Everyone started to get out of their seats, and I realized I hadn’t even noticed that the professor had stopped talking. I pushed past the students trying to walk in front of me and moved toward the middle of the row as Corabelle packed her bag. The pink girl headed straight for her too, eyes on me, and her brows shot up when I leaned down and kissed Corabelle on the forehead.
“So I guess you ended up not having any time to write me back all weekend.” She pouted, her bright lips matching her hair.
“Sorry,” Corabelle said. “We were all over the place.”
“All over each other, I’m guessing.” She crossed her arms over her neon green sweatshirt, one shoulder cut out to reveal an equally bright pink tank. That girl liked her color.
Corabelle didn’t answer that, and I had to force myself to keep quiet and let them have their tiff. When she stood up, I took her hand.
“I get it,” the girl said. “I get a little crazed over a new guy.”
“I’ll call you later on, okay?” Corabelle said.
“All right. I want details.” She appraised me from my boots to my black T-shirt. “They’re bound to be good.”
“Let’s go,” I said, tugging Corabelle toward the door.
“You two lovebirds going up in the tilted house now or saving it for later?” the girl asked.
I turned around. “What are you talking about?”
“The assignment,” Corabelle said. “The professor gave us a task to do in the house on the roof.”
“Somebody was in la-la land,” the girl said, and I really wished she’d just go away. “I have to put in an extra shift at Cool Beans, but you might want to get it done. They aren’t open but a few hours a week.”
About the last thing I wanted to do was waste what little time I had before heading to Bud’s on homework, but Corabelle said, “That’s a good idea.”
When we got out in the hallway, instead of heading for the stairwell, she went for the elevator. Several others in the class were waiting outside it, and I could see we were going to have a lot of company. “What are we supposed to do up there?” I asked her.
“Measure the angle of a photograph on the wall against the true straight line from the center of the ceiling. There’s apparently a chandelier that hangs properly.”
“Can’t we just get this off their website or something?” I asked.
Corabelle squeezed my hand. “It’ll be fun.”
I wanted to say, no, you naked on my sofa would be fun, but we were surrounded by students. I pulled her to the back of the group as the others squeezed onto the elevator. “Let’s see if the rest of them can get through it first and then we’ll go.”
“Okay.” She let me lead her down the hall and pull her around a corner that ended abruptly in a doorway to a lab with a biohazard sign and more security locks than Fort Knox.
I yanked her into my arms and kissed her thoroughly. I didn’t stop until I felt better, less tense than I’d been having to sit away from her during class.
“Gavin,” she said. “We do have to carry on with normal life.”
I pulled her in close. “I don’t want to.”
She laughed. “You have that same whiny voice you got when you had to go home every night when I lived with my parents.”
“Feels about the same too.”
“You’re killing me. I don’t remember getting this sore before.”
“We never had a break before.”
She wrapped her arms around me and rested her head on my chest. I could have stayed there for hours, but the locks behind us began to turn, and we had to step out of our secret alcove to let a harried-looking student dash by.
“We should probably head up,” Corabelle said.
I sighed. “Okay. I still think we can get the answer somewhere else.”
“You didn’t pay a lick of attention in class, did you?”
“How could I, when you were sitting so close, naked under all those clothes?”
Corabelle smiled, and once again I wanted to revel in it, seeing her happy again. I vowed never to do anything to take that smile from her. Maybe I could do a reversal on the vasectomy somewhere down the line without telling her. It would work. I would make it work. She didn’t even have to know what I had done.
We punched the button to the elevator, and I was pleased to see it empty when it opened. I held her close as we ascended to the roof garden. The tilted house was part art experiment, part joke, depending on who you asked. It had been installed a year ago and made a big splash in the student papers. I hadn’t paid much attention at the time, but you couldn’t help but notice the little blue building if you looked up, hanging off the roof like it might fall with the slightest breeze.
“Have you been up here before?” Corabelle asked as the doors slid open.
“Nope.”
“Good.” We stepped out into the hall. A dozen or so students were waiting to get in to go down. I recognized a couple from the row in front of me. “27 degrees,” a tall guy in a hipster fedora said.
“I got 28,” countered a girl.
“It’s 27,” said another girl.
“I say let’s go with 27 and head out,” I said to Corabelle.
She shook her head and tugged on my arm, past the growing horde and through the glass doors.
The garden was still blooming, chaotic with flowers and bees, and a few straggling students who were all saying, “27 degrees, don’t bother measuring” and moving back up the path.