Nick Connelly was so quiet when I first met him that he was almost invisible. The Dean, on the tour I got my first day of work, warned me that he was shy. Carol, the department secretary said he was just introverted. Some of the other faculty thought he was arrogant, an elitist. I didn't give him a second glance.
It was a rainy, April afternoon. I'd spent so much time in my office I was contemplating suicide, so I decided to take a break and hit the cafeteria. I shook my umbrella and coat and parked them at the door. After grabbing a cup of coffee and slice of artery-clogging cheesecake, I walked into the hall with my tray. Only one other person was there. Nick was sitting alone at a table, a book open, but he was staring out the window at the rain. I remember thinking, how very James Dean.
"Would you mind if I joined you?" I asked. It seemed absurd that he was the one person in the department I didn't really know.
"Please," he smiled and waved toward the chair opposite him.
I held my hand out, "Laura Smith. And you're Nick Connelly. Right?"
He looked amused, shook my hand, and nodded, "Nothing gets past you." Nick looked at my cheesecake and arched his eyebrow, "A bit decadent, isn't it?"
"I can resist anything but temptation," I responded.
Nick laughed, "Oscar Wilde. An excellent quote."
"It's my personal motto," I replied as I skewered a forkful of cheesecake. "I want it on my tombstone. I'd like everyone to wonder what I died from."
Nick laughed softly, and that was how our friendship began. We started out meeting every afternoon in the empty cafeteria, and then branched out into a couple of lunches a week. It didn't take me long to realize that he wasn't shy at all, just quiet. I became obsessed with our afternoon "teas," as he called them. I never missed one.