The Exception to the Rule

by Christina Lauren

Hi C, Don’t worry about it. Tbh, it was the only note I got from a guy on Valentine’s Day, so I’ll take it. T.

Smart. So from your lack of exclamation points you must also be a guy. What school do you go to?

I am the exception to the rule. And didn’t your parents tell you not to share personal information with strangers on the internet? Happy Valentine’s Day,

C! You are the mythical unicorn who remembers dates and conversations. Happy Valentine’s Day to you, too. T.

What can I say? I’m the exception to the rule.

T, DAMN! I was going to send this when I got home tonight, and you beat me to it. And look at your egregious exclamation point usage, Miss Exception to the Rule. Happy Valentine’s Day, C.

What can I say, I’m a conundrum wra0pped in a mystery tied with a p7uzzle shoved in a pickle jar.

Oooh, exactly how hammered are you right now?

Pretty hajmmered

You’re not a slutty douche, C, you’re a conundrum wrapped in a mystery tied with a puzzle shoved in a pickle jar. Apology unnecessary but accepted.

Oh my god. I forgot about that.

I am not in the eastern time zone, however, the Time Stamp Rule Book accepts my victory. You are the keeper only of the Detail & Privacy Rule Book. I am the king of 2019. The end.

I like a lot of things, but I don’t LOVE any one thing. It feels scary, you know? To worry I might commit to something because I have to but not because I love it.

This is going to be forward, but I’ve gotta shoot my shot: Will you be home at all this summer? If so, do you want to meet up? (If you have a girlfriend, tell me because in the interest of full disclosure, I have had a little crush on you for years now and am basically asking you out on a date.)

I’m not taken anymore, if that helps . . . And I’ll be in Irvine for the last two weeks of August.

Not only do I have a boyfriend, but he is moving to the same city I am for graduate school, and we are packing up for the road trip over—you guessed it—the last two weeks of August.

Goddamnit.

TEN Valentine’s Days, though. Ten!! It’s so cool that we’ve done this since we were 14 and 16 years old. Happy Valentine’s Day, C. Maybe next year we’ll meet. Even if it isn’t romantic, it will be so good to see you in person someday.

I’ll be in Irvine for a week in June but can also come back when you’re in town.

It’s not too soon . . . You’d come back just to see me?

Without question.

Of course, Kristen and I aren’t the first exes to occasionally hook up after we’ve ended things, but for every time we said This is the last time, there is, at some point, an actual last time. For me, that was three weeks ago. For Kristen, it seems that actual last time hasn’t happened yet. She tugs me into Dylan’s library and shuts the door, sealing us up inside.

They’re at the same party?.

Callum? my brain screams, a high-pitched, internal shriek. Callum Sundberg? The graduate student in our program a few years ahead of me and Elise? The literal embodiment of charisma? The capable-yet-intimidating TA for our neuroanatomy seminar? The man so tall and hot and untouchable we peek at him around objects—trees, books, doorways—like looking at an eclipse?

Thank God it happened on Valentine’s Day, because the second I get home, I’m going to email C and tell him all about this. Callum reaches down, extending his hand to me, and I take it. He pulls me up and when our eyes meet, his thumb passes, warm and smooth, over my knuckles. “You sure you’re okay?” Revision: I will tell C everything except the way I feel that thumb stroke everywhere.

It wasn’t until the very end when she said his name that I realized it’s my TA. MY VERY HOT, VERY INTIMIDATING TA.

PS: Since we’re talking about meeting up . . . should we finally exchange names? Numbers?

T is Terra. Her name is Terra. A class list crystallizes in my mind, and I mentally scan down toward the bottom. Terra Solace. t.sol. I just met her, but she has no idea she’s just met me.

Her hair is chin length, dark brown, straight, and smooth. She’s on the taller side, but thin, long limbed. My weakness is tall women.

She’s single. She wants to meet me. But, shit, it isn’t so easy anymore. Because Terra is a student in a class for which I do a majority of the grading. Terra overheard a private conversation I was having with an ex. Terra thinks I’m intimidating. (But she also thinks I’m hot.) Terra wants to exchange names and phone numbers. Fuck.

