I met him on the stairs.
It was an awkward sort of meeting, the kind where one person doesn’t see the other until they’re both only a foot apart, which is followed by repeated sidesteps and mumbled apologies until a solution is eventually found. We both must have had our heads down.
But he was tall and thick and the stairwell was short and narrow, and when we did finally get by each other, me going down and he going up, I walked into his arm and dropped my textbooks, which proceeded to tumble down the stairs.
I watched like an outsider looking in. Each time they hit another step and continued on their gravity-led path, I blinked. Blink. Blink.
I awoke when I saw him fumble down the stairs after them. I allowed myself one last dazed blink before I hurried down, as well. The sounds of the falling books mixed with the sounds of our footsteps, and together they echoed off the walls.
He reached them first, where they laid at the foot of the stairs. He had to bend low to pick them all up; he collected them in his arms, and I watched silently from a few steps above him. I hadn’t seen him on campus before. I caught myself wondering if he was a freshman, but dismissed the idea quickly, deciding that a freshman couldn’t possibly be that big.
When he stood back up with the books in hand, turning to me, I was captivated by the way the unnatural light of the stairwell flickered and danced over his face. It was covered in canyons and valleys of skin, of scars that quivered over his wide visage. I was so busy staring I forgot not to stare.
There was a pause before he handed me the books, and I accepted them without a thank you.
“‘M sorry.”
The volume, or lack thereof, of his voice caught me off guard, yet I lowered my eyes from his valleyed face to the floor. “That’s okay.”
“You should pay more attention to where you’re…” A hesitation. “Going.”
“I was distracted.”
“By what?”
“The floor.”
He narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, which would have been intimidating if I hadn’t known about his softer-than-soft voice. “Well…” he began, trailing off until I couldn’t hear him anymore, “Whatever.” He started past me, his footsteps louder than any other sound he could probably produce.
I turned to watch him for a few steps, before I called, “What’s your name?”
He stopped, looking down over his shoulder and shuffling his feet. “Uhm, it’s Wilson.”
“I’m Serena.”
“Okay.”
It ended as it started, with an awkward, mumbled exchange of words and gazes on the floor as I shuffled outside and he stomped up the stairs.
There are 18,175 students on campus. When I saw him in the dining commons the next day, I asked him out to coffee.


His name was Wilson Knaw, and he was a sophomore like me, only he had transferred this year from some small school I’d never heard of up on the north coast. He was six feet, seven inches tall, and he had never lifted a weight in his life, even though his stomach was flat and his muscles bulged under his windbreaker. Those were the answers to the first few questions I asked him. The next question was about the scars on his face, but he got flustered and told me to shut it and, surprising to even me, I did.
He asked me why I wanted to know all this, and I told him I wanted to be friends.
He looked uncomfortable with the notion. “Why?”
I shrugged.
He scoffed, narrowing his eyes like he did when he was trying to figure out the reasons behind my height inquiries. “You don’t have no reason?”
“I do have no reason.” I paused for a moment, tracing his face with my eyes. My coffee was getting cold. “Your voice is very soft.”
He swallowed, and his Adam's apple looked like it was on one of those amusement park rides that lifts you up high then drops you. “Sh-shut up.”
“Sorry,” I picked up my coffee for the first time and took a sip. “I’m sorry.” The words sounded foreign in my mouth and I almost choked on them. I hadn’t allowed myself to say that in a few months. It felt weird, like tears slipping from dry eyes. More words fell out. “I’m sorry I’m asking so many questions. I just haven’t talked to anyone in a while, and I saw you, and I thought that you’d be nice to talk to, and I’m sorry, and my roommate left, because she stays with her boyfriend now, and my classes have just been keeping me so busy I just--” a gasp, “--needed someone to talk to. I’m sorry.” The coffee tasted bitter and salty.
His face looked really blurry, and I didn’t know why, because my eyes still felt dry. I saw him blink a few times, his mouth hanging open numbly, before he said in his husky voice, “What did you say your name was again?”


By the end of that day, I knew that Wilson Knaw bit his fingernails. He knew that Serena Liner’s nose turned pink when she was embarrassed. I knew that Wilson Knaw helped care for the gardens on campus. He knew that Serena Liner was failing her Chemistry II class, even though she wanted to be a bio-chem major. I knew that Wilson Knaw had a pet hamster named Creed, after his favorite character from The Office. He knew that Serena Liner didn’t like to wear jackets. I knew that Wilson Knaw’s favorite weather was slightly overcast with a small amount of breeze. He knew that Serena Liner’s favorite color was navy blue.
We compared class schedules, found out that neither of us had classes Wednesday mornings at 10, and scheduled our next small-talk coffee date accordingly.


Small talk was all it ever really was.
I’d do most of the talking, which was weird because I hated talking, especially to other people. But I had chosen my small-talk partner appropriately, apparently. He was a good listener. Looking back on it, I’m not sure what compelled me to ask him his name that day on the stairwell. Perhaps I didn’t care any more. Perhaps I had already given up. Perhaps I really had hit rock bottom.
But rock bottom wasn’t so bad. I liked talking to Wilson. We were easily the oddest couple in the small, on-campus coffee shop at any point in time. We always sat across from each other and neither of us ever smiled. I’d talk in my monotone and he’d answer in his wispy voice, like wind blowing up snow. We talked about all sorts of things, like the weather and our favorite brands of shoes. Between the two of us, there was never an awkward moment that stuck out, because every moment was awkward.
Small talk was all it ever really was. It wasn’t anything more until our fifth small-talking session.


“I have a calendar.”
He raised an eyebrow in a mundane fashion. “That’s nice. So do I.”
“No, but it’s a special calendar.”
His face turned pink. “I-I don’t need to know your-”
“No, not for that.”
“Oh.” Pause. “Then what’s it for?”
“I keep track of days since.”
“Since?”
“Since I broke up with Andrew.”
“Who’s Andrew?”
“I broke up with him.”
“Oh.”
I sipped my coffee. It was snowing out. It hadn’t snowed since last February. I wasn’t wearing a jacket.
“Are we friends, Wilson?”
He was picking at his fingernails. “Uhm, yeah, I reckon we are.”
“There’s a special date on my calendar. Guess when it is.”
“Uh…” His face was pink again. “The day we met?”
“No. It’s tomorrow.”
“What’s special about tomorrow?”
“I marked it a while ago, on the day I broke up with Andrew.”
“I… don’t get it.”
“I have a gun in my room.”
His face drained of all pink. His mouth tightened and the valleys on his face rippled like a mirage. He didn’t say anything so I kept talking.
“It’s been two months since.” I paused to sip my coffee again. “Well, tomorrow will be two months since. So I marked it on my calendar. And I told myself that if I didn’t make a friend in two months-” There was coffee in my mouth again so I didn’t continue, I just shrugged.
Wilson stayed silent.
I swallowed my coffee. It burnt my throat. “I’m not good at making friends, though. So I thought that I’d have to--”
Wilson was crying. Tears ran in zigzags over his skin-valleys. People were staring, but I don’t think either of us cared. “Yeah, Serena, I’m your friend,” he mumbled between quiet sobs. “I’m your friend. You don’t need to do that. I’m your friend.”
I accepted it without a thank you.