Nick peeked his head through the door from the side, “Uh.. Boo? You coming in or not?”
Jourdin just whimpered in response as she trudged into the house, dropping her bag by the door and falling into Nick’s outstretched arms.
“Bad day?” Nick asked, kissing her forehead.
“Like you would not believe,” she mumbled against his chest.
“Awwww… I’ll make it all better” he said, scooping her up and carrying her to their bedroom, lying her down and spooning her. “What happened?”
Jourdin relaxed a little as she snuggled back against him, able to feel some of the tension and stress leaving her. “It was just a bad day… I spilled cappuccino all over the car on the way to school, got caught in traffic because a couch fell off the back of a truck and caused a big mess, so I was late to class and missed an extra credit quiz that I totally needed, forgot my disk with my assignment on it here at home, got cheese sauce from my pretzel on my shirt and got assigned a 10 minute oral presentation for com theory that’s due next week,” she said, sighing heavily.
“Shit… sorry, Boo.”
“Not your fault.”
“No, but I’m sorry you had a bad day. We’ll just hang out tonight, do whatever you want.” Nick told her, his hand slipping lightly up and down her arm.
“Mmmm.. order pizza, cuddle, and sleep.”
“Sounds good to me.”
She sat up, saying, “But I don’t have time for that.”
“Why not?” Nick asked, sitting up beside her.
“Nick, I have like, nine days to pull together 10 minutes worth of information… I gotta start now,” she said, getting up to change her clothes.
“Right this second?”
“Pretty much”, she replied, pulling on a pair of track pants and a t-shirt of his.
Nick sighed, “Okay.. how about this? Start your homework if you have to, I’ll get dinner.. you can take a break for awhile and we’ll eat and then I’ll help you?”
“Help me with what?”
He shrugged, “I don’t know.. whatever you’re working on.”
Jourdin stepped in front of him and kissed him softly on the lips “Okay.”
Nick smiled at her, “Then go get to work.”
Jourdin rolled her eyes and headed off to the computer room to get started on her research.
Forty minutes later, Nick came into the room, carrying a pizza box with soda and plates stacked on top. “Boo.. I got food.”
Jourdin slowly turned away from the computer, blinking. “I think my eyes are going to cross.”
Nick laughed and sat down on the floor, “How’s it going?”
She joined him on the floor, “Not exactly well. No one does studies on this stupid theory, because no one likes it. So there’s, like, no info on it.”
Nick handed her a plate, “What theory is it?”
“The narrative paradigm” she said, grabbing a slice of pizza.
“Umm.. sure.”
Jourdin giggled and scooted closer to him, “I love you.”
Just as Nick started to reply, Jourdin’s cell phone began ringing. She looked around, wondering where she left it. She jumped up to find it, and grabbed it off the entertainment center. “Hello?… Luke?… Oh, hey… yeah?… that’s a good idea.. tomorrow night, sure that’d work… yeah, see you then… Bye.”
Nick raised his eyebrow as Jourdin came to sit back down beside him. “Luke?”
“Yeah, he’s in my com class. He said him and a few other people are starting a study group for the next test and wanted to know if I wanted to get in with them,” she said, reaching for her pizza again.
“Oh, okay.. as long as you’re not makin’ dates with someone else.” Nick said, leaning over to kiss her cheek.
“Never.”
~~~
Nick was putting away the last of the dishes as he pulled them out of the dishwasher when Jourdin came running in the house, squealing.
“Niiiiccckkk!!!”
He held his arms out to her, “What is it, Boo?”
“I got an ‘A’ on my test!!” she shrieked, wrapping her arms around him in a bear hug.
“Awright! Way to go!” he said, picking her up and holding her against his chest. “I knew you could do it.”
She gave him a quick kiss, “I SO needed this. Getting in the study group was so good for me. We all did better on this test.. Anjanette, Meghan, and I got ‘A’s and Luke and Tabitha both got ‘B’s.”
He smiled at her, “I’m very proud.”
~~~~
“Hey baby boy?” Jourdin asked, walking into the game room where Nick was playing on the Game Cube.
He paused the game, “Yeah?”
“Can I practice my report on you?”
“Sure.” He turned off the tv and sat up straight on the couch, showing her she had his undivided attention.
“Thank you… um.. I start with some questions since we have to include the audience in our presentations… you want those, too?” she asked, shuffling her notecards into the right order.
“Gimme the all you got”, he said, half smirking.
“Aight,” she cleared her throat and glanced at her notes. “Raise your hand if you have a significant other…” she giggled as Nick raised his hand and then continued, “ who can remember the date of your anniversary- the day you became ‘official’?”
Nick interrupted her, “March 26.”
She smiled, “Can you remember the first time you told the other person you loved them?” She paused this time, waiting to see if he’d answer.