He came out looking like an A+ sex stud, and I came out looking like Gollum curled around her bottle of wine.

He really is so intensely hot; the longer we maintain eye contact, the more worried I become about releasing a spontaneous moan.

“Hey, Mike. I’m going to have to recuse myself from grading these.” He looks up at me, lowering his glasses. “Oh yeah? What’s up?”

“I’ve got a thing for one of the students.”

Did I hear right that Mikkelson is taking over your TA role for the rest of the term?” “Yeah, I swapped over to his neurophys section.” He narrows his eyes at me. “Same reason?” I grin. “Same reason.” “You’re really not going to tell me who it is?” “Hell no,” I say and turn for the door again. “Because if she rejects me, you’ll never let me live it down.”

From the second Terra walked out of the classroom, I wanted to see her again. Immediately. I have this buzzed, vibrating feeling in my limbs. No matter how fantastical it sounds, it feels like we were destined to run into each other in some truly unbelievable way.

I realize that I’ve just inadvertently quit the one space where I’m sure to easily run into her. I’m neck-deep in worrying about how to manufacture a chance run-in when I look up in line at the soup-dumpling counter at Franklin’s and see her only a few places in front of me.

She’s nervous, but she really is so beautiful. I’d never really thought too much about what she might look like, but somehow I can still say she looks just like I imagined she would. Strong and scrappy and unpretentious and sexy. I want to soak up every physical detail about her now that she’s right here in front of me: her plush lips, the scattered freckles across the bridge of her nose.

“You sure it isn’t because I know all about your sexual prowess?” I’m unable to keep my laugh in. This is exactly how T would have teased me, and I fucking love seeing her relax. “Yes, you’re right. Having a reputation of being an amazing lay is just too great a burden for me.”

“Where did you go to school?” she asks instead. I watch her carefully as I toss the bite in my mouth and speak around it. “Madison.” Her eyes go wide. “Seriously? One of my good friends from back home went there!”

I watch her chew and swallow, trying not to let my expression show that I’m imagining kissing her. “This is going to sound really weird,” she begins. I know exactly what she’s going to say, and now I’m dying to hear our story from her soft, plump lips.

“Why are you asking the hard questions!” “I don’t know!” I laugh, too, wanting to apologize but also . . . wanting to keep sitting here and eating soup dumplings and flirting with her for the rest of the day until she figures it out.

“We get soup dumplings when we’re thinking about each other.” She was thinking about me.

“Do you ever have a feeling about someone? Like they’re your safe space and, I don’t know, like someday it could be more?” I swallow, nodding. “Yeah. Of course.” I’m looking right at her. “I have a feeling about him.” But the thing is, when she looks up at me and our eyes lock, I’m pretty sure she has a feeling about me, too.

Also, the possibility that my pen pal C is actually Callum Sundberg is less likely than the earth being hit by a comet in the next half hour.

“Can I take you out to dinner?” His question comes out of absolutely nowhere, and my fists drop like stones. “What?” “Dinner.” He cutely mimes spooning food into his mouth. “Sun goes down. People eat.” “Like a date?” “I hope so? I intend to flirt.”

I look down at my phone. He’s created a new contact with his number. The Hot TA.

C . . . my hands are shaking right now. I am freaking the hell out. I live in Philly, too. And I think you know that. He replies with a phone number. And when I enter it into a text box, an existing contact pops up on-screen. The Hot TA.

How on earth is it even possible that I am going on a date with Callum Sundberg, who also happens to be my longtime valentine?

It’s the boy who thanked me for replying to his typo email and who sent me a note the following year to make sure I got at least one valentine. It’s the guy who gave me advice about going away to school and asked me how my mother was doing after having breast cancer. It’s the man who lost his father to cancer in the depths of the pandemic and worried about how to best support his mom and his sisters while still pursuing his dream of going to graduate school. It’s my soup-dumpling buddy. It’s my conundrum wrapped in a mystery tied with a puzzle shoved in a pickle jar.

He walks around the hood and sees me at the same time I see the cupcake box in his hand. Forget flowers; give me a cupcake and it’s a perfect date. After all this time, he remembered?