7. Amiyah
Chapter seven
Amiyah
The hallway to the lecture hall smells like the desperation that clings to the first day of a semester like perfume to a cut-priced whore.
I inhale it through my nose and hold it for a moment before slowly releasing it through my mouth, because my therapist said it might help with the anxiety that comes with leading a double life and fine, whatever, it works.
Penelope and I had an amazing time on “vacation”, in Nepal, though, I spent a good chunk of my cut on a bunch of bullshit I guess I shouldn’t have, but I’m also not sorry about.
Oops.
My pastel pink cashmere cardigan is soft and perfectly fitted, worn over a white pleated tennis skirt that hits mid-thigh.
My blush ballet flats make almost no sound against the linoleum, which I consider a personal victory, because a woman who moves quietly is a woman who controls the room before anyone realizes she has entered it.
The look is very intentional. Very cutesy. Very…demure.
The front-left seat is my seat.
Not like, officially my seat. There are no nameplates, no assigned seating, no binding contract signed in blood on university letterhead, but I did scout this room last week during break, when campus was a ghost town. I decided then that it shall be mine.
I round the corner and cross the threshold, my purse swaying gently against my hip, and then I see him and come to a full stop.
There is a man in my seat.
Not my seat, technically. The seat beside my seat. But the distinction feels academic when his legs are spread so wide they’ve established what appears to be a territorial beachhead on my side of the desk.
I clock him in fragments, his dark hair that’s slightly too long, his sharp jaw, and his expressive, almond shaped espresso eyes currently aimed at his phone screen, dark and focused, the kind of eyes that probably make most girls blush.
Good thing I’m not most girls.
He’s wearing a fitted black shirt, beige pants with a black belt sporting a silver buckle, glasses that frame his features so well they look like they were made by god herself—the kind of pieces that whisper money rather than shout it.
I file his attractiveness under annoying and irrelevant and slide into my seat.
His knees. His knees are practically in my fucking zip code.
How rude.
I give it approximately four full seconds of watching his knee occupy airspace that by all rights of academic possession should belong to me before I turn to him with the flat, pleasant tone reserved for people who annoy me.
“You’re too close.”
He doesn’t look up from his phone. Doesn’t shift his posture. Doesn’t acknowledge that I have spoken at all except for the single syllable that emerges from somewhere behind the screen.
“Move.”
The word lands between us like something with mass. Not hostile, exactly. More like bored. The verbal equivalent of swatting a fly without opening your eyes.
My jaw tightens. The muscle twitches once, a small involuntary betrayal that I immediately resent.
“You move.”
Now he looks up.
“I was here first,” he says, and there’s an accent there, unmistakable and it makes my traitorous heart do a little flippy-flip inside my chest.
Fuck him for that.
“I sat down. The seat is occupied. The seat is mine.” he continues.
“Respectfully, you’re occupying space that isn’t yours.” I say, sweet as frosting. “And encroachment has consequences.”
One eyebrow of his lifts a millimeter. “Consequences,” he repeats, a ghost of a smile touching the corner of his mouth.
I let my smile sharpen by one degree. “I’m sorry, did I stutter?”
The ghost of a smile on his face widens just enough to be infuriating. He leans back in his chair, one arm draping casually over the back of it like he owns the entire row.
“And what consequences can I expect if I don’t move, hmmm?”
Oh, this guy thinks he’s cute. I could literally chop off his fucking dick and shove it down his throat without even breaking a nail.
Around us, the lecture hall fills. Chairs scrape against linoleum.
Backpacks hit the floor with dull, percussive thuds.
Paper coffee cups crinkle. Someone’s laptop fan whirs to life with the strained whine of a machine that’s been asked to do too much with too little.
A group of undergraduates clusters near the back, their conversation a blur of weekend plans and housing complaints.
None of it penetrates the four inches between his knee and my personal space.
My knuckles whiten around my pink pen. The plastic creaks. I’m holding it too tight. I know I’m holding it too tight. But relaxing my grip would feel like surrender, and surrender is not in my vocabulary except as a theoretical concept I studied once for a crim pro exam.
