The Original Law Student: Part I

"Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you

If you're young at heart." 

                                                                                     - Frank Sinatra, Young at Heart

One word of warning before I begin my story. I will most undoubtedly frustrate you with my obliviousness, shock you with my naivety, and make you smh. For better or for worse the following is a true story.  

At the undergrad I went to, there is a University Center (UC) that holds a gym and a food court. It is more or less a typical gym: one area with treadmills, ellipticals, etc; all the weight machines on another; a track in the middle. There is also a bench where you can leave your stuff. We are on the honor system. You never had to worry about your stuff being stolen. 

My first semester of college I would go to the gym almost every day. Let’s just say the difference between me in the gym and me at a party is the difference between night and day. At the gym, you have your regulars and your sporadic exercisers. When you become a regular, you start to notice your fellow regulars. There was one guy in particular that stood out.  He had dark hair, olive colored skin, high cheekbones, roughly six feet tall, well built, and rather intimidating looking. My initial guess was Italian. He would always be in there whenever I came in and there after I left.

On some night in September, my friends and I went out downtown to a club. Let's call it club DI for the sake of anonymity.  I wore a blue dress that night. It was Latin Night, where they would play salsa/tango/latin music. My friends and I sat down at a booth/couch thing. Across the room I saw a guy wearing a white shirt with a red tie. His color combination caught my eye but what kept my attention was his face. For some odd reason, he looked strikingly familiar. I asked my friends if they had seen him at school before. They all said no and one friend mentioned that he looked too old to be in undergrad. I let it go and did not think twice about it.

Around the first week of October, I went to the gym one night. It was raining outside so I borrowed my friend's umbrella. Like usual, I saw the guy again but didn't think too much about it. I was running around the track, while he was lifting weights. As I was nearing the curve (picture above), he came near the bench, smiled at me, and did a "keep going" kind of gesture with his hands. And just like that, he became approachable and no longer that scary intimidating guy from before. After my run, I came over to the bench to put my Ipod down. As it happened, he was there. I turned to him, and I kid you not, and said, "Hi, my name's _____. So what makes you want to work out so much.? I always see you in here." 

He laughed and told me how he had once been the chubby kid, which honestly if you saw this guy is kind of unbelievable. At this, I told him I used to be one too but worse, I had had glasses. He did not believe the chubby part the same way I did not believe him. Any way as we were talking, he asked me a seemingly random question, "Do you go out?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Do you ever go to DI?"

“Yes.” Thought: Where is he going with this?

"Have you ever gone on Latin Night?"

“Yes . . .”

That's when he exclaimed, "You're the girl in the blue dress!"

Then it hit me. "You're the guy in the white shirt, red tie!"

It never had occurred to me that the guy I had seen almost every day that semester had been the white shirt red tie guy. It was the difference between day and night. The same thought must have occurred to him too, because he said, “I honestly didn't recognize you. You clean up really well."

"I'd say the same about you too."

As it turned out, he was a law student. Apparently, my school also had a law school a few miles down the road. Everything finally made sense finally: why he had looked so familiar at the club, yet too old to be an undergrad, why he always came to the gym . . .

Being the curious person that I am, it became a game of twenty questions. He was not in fact Italian but half-Cuban and half-Colombian. He was originally from Miami which explained the slight accent. At the start of this story, he was 23, five years older than me. He kick boxed.

     We both went back to our respective workouts and that night we walked out together. In the About Me section, it says that I’m willfully ignorant/oblivious. You are about to see just how badly. Clue number one: As we were walking, he asked, "So how old are you?"

"18"

"When did you turn 18?"

"In August"

"So this conversation would have been illegal two months ago?"

I laughed at this point because I did not know what to say and ignored the comment. I could not fathom the idea of an older guy as charming as him hitting on me. We talked all the way to the exit of the UC. Outside it was still raining hard. This is where the naivety combines with the lack of social etiquette/lack of shyness to create the following scenario.

I turned to him and said with blissful ignorance, "Let me walk you to your car. I have an umbrella." He refused a few times. At this I said, "Look, I don't really have anything better to do tonight asides from studying, and I'm not really in a hurry to go do that, so just let me walk you to your car." So that's exactly what we did. He had parked his car in the lower level parking lot. To get there, one had to walk down a long series of steps along the side of the UC. As the two of us were walking down the stairs under my umbrella, I realized that we were both getting wet still. Being the fact that we had just met, our bodies were at an angle with one another and both of us were on the outer edges of my small borrowed umbrella. So yet again, I did something that could have been misinterpreted, as in me flirting with him.

"Hold this." 

I gave him my Ipod, slipped my arm around his waist, and said, "Put your arm around me. I don't see the point in both of us getting wet." We continued walking down those stairs like that, when he said, "So when my friends ask me what I did tonight, I can say, 'I got walked to my car by a girl.'"I laughed. The two of us walked all the way to his car together, when my sense of caution finally kicked in or as some of my friends like to say, "Chose a moment that'd be too late in the real world to show up.”

We get to his car, an old green Jaguar. For any car fanatics reading this, I forgot the model. He turned to me and said, "Thank for walking me to my car. The least I could do is drop you home."

"Oh it's fine. I can just walk."

"It's raining pretty hard . . ."

"I do have an umbrella."

"Let me at drop you off. I promise I'm not a rapist."

Guys, if you're ever trying to drop a girl off home, NEVER use that line of logic.

I'm sure most rapists say the same thing, I thought in my head but I caved in against my better judgment. For whatever reason, something inside me said he was better than that.  He opened the door for me and as I got in, said, "Watch your feet."

Point one for the tall dark mysterious stranger.

