What's in a Name? (4)

Start at the beginning.

Once upon a time, a knight in dull but solid armor tried to rescue a fair maiden from the lair of a dragon.  His first attempt was foiled by the dragon’s flames spilling over the ground.  The second attempt, his most valiant, had him facing off against… um…

He was trying to amuse himself by reimagining his mission to learn that girl’s name as some sort of fairy tale quest.  It wasn’t working, the amusement or the reimagining.  But it didn’t matter.  It was going to happen this week.  There were no toddlers behind him, his mom had been a reader on Saturday, and nothing was due on Monday.  The path should be clear.

Something had already occurred to fuel his hope.  She’d smiled at him.  Probably.  He’d just happened to be looking in her direction when she turned around to give the collection basket to the person behind her.  She looked right at him and smiled.  Maybe.  There were several people between them, and it was possible that her smile had been aimed at one of those people.  But it definitely looked as though she’d smiled at him.

The recessional was one he had memorized.  Since he didn’t need to keep his eyes on the words, they could send more frequent glances to the woman he expected to be just as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside.  She put on her sweater, but she did not immediately pick up her purse.  She opened a book, perhaps a missal, and stood in her pew looking at a page.

He furtively studied his surroundings.  He had nothing to use as a pretense, nothing to keep from being obvious about waiting for her.  Did it matter if he was obvious?  If she actually smiled at him, than she’d figured out he wanted an introduction and wouldn’t mind.  But if she’d smiled at some lady – he preferred to think it was a lady if it wasn’t him – then seeing him waiting would be either annoying or creepy.

Thankfully, she stuffed the book in her bag quickly.  Very few people would count a few extra seconds as creepy.  It was time to act.  He genuflected and fell into step next to her.  “Good morning,” he said, without inserting a name.

“Good morning, Nathan.”

He nearly tripped over his own feet.  How did she know his name?  “How do you know my name?”

“You were in my math class last semester,” she said.

His brain went to the Calculus room.  It had been one of his larger classes and almost entirely lecture with little interaction by the students.  But still, there was no way he’d missed those eyes or that hair or…

She smiled at his confusion.  “I sat behind you so it makes sense you don’t remember.”

He would not have had much reason to turn around in that class if he didn’t know she was there.  And he’d usually been early so he wouldn’t have seen people coming in behind him.  At any rate, he refused to let a missed opportunity interfere with the current one.  “So what’s your name?” he asked.

She dipped her fingers in the holy water at the exit.  As soon as she was outside, she stopped as though she was in no hurry at all.  “I’m Becca,” she said.