Chapter 505) Beauty And The Brain

University of Britchester
North Campus Main Lecture Hall

Turning to the blackboard to wipe around on it in an attempt to hide his blushing, the blond young man exhaled to lower his anxiety. One class down. Only one for today, thank goodness. Two more the next day. His dad and older sister, both professors, had both told him this would get easier. Question being, when. So far, no change, even after almost 4 months. If anything, the anxiety made it harder to get up and face the students who were barely younger than him. Just normally he had a real professor there with him, unlike today where due to staffing shortages he had to fly solo. Yikes.

He nearly jumped when someone now spoke to him and froze after turning around when he saw it was a very pretty girl. Oh boy! He could feel his face illuminate red and hot; his ears felt so red hot they seemed close to setting his hair on fire.

“Professor … umm …” the girl quickly looked at some notes in her hand, before she looked at him again, “… Cameron, could I ask you a few quick questions please? I know, office hours and all but … I literally just transferred here … “

His voice was croaky and crackly as he replied.

“I am not the professor; I was asked to cover for him at the very last minute, Professor Ethan Cameron is out sick this week with the flu. I am kinda like a glorified Teacher’s Aide right now, working on my doctorate. Anything I can help you with?”

“Umm, okay, yeah, maybe, I just transferred to UBrite and am having the hardest time getting the hang of this class, but I need it to move on. I was told the professor is very nice and does help out students off the clock without making them have appointments and all that like other profs. I hate to ask, but I REALLY need some help here.”

“Right. That won’t be a problem. I can try to explain it to you, unless you prefer my father.”

“Your father? Oh, you’re the prof’s son, so a whole family of brainiacs?” she giggled briefly.

Benjamin just smirked awkwardly, unable to think of anything clever, or rather anything at all, to reply, especially since he made the mistake to look her over and realized she was very pretty. He blushed deeply again. Girls had always been his kryptonite, especially those he found attractive. He was socially awkward to begin with, had inherited that from his dad, who had been bullied all through school. In that aspect Benny had probably lucked out, considering he was largely completely ignored by all other students during his school years. To this day he wondered what a prom really was like, as he sure had never been.

“So, do you want to do it right here and right now?” the girl now called him back from his thoughts.

The depths of crimson reached new levels and shades probably not even known to the good people of Pantone, as he stared at her wide-eyed, before realizing what she really meant. Help with the studies, not the naughty wishful thinking things any hetero young man in his early 20’s would probably immediately mentally default to when a pretty girl would say such words to him.

“Oh, well, umm, we can’t do it here, there is a class right after mine – well, my dad’s rather – but we can go to that little cafe down a block on campus maybe. Or I could meet you where you live.” Benny managed to get out.

She seemed to think for a moment, as new students started to file in casually.

“Problem: I live at a very noisy dorm and don’t think this will do me any good if I can’t focus, I have ADHD, so the cafe is out too. I usually study at the library, but we’d get kicked out if we’d talk a lot. Would it be too weird if I came to your place?” she asked.

“Uh …” he flushed in deepest shades of red again and would have loved to answer, but he had no words. Not one single word was left in his brain at the moment. A girl? In his home? Alone? One of his dad’s students? Oh boy. That idea was frightening enough, and he had no idea if he would be able to remember his own name, let alone what he was supposed to make more palatable for her to understand so she could write a paper on it.

Now she looked taken aback, fidgeting awkwardly, while mumbling

“OMG, sorry, I just realized that was probably total cringe to ask. I mean, we never met before, you don’t know me, I don’t know you not to mention you’re technically faculty and that would be …”

“… totally okay. Really. I mean, my family and I are vetted on campus, everyone knows us, so we’re definitely not some weird creeps, and my dad has been helping students off the clock since I was young. We often had one or two of his students over for lunch when I came home from school, when they followed him home to get some help on some subjects, knowing he never turned anyone away, so it’s no problem, really, I was just thinking of all the other things I needed to do today, but I can move things around and fit you in.” Benny lied.

There were no other things, there hardly ever were. Just like his dad Ethan, Benny had always been the quintessential nerd, no friends, never invited to any parties by classmates. And most certainly never any girls. Not for lack of wanting, he was just way too shy to even try. But like his dad, Benny just wasn’t a ladies man and could only hope it wouldn’t take him as long to find lasting and true love as it had his father. Ethan Cameron was on his third marriage. His first wife had been his high school sweetheart, who wanted kids right away, when that didn’t happen she blamed Ethan and divorced him within the second year of their marriage. It took him many years to fall for wife number two, Vanessa, 10 years his junior, whom he had one daughter with, Hannah. Vanessa died in an accident when Hannah was a teenager. Hannah was already married and had a daughter with her Komorebian husband when Ethan met Celeste, both older with grown children already. Yet, they fell fast and hard, and not long after they got married Benny came along as a complete surprise with Celeste and Ethan already in their 50s.

The girl kept looking at him, his smile faded, until she grimaced and with a giggle told him

“I would need your address though, like I said, I just transferred here so I don’t have the low-down on the campus-Camerons yet. When is a good time for you?”

