My First Love

Chapter 7: Prisca's World

The following week began with rain.

The heavy, committed kind that Boston delivered without apology — drumming against windows, turning the quad into a shallow lake, forcing everyone into hoods and hurried walks. The kind of weather that made campus feel smaller and more intimate, like the buildings had pulled slightly closer together.

I liked it, honestly.

I had always thought better in the rain.

---

Monday morning I ran into Dora.

Not with Prisca — alone, which felt like a different experience entirely. She was coming out of the campus bookstore with a paper coffee cup and a tote bag that appeared to be winning a structural argument with her shoulder. She spotted me before I spotted her and called my name across the wet courtyard without hesitation.

"Daniel! Hold on."

She navigated the puddles at speed and arrived slightly breathless, adjusting her bag.

"I keep meaning to find you," she said, as though we had an ongoing arrangement.

"For what?"

"To tell you something." She took a sip of her coffee and looked at me with the frank, appraising energy she seemed to bring to everything. "Prisca talked about you. After Tuesday coffee."

I kept my expression even. "What did she say?"

"That you were interesting." Dora paused for effect. "Prisca does not use that word casually. She called her last boyfriend *fine.* For eight months. *Fine.* You got *interesting* after two coffees."

I processed that. "She had a boyfriend?"

"Past tense, deeply past tense, not relevant." Dora waved it away efficiently. "The point is — she's paying attention to you. Which means you should pay attention to what you do next." She tilted her head. "Are you interested in her? Actually interested, not just flattered?"

The directness of it was slightly startling, even from Dora.

"Yes," I said. "Actually interested."

She studied me for a moment with the focused expression of someone running a quick internal calculation. Then she nodded once, apparently satisfied.

"Good," she said. "Then don't rush it. Prisca doesn't respond to pressure. She responds to consistency." She picked up her bag strap. "Also she hates surprises, loves bookstores, and takes her reading very seriously. That's free information. Use it wisely."

Then she walked away into the rain as abruptly as she had arrived.

---

I stood in the wet courtyard for a moment.

Dora Mitchell, I was learning, operated like a force of nature with excellent intentions. She had just handed me a small map to a person she clearly loved — not to interfere, but to help. There was something genuinely generous in it beneath the briskness.

I filed everything carefully.

*Consistency. Bookstores. Takes reading seriously.*

---

Tuesday's class was cancelled.

Ellis sent an email at seven AM — university conference, makeup lecture Thursday. The sudden gap in the day felt strange, like a room you expected to be furnished that turned out to be empty.

I thought about texting Prisca.

I did not yet have her number.

That felt, suddenly, like an oversight that needed correcting.

---

I corrected it Thursday.

Class had been rescheduled to the smaller seminar room on the third floor — twelve students instead of thirty, a round table, Ellis in a different mode entirely. Closer, more conversational, expecting participation rather than just reception.

It was a better format. The discussion moved well. Prisca contributed twice — both times with the same quality she always had, clear and considered, not performing intelligence but simply using it.

After class, walking out, I stopped at the top of the stairwell.

"Can I have your number?" I said.

Prisca looked at me. No surprise, exactly — more like she had been waiting to see how long it would take.

"Yes," she said simply.

We exchanged phones in the unceremonious way of it and handed them back. She glanced at what I had typed.

"Daniel R," she said.

"There are two Daniels in my contacts already."

"And in mine now," she said, pocketing her phone. She started down the stairs. "I'll see you Tuesday. Text if you find anything interesting before then."

---

*Interesting.*

Dora's word came back immediately.

I spent Friday in a secondhand bookstore off Commonwealth Avenue that I had passed a dozen times without going in. It was the good kind — narrow aisles, floor-to-ceiling shelves, organized by a system that required local knowledge. The smell of old paper and something faintly like cedar.

I spent an hour in there.

Found a copy of *Ways of Seeing* by John Berger — media theory, directly relevant to her track — in good condition, with no annotations. I stood in the aisle holding it for a moment.

*She takes her reading seriously.*

I bought it.

Not to give it to her. Not yet — that would be too much, too fast, the kind of gesture that lands wrong if the ground isn't ready. I bought it because it gave me something real to say.

That evening I texted her.

*Found something interesting. Berger's Ways of Seeing — original 1972 edition, Commonwealth Ave bookstore. Thought it might be relevant to your track.*

Three minutes passed.

*I've been looking for that edition for a year. Which bookstore?*

I sent the address.

Her reply came quickly. *Going tomorrow morning. Thank you, Daniel.*

Then, after a short pause: *You went to a bookstore on a Friday afternoon.*

*You said you loved them.*

A longer pause this time.

*I didn't say that to you. I said it to Dora.*

I smiled at my phone.

*Dora is forthcoming.*

The response took a moment. When it came, it was brief.

*She really is. Goodnight, Daniel.*

*Goodnight, Prisca.*

---

I set my phone down and leaned back in my chair.

Outside the rain had finally stopped. Boston was doing its post-rain thing — washed and quiet, the streets reflecting the streetlights in long orange lines.

Peter knocked and came in without waiting, which was standard.

"You're smiling at your phone," he said.

"I'm not."

"You were when I walked in." He dropped onto the couch. "Prisca?"

"We texted."

He waited.

"She said goodnight," I said. "By name."

Peter was quiet for a moment. Then, with great seriousness: "Daniel. She said goodnight by name."

"I know."

"That's personal. You don't say goodnight by name to someone you're indifferent to."

I knew that too.

I just liked hearing it confirmed.