Seeing as both of us were new to the area, we had to work together to try and find my dorm. I knew how to walk there, just not drive there. While we were trying to find our way there, we continued talking. He told me how he loved to go spear fishing in Miami. As a water lover, I'm not going to lie, it sounded like a lot of fun. Of course me being me, we end up talking about food, when I ask him for his favorite type of food. As it turned out, sushi was his thing and he told me about a few good sushi places in Miami. This is where clues # 2 and 3 come in.

"Do you like sushi?"

"Never tried it."

"What?! Ok, you definitely have to try. I know this really good Japanese place here. What are you doing Saturday night?"

"Nothing other than studying."

"We should get sushi there Saturday night."

"Sure, why not."

"What's your number? By the way, I'm not stepping on any guy's toes when I ask for your number, am I?"

That was clue number three, two being asked out on what turned out to be my first date.  Yes, I really did not consider it a date at the time. He dropped me off home. I called my friend to tell him the story of everything that happened, thinking to myself how crazy coincidence can be. In return for my trouble, I got an earful on how naive and reckless I was for trusting a stranger. He could have raped me, kidnapped me, etc. To appease this friend I told him I would cancel the dinner plans. I had the intentions, the means, and the time but I would not be telling you this story if that had happened.

Saturday night came faster than I had expected. Between classes, studying, and hanging out with friends, I had not had time to call him and cancel our plans for dinner on Saturday night. I decided not to cancel. I put on a pink top, a pair of jeans, and a pair of heels, since he was tall enough. Then, I went to the other end of the dorm, knocked on a friend’s door, and told her the entire situation to be on the safe side. I was a freshman in college who had been sheltered most of her life. You never know when you might run into a psychopath like Ted Bundy. Before leaving, she said "Call me as soon as you get home ok?" It was the beginnings of a wonderful friendship. Being motherly and protective would define our relationship.

The tall, dark, and mysterious stranger came on time. He was standing outside next to his car in a nice white shirt and a pair of jeans. We said hi and hugged, when he did something bizarre. He kissed me on the cheek. I took a half step back without thinking, surprised by his forwardness. He noticed and said, "Oh, I'm sorry. It's a Miami thing, I promise. It's kind of like our way of saying hey."

I made a mental note to ask my friend from Miami tomorrow. He opened the door for me and once again said, "Watch your feet." Once he got in, I asked, "Why do you keep saying that?" He laughed a little and said, "Once when I opened the door for a friend of mine, I hadn't noticed her foot was still out. I accidently slammed the door on her foot." He had the most embarrassed look on his face, and I could not help but laugh. After that the conversation just flowed. Talking to this guy was easy but more importantly, fun. We got to the Japanese place and walked in. It was my first time and I can definitely say I was impressed. At this point, I still did not consider it a date and I had brought money to pay for myself. 

A waitress brought us to our table and we sat down. I had no idea what to order so he ordered for me. As we wait for our food, we talked and the more we talked the more I found myself charmed by this man. He admitted that spicy food made him cry, literally start tearing up. He watched anime, especially Bleach. He was amazed when he found out that I did too. He was terrified of clowns. Yes, really clowns of all things. He loved kickboxing. He even told me one of his totally intoxicated stories. 

One night, he was dead drunk, and his friends took him home.  When they could not find his keys and before his poor friends could react, he crashed his hand through the glass on the side and opened the door. His friends took him inside, cleaned up his hand, bandaged it, and put him to bed. Luckily, alcohol has a way of numbing the pain, at least for a while. He definitely had to go to the doctor when he woke up the next morning. 

All good things come to an end as did our night. He dropped me off home. He had to be up early the next morning (9 or 10am) to go back to studying. I walked into my dorm, where I saw my favorite RA. She asked, "So where are you off to?"

"Actually, I'm just coming back from dinner."

"You should go out. You're all dressed up and it's only ten o'clock."

That got me thinking. Even though I knew he had to be up early, even though I knew it wasn't the norm/proper, I called him.

"I know you have to be up early but I'm really wide awake and I'd really rather not just go back to studying. Do want to hang out again tonight?"

"Sure, that sounds fine. I would say we could come back to my place and watch a movie but I don't want to put any pressure on you. Let me call up my friends and see what they're doing tonight."

A few minutes later he called me back.

"I called my friends and they're all going to a haunted house downtown. Would you like to come?"

"Sure! Sounds good! See you then."

About ten minutes later he was in front of my dorm again. The haunted house turned out to be rather close and in a rather unexpected location: a children's museum. They took each floor and transformed it into a level of the "haunted house," except for the lobby. Upon arriving, we waited around in the lobby, until his friends arrived. I was definitely the youngest in the group and not just by a few years. They were rather nice people. When it was our group's turn to go into the haunted house, I said a quick prayer, wishing for no clowns. For a children's museum, they did a great job in transforming it. We had gotten to the last floor, when we finally saw a clown. Long story short we got through the level WITHOUT my guy punching the clown.

When we got out of there, he turned to me and asked, "So my friends want to go to a bar after this. Would you like to come? I mean, I can drop you off home if you don't want to." It was a definite yes to that invitation. 

We went out to a bar with his friends. They started a game of pool. He and I were on a team. Coincidentally, I had just learned to play pool the week before. Talk about fate. Unfortunately, we lost. Then he asked me, "We're taking shots. Do you want one?" Did I want one? Of course I wanted one. By the way it was tequila, my former favorite but that's another story. Afterwards, he had this really surprised look on his face.

"What?"

"You really don't look like the kind of girl that drinks."

I laughed and this is when things got interesting . . .