers is on,” Amelia would scream at John, and for those thirty minutes, the house was peaceful. 

As Lucy listened to Amelia talk about her day, and everything that happened at school, Lucy smiled and said, “sounds like you have a little crush on your professor.”  Amelia couldn’t believe her ears, that’s the second person to tell her that today, was she missing something?  “I don’t have a crush on Daniel,” she said in an exasperated tone.  “OK, if you say so,” Lucy replied in a sickly-sweet tone of voice.  Amelia’s nickname was “heart on her sleeve” which was given to her in the seventh grade, by her English Teacher Mr. Matteucci, she didn’t understand what that meant exactly back then, but she certainly knew what it meant now.  Amelia had absolutely no ability to lie, as Matt would always tell her, “I don’t know why you bother trying to lie, you suck at it!  Your eyes always, always give you away.”  Damn him, why was she thinking of that asshole?  She supposed she should have been honored, considering how proficient of a liar he was, he was the true expert on the subject.  Amelia chose to let Lucy’s comment go, neither she nor Leah were there, what did they know.

Tortured by her own brain, Amelia finally decided that she had to send Daniel an email to apologize for her outburst in class.  “It was the right thing to do,” she thought.  If he was offended then the apology would hopefully set them back on the right track, and well if he wasn’t, then at least he would know that she was willing to apologize when she was wrong.  “Dear Daniel, I wanted to apologize for my outburst in class today.  I’m sorry if I offended you in any way., Sincerely, Amelia A. Jenkins.”  She hit send, and then she obsessed over the email, Amelia, wished she knew how to turn off her brain.  Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day.