Chapter Two

The Computer Science Guy

The following Thursday, Maya arrived at the book club seven minutes early, which was sufficiently early by her standards that she considered it a personal achievement, although she immediately ruined that achievement by spending the first five minutes standing outside the room trying to decide whether she actually wanted to go in. The week had passed in the usual blur of lectures, readings, assignments and far too much coffee, and yet somewhere between Tuesday afternoon and Thursday evening, she had found herself remembering the conversation she had had with Ethan at the end of the previous meeting more often than she cared to admit. It was ridiculous, really, because they had spoken for perhaps five minutes, and most of those five minutes had been about a fictional character neither of them particularly liked, but Maya had caught herself wondering whether he would come again, whether he would sit in the same place, and, more embarrassingly, whether he would remember her.

She finally pushed open the door and found the room only half full, with several familiar faces scattered around the tables and the usual collection of abandoned mugs, notebooks and books already beginning to make the room look lived in. The late afternoon light came through the tall windows in long pale strips, illuminating tiny particles of dust that drifted lazily through the air, while outside, the courtyard had taken on the muted colours of early autumn. Maya walked toward her usual chair, placed her bag beside it and pulled out the green book she had been reading, but she had barely opened it when she heard the familiar sound of footsteps behind her.

"You're early."

She turned around and found Ethan standing there with his backpack hanging from one shoulder, his glasses slightly lower on his nose than they had been the previous week and his headphones resting around his neck. There was something different about seeing him now that she knew his name, although she couldn't decide whether that was because he actually seemed more familiar or because her brain had simply decided that knowing someone's name automatically made them more interesting.

"So are you," she replied, glancing at the clock.

He looked toward it and then back at her. "I usually am."

"That's unfortunate."

His eyebrows lifted. "Why?"

"Because now I can't use being early as evidence that I'm more responsible than you."

He laughed quietly, the kind of laugh that seemed to escape him before he had time to decide whether something was actually funny, and Maya found herself smiling despite the fact that she had intended to continue teasing him. He pulled out the chair opposite hers and sat down, placing his backpack between his feet before taking out a laptop, a notebook and the novel for that evening's discussion.

Maya looked at the laptop, then at him. "You're actually taking notes?"

"I usually take notes."

"During a book-club meeting?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

He looked genuinely confused by the question. "Because we're discussing a book."

Maya stared at him for a moment before shaking her head. "You're definitely a computer science student."

He paused, apparently trying to understand how she had reached that conclusion. "How did you know?"

"Nobody else takes notes like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you're about to submit them for internal assessment."

He glanced down at his notebook, where the page was already divided into neat sections, and then looked back at her with a slightly embarrassed smile. "I like organizing things."

"I noticed."

She returned her attention to her own book, although the smile remained on her face. There was something oddly comforting about talking to him, perhaps because Ethan did not seem to be trying particularly hard to impress her. He wasn't constantly searching for something clever to say, and he didn't seem bothered when a joke landed badly. He simply responded to whatever she said with a quiet sincerity that made even ordinary conversations feel slightly more interesting.

As the other members began arriving, their conversation gradually became part of the larger noise of the room, but Maya noticed that Ethan kept occasionally looking up whenever she spoke to someone else, as though he was unconsciously keeping track of the conversation. She told herself she was imagining it, because she had no reason to believe otherwise, and she certainly wasn't interested enough to start analyzing the behaviour of a boy she had known for approximately twelve minutes across two separate evenings.

The discussion began soon afterward, and this time Maya tried to listen without immediately forming an argument in her head, although that lasted approximately four minutes before someone said something about the protagonist being selfish and she quietly leaned forward in her chair.

"That's not fair," she said.

Several people turned toward her, and the coordinator smiled. "You disagree?"

"I disagree completely."

Ethan looked down at his notebook, and Maya noticed the faintest hint of amusement on his face.

"What?" she whispered.

"Nothing."

"You did that last time."

"I'm listening."

"You're smiling."

"I'm allowed to smile."

"Not when I'm making a serious argument."

He looked at her over the top of his glasses. "I'll try to control myself."

Maya narrowed her eyes at him before turning back toward the group, but she couldn't stop herself from smiling as she began explaining her interpretation of the character. This time, Ethan joined the discussion a few minutes later, and Maya was surprised by how thoughtful his argument was. She had expected him to approach the novel almost entirely from a logical perspective, but instead he focused on the protagonist's fear of failure and the way the author had used her relationships to reveal the parts of her personality that she tried to hide.

Maya listened carefully, her chin resting lightly against her hand, and when he finished speaking, she looked at him with genuine surprise.

"Okay," she said. "That was actually good."

He smiled. "Thank you."

"I didn't say you were right."

"I know."

"But it was good."

"I'll take that."

The discussion continued, but something had shifted between them. They were still essentially strangers, yet the awkwardness of the previous week had begun to disappear, replaced by a quiet familiarity that neither of them seemed to notice developing. They disagreed about several things, agreed about a few others, and once or twice caught each other's eye when someone made an especially ridiculous observation, both of them silently acknowledging the same thought without needing to say it.

When the meeting finally ended, Maya gathered her books slowly, partly because she wasn't in any particular hurry and partly because she had begun to suspect that Ethan was also moving more slowly than necessary.

"You walking toward the library?" he asked.

She looked up. "Yeah."

"Me too."

There was a pause.

"Do you want to walk together?"

Maya considered pretending that she needed to be somewhere else, although she had nowhere else to be, and eventually decided that would be unnecessarily strange.

"Sure."

They stepped outside into the cool evening air, and the sounds of the university gradually replaced the quiet of the book-club room. Students crossed the courtyard in groups, bicycles passed along the stone paths, and somewhere nearby someone was playing music faintly enough that Maya couldn't recognize the song. Ethan walked beside her with his hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket, occasionally adjusting his glasses whenever they slipped slightly down his nose.

"So," Maya said after a while, "why computer science?"

He glanced at her. "Why English?"

"That's different."

"How?"

"English makes sense."

He laughed. "Computer science makes sense."

"Exactly. That's why it's suspicious."

He shook his head, smiling as they continued toward the library. "I like solving problems."

"And I like creating problems."

"That explains a lot."

She looked at him, offended for approximately two seconds before laughing. "You know, you're becoming surprisingly annoying."

"I've been told that before."

"Good. At least you're self-aware."

They continued walking, their conversation moving effortlessly from their degrees to professors, books, terrible cafeteria food and the strange experience of living in a university where almost every building seemed to have hundreds of years of history behind it. Maya discovered that Ethan spent an unreasonable amount of time listening to music while studying, that he preferred working late at night and that he had an almost obsessive habit of organizing his notes according to subjects and topics.

Ethan discovered that Maya frequently reread books she already knew by heart, that she talked to herself when she was trying to write, that she judged people according to their opinions about fictional characters and that she had an alarming ability to remember lines from books but somehow managed to forget where she had put her keys approximately three times a week.

By the time they reached the library entrance, Maya realized that they had been walking for nearly twenty minutes.

She stopped beneath the stone archway and looked at him. "I thought you said you were going to the library."

"I am."

"You've been talking the whole way."

"So have you."

She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it when she realized he was right.

Ethan smiled, adjusting his glasses before pulling open the library door.

"See you next Thursday?"

Maya hesitated for only a second before nodding.

"Yeah. Next Thursday."

She watched him disappear inside, then looked down at the green book tucked beneath her arm and smiled to herself as she followed him into the library, still unaware that the quiet computer science student with the glasses had already begun becoming something more than a familiar face across a book-club table.