No Such Thing
“There is no such thing as love,” I responded aloud to a class of about 30 other students. I was sitting in a gen ed philosophy class and we had somehow gotten derailed from the topic at hand and a girl near the front raised her hand and asked “If you believe in love at first sight, doesn’t, then, it exist because you believe it does? Does your belief in it define it as real?” I shook my head. I hate these stupid gen ed classes.
The professor looked at me, surprised since I never speak in this class, and began speaking when I heard a voice from behind me say “Admitting there’s no such thing means you qualified it and now it is a such thing.” I turned around to see what wiseass would make such a comment. A guy two rows back from me grinned and tilted his head sideways and nodded slightly at me. I shook my head and sighed.
“Well, that’s an excellent point, it depends on what your version of ‘existence’ is and what qualifies ‘existence,’” the professor went on. I tuned out and instead of scribbling notes into my notebook, I started calculating how many assignments I had to hand in to get an A in the class if I got an A on the final paper. I passed the time thinking about ionic bonds and heavy metals until I heard the professor wrap up the lecture. I put my things back in my bag and started walking out. Upon passing Mr. Wiseass, he stepped out of the row he had been sitting in and spoke from behind me as I walked out of the lecture hall.
“Of course,” he said, “I don’t believe any of this crap.” I turned around and laughed slightly.
“You sounded like you were pretty gung-ho about it,” I said as I kept walking. I held the lecture hall door open for him to pass through.
“Yeah, but my major is math, so what does that tell you about how much I believe in this stuff?” He follows me to a vending machine as I grab a bottle of water. Accidentally, a bottle of artificially flavored water falls out and I look at it.
“Shit,” I say as I glance over the bottle.
“What?” he asks. I hand him the bottle.
“You want this? It has aspartame in it. That stuff will give you cancer,” I say as he takes the bottle from me.
“Oh, so it’s okay for me to get cancer but not you? What makes you so special?” he asks as he follows me down the hallway and toward the library.
“I’m not the one following around a girl from a class he doesn’t know,” I say back as I open the door to the outside and make my way toward the library.
“Touche, madam,” he replies before he stops and yells to me after I get a bit farther away.
“IS THIS BETTER?!” he yells. “I’M NOT FOLLOWING YOU ANYMORE!” I laugh and shake my head.
“Bye!” I yell back to him.
“THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS GOODBYE!” he screams to me as I enter the library. I shake my head again but don’t turn around as I enter. I don’t even know what his name was.
I don’t see the guy again until Wednesday’s philosophy class when he makes it a point to sit down next to me. I look up from scrolling through the songs on my mp3 player and take my left earbud out.
“What do you want, nerd?” I ask him. He smirks a little and fakes feeling insulted.
“Nerd?! What’s YOUR major, ma’am?” he asks me. I lean down and take a particle physics textbook out of my bag and point to the front cover.
“Oh, well, you’re a nerd too!” he says and gives me a high-five. I chuckle a bit and he leans back in his chair. “I don’t see a lot of nerd girls,” he continues. “Congratulations.”
“It’s not that big of a deal,” I say to him, “I just do me some physics and call it a day.”
“Most girls can’t even spell ‘physics,’” he says. “Does particle physics give you a large hadron?”
I shake my head and sigh loudly.
“Do you know how many times I’ve heard that? Physics lines don’t work, man, they only serve to annoy me at this point!” I yell at him and turn my head.
“Sorry, my charm can be a bit strange, don’t let it get you down,” he replies. I look at him and cock my eyebrow.
“Stop talking,” I instruct him. He puts his hands up in defeat and opens a notebook. He doesn’t say a word to me for the rest of the class.
He proceeds to sit next to me and talk to me about various topics in math, physics, life, etc. for the rest of the semester, which only lasts for three more weeks. We finish our final at about the same time and he walks out about a minute after I do. I’m planning on heading back to my apartment when he yells to me from down the hall.
“HOW’D YOU DO, NERD?!” he asks as he walks over to me and we continue walking in the direction of my apartment.
“Pretty well. I bullshitted my way through it big time,” I say and he nods his head. He talks about a test question and what he wrote until we are standing at a point where he will either follow me or veer away.
“Where are you going, anyway?” he asks.
“To my apartment,” I say.
“You live with your nerd boyfriend or something?” he asks. I shake my head.
“I live on campus,” I inform him. He stops walking and I stop thinking that he is going to say his goodbyes and leave.
“So your nerd boyfriend won’t mind if I follow you and we spend hours talking about math and watching ‘Star Wars’?” he asks me. I laugh and shake my head again.
“Well, I think one’s nerd boyfriend might mind some random guy following me home,” I say. He cocks his head and snaps his fingers.
“Aw, shucks. Well, I guess that nerd boyfriend doesn’t really matter, anyway,” he says.
“What? Why not?” I ask.
“Because there’s no such thing as love,” he replies. I laugh and he turns and waves at me as he walks away.
I have never seen him since.
