During midterms, Jon could not get Dany out of his head. He had only kissed a girl once before, and it had been more of a result of peer pressure from his mates at a party, as they always used to tell him that it was about time he kissed a girl. It had been five years ago, when he was sixteen.
He biked to school that evening to study in the library. His brother Robb had invited people over to their place to study, which meant they would study the first hour and then start talking about any other topic, laughing loudly and drinking at the end of the evening. So, he preferred to go to the library to study on his own.
His phone vibrated as he parked his bicycle and a text from Daenerys popped on the screen. He had asked for her help with an equation he couldn't solve and she sent him a picture of her notebook with the solution. And so, she got into his thoughts once more, about how she had talked to him for hours about a subject he knew nothing about. That study session had been slightly embarrassing, actually. He had felt a little dumb next to her.
He was good in courses that used words instead of numbers. When math was involved, he felt quite stupid and doubted his intelligence. Math made him insecure, as if he needed another reason to be insecure. Calculus for Economics was the most difficult class he had taken in his life. He had considered dropping out, but his father, an engineer, had told him calculus was useful for everything in life.
He had spent the past week studying calculus for hours every day, wondering why the hell he had listened to his dad and stayed in this class, 'learning' theorems and equations that would not be of any use to him. He usually did not study for the grades, but reviewed subject by subject until he felt ready for an exam. If he had a top mark or an average mark, he was alright with it. He studied philosophy because he liked what he learned. But with calculus, he was studying nonstop just to get a passing grade.
Dany made calculus seem easy, though. It was impressive. Yet her blue eyes and full lips had hindered his attention to the equations every once in a while. He had felt so damn stupid when his eyes betrayed him and stared at her lips while they sat so close to each other. He messed it all up, blurting out that she was pretty. It got extremely uncomfortable and silent after that, and he had feared they would not speak again.
But despite it all, at the end of the night, she decided to kiss him. Why, though? Did she do this with many guys? Probably not. Her roommate said she had never slept with anyone. The memory of such an awkward moment made him blush to himself as he got closer to school.
Had it been the right choice to ask her out? He hoped so. He had liked being around Dany. She was so talkative, unlike him. He was not quiet with everyone—not with his family nor his friends. But meeting new people and thinking about what to say to them was always a challenge. He was too aware of everything he said and did around them. He was already thinking about conversation topics for their date to avoid running out of words.
However, he had had to pluck up the courage to talk to Dany first, as it was his only chance to perhaps pass calculus. Hell, even a text message about an equation could make his finger tremble before pressing 'send'. But what was in his mind the most was, of course, that quick moment when she caught him off guard, pressing a kiss to his lips. In the half-second after she separated her face from his, a number of reasons had made it impossible to hold himself from kissing her back. First, the realization that she felt as attracted to him as he to her. When he had told her she was pretty, she had stayed silent, so he had thought she wasn't even a bit attracted to him. Second, her expression after she pressed that kiss to his lips conveyed that she was regretting it, or was embarrassed. He wanted to assure her there was no reason for that. He had loved it, not the kiss itself, which had been too quick to process, but how she had been brave enough to do so.
This lead to the third and most important reason: she had done something completely different from what he would have done, which would have probably been saying goodbye at the end of the night and leaving, too nervous to even ask her out. And so, that unexpected act had pushed him to kiss her back, something completely unexpected from himself as well. He had never kissed a girl like that, in such a fast way, without giving any thought to it. How could she have gotten him to do that, a girl he had just met that day? So, a strong and sudden need to know more about her hit him like a brick after kissing her, after breaking his behavior pattern in the most unexpected way, and he did the last unexpected act of the night: asking her out. Unexpected, yes, because he had never asked a girl out before.
As he walked into the library, he tried his best to keep her off his mind. He reminded himself that, at least for now, he should focus solely on his exams.
Her Eastern History midterm was the following morning, and, once again, Dany couldn't sleep. Insomnia was frequent for her, especially the nights before exams. She looked at the time on her phone for the seventh time: 2:04 am. She growled. She was wide awake.
Dany threw her blankets to her side and sat on the edge of the bed to put on slippers, a hoodie and her hair up in a bun to go to the library. It was open twenty-four hours during midterms and finals weeks, given the number of students who pulled all-nighters before their exams. She would perhaps review her material a couple more times there, to avoid bothering Missandei.
The school had a huge library, one of the biggest in the country. Tall shelves divided the room in several hallways, each one holding books of a different subject. Dany walked slowly around them, eyeing every book she saw. Sometimes she, irrationally, wished she could read them all and get all that knowledge into her head. She stood on her toes to grab a book from the top shelf, Inequality in the West. She walked out of the hallway and headed to the code-reading machine to register the book's code and her student ID to take it to her room. All the students at their desks wore tired faces, and in the back corner of the room, was a black, curly head lying on a desk. He looked like Jon. Dany walked towards him and realized it was, in fact, Jon, asleep on his desk. Readings full of highlights and annotations covered his desk. Dried drops of coffee had stained his textbook. She dared to shake his shoulder softly.
"Jon?" she whispered, "Jon?" and shook him slightly harder.
He jerked up and opened his eyes. They glistened, reddish, adding to his confused gaze.
"Da-Dany," he mumbled, "I…think I fell asleep."
"Yeah, you did," she chuckled.
This was the first time she had seen him after she taught him calculus. Had it been sensible to wake him up like that? Had it been too intrusive? And why had she even woken him up? Her feet had dragged her to him, wanting to talk to him again, whatever the topic.