“Yeah, it was one of the first times we went rollerblading- you crashed and scraped your knee all up.. I kissed it and when I looked up at you, you were looking right in my eyes and I told you then… I wanted you to know I wanted to take care of you,” he said, giving her an almost shy grin.
“Awwww, baby boy! That’s so sweet!” Jourdin sighed. “Can you remember your first kiss with that person?”
Nick nodded, “It was like, 20 minutes after I met you.. I couldn’t wait anymore.”
Jourdin giggled at the memory of the shock of the sudden kiss and how much she’d enjoyed it. “As you have so kindly just demonstrated, the narrative paradigm, written by Walter Fisher says that humans are narrative beings who experience and comprehend life as a series of ongoing narratives, as conflicts, characters, beginnings, middles and ends. All forms of human communication need to be seen fundamentally as stories.”
As Jourdin spoke, Nick settled back into the couch. He could listen with his eyes closed just as well as he could with the open. A few minutes later he was jerked awake as he heard Jourdin calling his name. “What?”
“You were sleeping!”
“Uh, sorry.” He sat back up. “What were you saying?”
Jourdin groaned and went back to her speech. “Narrative fidelity is the quality of a story that causes the words to mean something to the listener because they can relate to it…”
~~~
Jourdin pulled the pillow over her head as the alarm went off, it couldn’t possibly be time to get up already.
The buzzing of the alarm suddenly stopped and Jourdin poked her head out from under the pillow to see what had happened. She looked to her right to see Nick smiling at her, amazingly wide-awake. “How long have you been up?”
“About 20 minutes, I was watching you sleep,” He said, moving closer to kiss her.
She gave him a little grin, still not ready to get up and moving. “Why’d you turn the alarm off?”
“So you could go back to sleep.”
“Nick, I have school today.. I have to get up,” she replied, rubbing her eyes.
“Skip today. You already did your presentation.. you deserve a break,” he said. “Just stay in bed with me today.”
“Yeah, and what excuse am I going to give my professors?” she asked.
“Tell them you had to stay home and take care of your boyfriend.”
“And why do I need to do that?”
“I hurt.”
“Where?” she asked, looking skeptically at him.
Nick didn’t say anything, but reached for Jourdin’s hand and guided her underneath the sheets, wrapping her fingers around his throbbing erection and looking at her with hopeful eyes.
Jourdin gently squeezed his cock, thinking he felt so hard he may well hurt. She slid her hand back and forth a few times, causing him to whimper softly and gasp in disappointment when she took her hand away. She wiggled out of her panties and pulled off the t-shirt she’d been sleeping in.
“Missing one day won’t hurt…” she said, crawling back over to him and lying down on top of him, then kissing him deeply.
~~~
“I am SO sick of this stuff!” Jourdin whined, slamming her theory book shut.
Luke laughed, “Yeah, but at least it’s getting more interesting. Semiotics was kinda cool.”
Jourdin made a face, “At this point, nothing is cool except knowing that I’m graduating in seven weeks.”
“Must be nice!” Luke said, getting interrupted by Jourdin’s ringing cell phone.
“Sorry.” Jourdin said, picking up the phone. “Hello? Hey!.. I miss you, too… Yeah, we’re almost done.. I think we’re both getting sick of this shit… no, it’s just me and Luke.. the other girls only wanted to study for the last test.. okay… you want me to bring home dinner?.. aight.. that sounds even better… I love you, too. Bye.”
Luke tried his best to appear as though he hadn’t been listening to her conversation, pretending to review his notes.
“Hey, sorry about that.”
Luke looked up at her, “It’s all good. You need to go?”
“Well, I’m just tired of studying today, so yeah, I’m gonna go. That was my boyfriend… he wanted to know when I thought I’d be back to know if he should start making dinner or wait so we could cook together,” she said, smiling.
Luke managed to smile back at her, “That’s cool.”
“Yeah, we’ve got a good thing going.” Jourdin told him, slipping her books back into her bag.
“He’s a really lucky guy to have you love him.. I hope he knows that.” Luke said, looking anywhere but at her.
Jourdin glanced at him as she slung her bag over her shoulder, unsure of how to take his comment.
Luke felt the awkwardness in the library’s study room and quickly mumbled, “I’ll, uh, see you in class tomorrow.”
Jourdin nodded, walking to the door. “I’ll be there.”
~~~
“So, what’s this Luke guy like?” Nick asked, putting their dinner plates into the dishwasher.
Jourdin shrugged, still wondering what exactly Luke had meant earlier. “He’s an organizational com major… graduates in May…played basketball his first two years at school but had to quit when he messed up his knee… he’s just… I don’t know… just a guy in my class.. nothing special really.”
“Aight.. just as long as I don’t have any competition.” Nick said, slipping his arm around Jourdin’s waist and pulling her close to him.
Jourdin stood on tiptoe to kiss him, ‘Nope. No one but you, baby boy.”