"How do you know?" he asked before a grin settled on his face. "You came?"
"No." His smile dropped, and she laughed.
"My friend really loves hockey, so she went to the game. Just about thirty minutes ago, she was ranting and raving about you. 'Oh my gosh. Noah Walker issogood. Your favorite student is so great.' Stuff like that."
"Wait," Noah said, registering what she just said. "You told your friend about me, and I'm your favorite student."
It's almost as if she realized what she said because she paused in her tracks, looking mortified, and Noah laughed. He would have never thought that Melanie would talk about him to her friends, let alone think of him as her favorite student. For some reason, hearing those words made him happy.
"Don't worry, Mel. You're my favorite professor too."
"First of all, you're not my favorite student. I don't have favorites because that would be unfair of me. Second of all, don't you have some groceries to get? Don't let me get in your way."
Noah laughed. "Now you're trying to run me off."
Melanie shrugged as she tried to continue on, but Noah stopped her, wrestling her cart from her.
"Noah," she exclaimed.
"You're stuck with me now," he said.
"Will you stop playing? I need to get my groceries."
"Well, let's go. I'm not stopping you."
She sighed, glaring at him before she went and dropped frozen strawberries into the cart, and Noah grinned. She was so amusing.
***
They were in the grocery store for a full hour before Melanie finished getting everything she needed. And instead of heading back to Adam's place like he intended, he was now carrying her bags inside of her apartment. And what a nice apartment it was. After living in a dorm for two years and going to apartments rented by college students, it was weird to see an apartment look so clean and put together. There wasn't anything out of place, and instantly, Noah was able to tell that Melanie was probably a stickler for cleaning. And though Noah wouldn't call himself the average young man who had an aversion to cleaning, he made sure to wash his clothes and keep his dirty socks off the floor and had his fair share of arguments with his roommates whenever things got too out of hand, but this was something entirely different.
The glass table in the middle of the room was spotless as if it were just brought and hadn't been touched. There wasn't one dent in her cream-colored couch that looked comfy enough to sleep on. The wooden floors were spotless, and the walls had a few fancy photos here and there, but none of them were of Melanie.
"Over here," she called as she walked over to the kitchen, which for an apartment, was a very nice kitchen. She opened her stainless steel double door refrigerator as Noah placed the bags on the counter. He would have started helping her un-bag everything, but he found himself too busy inspecting her home. When they said your home represented you, they weren't lying because everything in here reminded Noah of Melanie.
The pale colors, the cleanliness of her home that bordered on OCD, and the paintings that looked like they were made by some big artist all seemed like Melanie. There was a record player in the corner, and Noah had to wonder why Melanie even owned one. She was older than him, but she wasn't that old to own a record player like his grandfather. The cream colors, along with the blue pastels, all fit her. It was very Melanie.
"Maybe it's better for you just to take a picture instead," Melanie called over to him.
Noah realized he was no longer in the kitchen, but was instead in the living room, and if it wasn't for her saying anything, he's sure that he would have made his way to her bedroom next. Noah wondered what that room looked like; probably less frilly than some of the rooms girls had with all types of pink stuff and stuffed animals, but with a boring pale color with only the basic items a bedroom needed because that's who Melanie was.
After spending these few weeks with her, and this time, actually getting to know her, not just as Professor Bryant, the woman who made things more difficult than they had to be, but as Melanie Bryant, the woman who by default relied on sarcasm and witty lines, and her level of patience, if there were any, were in the negative digits.
"I just wanted to see what your place was like," he said. "It's very you."
Melanie arched a brow, probably curious by what ‘very you’ meant, as she placed her bag of oranges next to a box of strawberries. As Noah looked at the counter, he realized that none of the food she had brought had made it in the fridge yet, and he could not help but laugh. Everything this woman did was more than needed.
"Are you separating your groceries before you put them in the fridge?" Noah asked as he walked back into the kitchen.
The plastic bag in her hand that had once been full was now neatly folded as she placed it inside of a recycling bin. When Noah went to ball up one of the bags, she slapped his hand.
"You're making this more difficult than it has to be," Noah said. "It'll take half the time just to ball them up."
"But then it'll take up too much space, and they only come to pick up the recycling every two weeks. Do you know how frustrating it is to have your trash bin full, but you can't place it in the garbage can because they won't come to pick it up for another week?" Melanie shook her head as she took the bag and folded it herself.
"If you want to be helpful, you can take those groceries out of the bags over there and just set them down. I like my food to be put up a certain way."
Noah chuckled as he went to go do as she asked. "You're the only person I know who does stuff like this."
