One seat over, sometimes two.
He never stares. Never makes conversation beyond the bare minimum.
The first week, he asked what chapter the homework covered. The second week, he nodded at me when he sat down.
Last week, he said "nice notes" when he caught a glimpse of my screen, and I said "thanks", and we both went back to pretending the other person wasn't there.
I don't know his name. He doesn't know mine.
The space suits me. I've never been the type of woman who closes it.
He settles into his seat, flips the notebook open, and clicks the pink feather pen.
Dr. Petrov starts the lecture. Regression analysis.
I type. He writes. Forty-five minutes pass without either of us speaking.
Then Dr. Petrov puts a problem on the screen and tells us to work with someone nearby.
He turns to me, pen still in hand. "You get what she's asking for here? Because I'm looking at this and I see words, but they're not making sentences."
His voice is different from what I expected. Not a West Virginian accent.
Something flatter, faster. Northern. Maybe Midwest.
I look at the problem. "She wants us to identify the independent and dependent variables, then set up the regression equation."
He stares at the screen, stares at his notebook, and looks back at me with an expression so honestly lost it borders on comedic.
"Right. And if I have no idea what any of those words mean in this order?"
A sound escapes me. Not a laugh. Close to one.
Closer than I've come in this classroom all semester.
"The independent variable is the one youthinkis doing the causing." I turn my laptop so he can see my notes. "The dependent variable is the one being affected. So if you're looking at study hours versus exam scores, study hours are independent and exam scores are dependent."
He nods slowly, writing it down in handwriting so messy it looks like a seismograph reading. "Okay. Okay, yeah. I see it."
His pen hovers over the page. "You're way better at this than me."
"It's not hard once you see the pattern."
He half-grins, and it changes his whole face.
It opens him up, makes him look younger, less guarded. "Everything's easy once you see the pattern. The problem is I'm pattern-blind in this class."
He leans back in his chair, clicking the pen against his notebook. "I'm good at other stuff, I swear. This is my weak spot."
I keep my eyes on the screen. "Everyone's got one."
"Yeah, but most people's weak spots aren't a required gen-ed standing between them and graduation."
Another almost-laugh. I catch it before it fully forms, but he notices.
His grin widens by a fraction, and he goes back to his notebook, copying the equation I walked him through.
We work through the rest of the problem in a back-and-forth I didn't plan on.