“The consequence,” I say, keeping my voice at a volume calibrated to reach exactly his ears and no one else’s, “is that you’ll spend the next fourteen weeks sitting next to someone who will correct your notes, question your arguments in front of the entire class, and generally make your life academically unpleasant in ways you can’t even begin to fathom. ”
He goes back to scrolling through what looks like a manga on his phone. “You could sit somewhere else, if it’s really that deep for you.” he offers, not looking up.
“I could. I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“That’s not a very good reason.”
“It’s the only reason that matters.”
He glances at me again.
“You’re very committed to this desk,” he says.
“I’m very committed to not being pushed around by men who think spreading their legs is a personality trait.”
That gets a laugh.
“Fair,” he says. “But I’m still not moving.”
“And neither am I.”
“Then I guess we’re at an impasse.”
“I guess we are.”
The professor walks in at 8:02. Two minutes late, not that anyone but me is counting.
He’s small, thin, somewhere in his fifties, with wire-rimmed glasses and a tweed jacket that has seen better decades. He sets his leather briefcase on the lectern with a thud that echoes through the suddenly silent room.
“Good morning,” he says. “Welcome to Legal Environment of Business. I am Professor Chen. The syllabus is on the course portal. Attendance is mandatory. Questions are encouraged. Coffee is recommended.”
The room settles. Notebooks open. Laptops hum. Pens uncap. The collective sound of two hundred people pretending they’re awake enough for a lecture at eight in the fucking morning.
I sit with my spine perfectly straight, my shoulders are squared, and my chin is level, but still, I am acutely aware of every millimeter of space between my elbow and his.
I track it the way I track exits. The way I track sightlines. The way I count steps between a parking structure and a service door. It’s not conscious. It’s autonomic.
His elbow shifts. Not much. Maybe half an inch. A casual adjustment, the kind of movement that means nothing to normal people and everything to people like me.
My pen pauses for a moment.
Then resumes.
He, for his part, looks entirely too relaxed. His notebook is open, but his pen is capped. His phone is face-down on the desk now, screen dark, but his posture hasn’t changed. He’s still sprawled. Still taking up room. Still existing.
It’s infuriating.
Professor Chen clicks through his slides.
The projector hums. The air conditioning kicks on with a low rumble that vibrates through the floor and into the legs of my chair.
Outside, through the high windows, the morning light cuts across the quad in sharp, golden lines, and I can see students crossing between buildings.
As class drones on, I take notes, I underline and I star important points in the margin, my attention staying exactly where it is supposed to be.
Yet, the entire time, I am still very much aware of him.
His breathing. The shift of fabric when he moves. The faint scent of something clean and cedar-adjacent that cuts through the floor wax and desperation filling the lecture hall. The way his thumb taps against the edge of the desk during a particularly dry section on regulatory frameworks.
Ten minutes into lecture, he shifts again. This time it’s his knee. It moves maybe an inch closer to mine—not enough to touch, not enough to constitute an actual invasion, but enough that my body registers it the way it registers a change in barometric pressure before a storm.
I don’t look at him. I keep my eyes on my notes.
My pen keeps moving. But something in my chest tightens—a small, precise knot of irritation that has nothing to do with corporate law and everything to do with the man sitting four inches away who has, in the span of twenty minutes, established himself as the single most annoying person I have encountered this semester.
And I’ve met a lot of annoying people. I go to law school. It’s basically a breeding ground for them.
The slide changes. Professor Chen drones on about the historical development of business regulation. I write down every word. My handwriting is perfect. My margins are even. My highlighting is strategic.
I have no idea how I am going to bear this insufferable asshole for an entire semester.
The thought lands in my brain with the flat, pleasant certainty of a verdict I’ve already reached. No appeal. No reconsideration. Just the clean, clinical assessment of a situation that is, objectively, fucked.
Fourteen weeks. Three hours of lecture per week. Forty-two hours of shared oxygen with a man who grinds every one of my gears.
I cap my pen. Set it parallel to the spiral binding. Adjust my notebook by a quarter-inch.
And beside me, the new exchange student shifts one more time, his knee settling into what appears to be its permanent residence approximately three inches from my thigh, and I think, with the particular clarity that comes from genuine despair: this fucker is going to be a problem.