"Have I been like this for too long?"
"I don't know," she said in a low voice. Not many people were close to them, but still, the room was extremely quiet. "I just saw you."
He looked down at the mess in his desk. "I'm not always this messy, by the way. Tonight I tried really hard," he said, making her chuckle. "You wanna sit?"
She sat down in the chair beside him. "What are you studying?"
"Philosophy. I spent the last week only studying Calculus, so today I had to study Philosophy in just a few hours."
"Get some sleep," she said, "All-nighters are worse than not studying enough."
Jon said he would. He could handle philosophy better, anyway. He said he actually understood the professor in class and the books he read, as opposed to the Calculus.
"What do you have there?" he asked, eyeing her book.
"Oh, it's just...Fifty Shades of Grey." He lifted his eyebrows in surprise and she laughed out loud. Voices around them shushed her. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding. It's economics," she said, holding it in her hands.
He chuckled. "Well, I did find Fifty Shades of Grey in my younger sister's bedside table the other day."
"How old is she, though?!" she laughed.
"Seventeen. I still see her as a twelve-year-old, though. She can read whatever she wants but I'd rather not know," he grimaced. "I'd rather she'd read Twilight or something like that."
"Twilight? Come on! I wouldn't choose either of those. Terrible female leads in both."
"Can't deny that." He yawned and rubbed his tired eyes. He supported his face on his hand, with his elbow on the table, looking like he would fall asleep again. "Well, as you can see, all-nighters are not really my thing," he said, blinking to try and stay awake. "Have you ever stayed up all night studying?"
"Never. I always to start a couple of weeks before."
"Then why are you studying here now?"
"Oh, I…" she chuckled. "I couldn't sleep. Some nights I just can't, especially before exams. So I came to study a bit more, at least to review some more dates of the eastern wars and all that."
"Have you tried sleeping pills?"
She shook her head. Jon rested his head on the desk and said, "I feel like I've taken ten of those right now."
"You should go to sleep, then," she giggled.
"I will. I'll review this reading one last time and then I'll get going."
Dany was always in the top third of her classes and wanted to maintain her place to graduate with honors. So, she tried hard to absorb what her notes said, but his presence stole her thoughts from their content. And so, the thought of the kiss she gave him crept in again—it had been unwilling to leave her in peace since that night. Did he tell his friends about it? Did they all laugh together at her? She had even wondered if he would change his mind and cancel their date. Why had she done that? She could have asked him out instead of kissing him. She could have kissed him at a party. Studying together was not the best situation to kiss a stranger, if he could have been considered a stranger by their fourth hour together.
"You know," she left her papers on the table, "I can't focus."
Jon exhaled a laugh. "Neither can I. I'm just looking at the words and not internalizing anything."
They laughed together. She tried not to stare at him while he did so.
"We should go to sleep."
He nodded and told her, "Good luck tomorrow."
"Good luck to you too," she smiled.
She guessed that was goodbye. But when she got up, he told her, "Hey…um…you haven't forgotten, right? That after...the calculus midterm..."
"No, I haven't forgotten!" she exclaimed, half-laughing.
"Oh, great, sure, um...I don't know why I thought you might have, I..."
"It's alright, Jon. Oh and...if you have any other questions about Calculus, just text me."
"Sure, yes, thank you, I will." And after a second, he said, "Do you want me to walk you back to your dorm?"
She shook her head. "It's fine, but thanks."
"It's kinda late...are you sure?"
"You're so tired, you should get some rest, don't worry."
Jon opened his mouth but hesitated. It seemed like a competition for who was kinder.
"Are you...sure?"
She nodded with a smile. It was nice of him to want to walk with her, but she didn't know if, when they arrived at her dorm, he would expect her to ask him to come in. Perhaps he wouldn't, though, he didn't seem that straightforward and was clearly tired. But it would be better for both to leave on their own to get some sleep anyway.
"Yes, but thank you," she replied. "Goodnight...and nice textbook," she joked, looking down at the coffee stains on it.
"Thank you, and nice slippers," he replied, pointing at her light-blue and pink slippers.
"I'm glad you noticed," she laughed. "See you around, Jon."
She turned to walk towards the door and could not stop her lips from forming a tiny smile. She hoped she had seemed friendly, though, as he truly made her feel on edge. Was the memory of the kiss what made her nervous? Or did Jon, in general, make her nervous? One thing she was sure of was that she would not kiss him on their date.
Before crossing the door of the library, she looked back at him and he waved at her. She waved back, and stupidly wished she had agreed for him to walk with her.
As soon as she left, Jon wondered if he should have insisted more to walk with her. But it was late, and he had an exam the next morning. The most responsible thing to do was to go home and sleep. He stood up anyway and put his books in his backpack, wondering if he was getting ready to go home or to meet her outside and ask her once more if she wanted company. Maybe not. He would seem too insistent, too desperate.
He put his backpack on his shoulders. He wanted to be with her again, at least for the short time it took to get to her dorm. He held the stripes of his backpack with both hands and breathed deeply. It was either going to her now or waiting until the calculus midterm to see her again.
He ran towards the door, across the large room between the tables, and felt a hundred eyes on him. He pushed the door open and walked out. There was nobody outside, only small silhouette at the end of the brick road. He squinted his eyes: the silhouette had blond hair. She was too far now, though.
He cursed to himself. If he weren't so indecisive and had run out just a bit earlier, he could have walked with her. He exhaled and walked the other way, heading to his flat.