two men

I was sitting in AJ's before lunch tweaking a paper for Anglo-Saxon, and a friend stopped by to say hello. We chatted for a bit and, as so often happens here, the discussion turned from weekend plans to abstract concepts. Well, I thought it was abstract concepts, but the issue was more personal for him than I knew. It seemed like suddenly: "You don't understand how angry you just made me, Mary." His face turned a little red--an angry red but not a furious red--and he clammed up and wouldn't listen to anything I had to say, even my apologies. He walked off.

I thought I should feel bad about it, so I stared at the table for about thirty seconds. Then I realized that I wasn't upset at all--as far as I could tell it had been a friendly conversation the whole time. I shrugged and went back to my paper. (It was about 11:15 and the paper was sort of due at 2:30.)

Someone else walked up, and I'm not sure how to describe him without plastering his identity online. I don't know that I've talked to him enough to call him a friend, but we're friends on facebook. I have one class with him, but mostly when we talk, we talk business. I always got the feeling that he didn't like me much.

"Hey, Mary, do you know who that was?"

"Yeah, that was" and I told him my friend's name.

"Yeah, I know it was him, but is everything okay? I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but it sounded kind of awkward."

I shrugged. "Yeah, he's one of my friends. I'll give him some time to cool off then I'll go apologize."

He gave a small laugh, a "heh-heh," one with two breaths. The first was nervous and the other relieved. "Okay. I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"I'm okay." I nodded. He started to turn. "Thank you," I told him.

And that was that.