Another bout of blushing, this time on both sides.

“Oh, right! Sorry. Today at 3 would work for me.” he gave her the address along with a brief description of how to get there, then with a smile the girl left, he packed up his things and squeezed past the students for the next class who were now streaming in, but it wasn’t until he dropped the keys into the small bowl by the door at his home that it really hit him.

Britchester University Campus
1b Mossy Lane Townhomes

“Oh my God! There is an actual real-life girl coming to my house! Oh! MY! GOD! What have I done?! Why did I do that?! What would dad do? Or mom? Mom’s always been cooler, so what would mom do?” Benny went into a full-fledged panic, took his prescription meds to help with his anxiety attacks, then ran through his home trying to hide anything that could be awkward or embarrassing. Like his Manga comics. Eeesh. Or his Simmi collection, his older half-sister Hannah, who lived in Mt. Komorebi, would bring him one or two capsules every visit since he was old enough to appreciate them. Not exactly the manliest collection to flaunt. Yikes!

Right as he dumped the last figurine into a box, someone was at the door.

The girl!
Oh God!

Already?!
AAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!

He inhaled and exhaled deeply on his way to the door, trying not to hyperventilate and again just before opening with what he hoped would look like a polite smile and not the grimace it felt like.

“Oh hi, sorry, I was … finishing up a phone call.” he lied.

“No biggie, you’re doing me a favor. A BIG favor. I don’t even know your name … I am Natasha, by the way. Natasha Westbrook.”

“Benny. Cameron, obviously. Well, Benjamin actually, but I am used to Benny.” Benny heard himself ramble on something that should have been a one-word reply. How hard would it have been to just say ‘Benny’?! UGH!

“Benny? That’s cute. You do look like a Benny.”

While following her to the small table in his living/kitchen area, Benny wondered if it was a good or a bad thing to ‘look like a Benny’. What do Bennies usually look like? Obviously not like anything girls would want, so …. UGH!

After a predictably awkward start, he soon was in his element and was able to make everything easier to understand for her. By the time it got dark outside, she was able to answer every single one of his test questions correctly.

She was very excited and appreciative as she left, but once the door shut behind her, Benny suddenly felt the quiet in his home eerily depressing. That was his one glorious moment of having a pretty house guest he wasn’t related to. Oh well, fun while it lasted.
He looked at himself in the full-length mirror by the front door and sighed, when he realized his reflection just wasn’t as special as he would have liked it to be. So that’s what Bennies looked like. Hm. He wouldn’t wanna date himself either. Yawn.

The Cameron lineage was widespread into various very different branches and all over the world, most of them barely related anymore at this point in more than sharing the same name and some same ancestry long, long, long ago, and sadly his branch didn’t inherit any of the cool charisma and presence, not to mention striking looks are some of the other branches had. He was plain. Simple as that. The plain brainiacs. Oh well.

The next few days went on as they did, the usual schedule, until one afternoon, Benny had just gotten comfortable on his couch with one of the latest guilty pleasures: a brand-new reality TV shows nobody admitted to watching but ratings proved it was extremely popular, lacking anything resembling a true social life himself, peeking in on that of other people was so interesting to Benny, scripted or not, when someone was at the door.

Through the glass insets he saw Natasha. The girl he had thought he’d never see again. Yet, there she was, at the most embarrassing time. Gulp!

The moment he opened Natasha looked like she had won the lottery, squealing and jumping, holding out a paper to Benny. A perfect score was all he could read before she flung herself into his arms, bouncing up and down, cheering.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you! You are my hero, Benny! I totally owe you!”

As usual, Benny blushed deeply, but managed to find a few words to invite Natasha in, only to realize horrified he was in his sweats with junk food all over and that reality TV show blaring. And all his nerd paraphernalia was back on the shelves, since he never expected to see her again.

She turned to him.

“OMG – you’re a TRLAMP addict too?! No way!”

“TRLAMP???”

Natasha pointed at the TV screen.

“‘The Real Life At Mirage Park’, TRLAMP, it’s what everyone calls it. Tell me I am not crazy, cos Carmen thinks I am crazy, but Joe totally slept with Kris last episode, right? Amirite?”

“Who’s Carmen?”

“My roommate.”

“Oh, right. And yeah, he did. They didn’t actually show it of course, but it was clearly implied when the camera panned away at the end of the last episode, and it showed the condom wrapper was torn open. Unless they needed one oddly shaped balloon for something, they used it as intended.”

“Oh my God! I totally missed that. And you are so funny, a condom balloon, hahaha! You are awesome. Hey, I just came by to thank you, but … if you’re not busy … maybe I could stay for the episode, cos I HAVE TO know how it goes now. I know, totally rude to invite myself and all, but …”

“No, no … not rude at all. Totally cool.”

And that was how it happened. The unlikely couple, when you least expect it.

Nerdy aspiring professor Benjamin Cameron and the pretty girl. They started watching the show together frequently from then on, she was actually totally amazed by the Simmi figurines and their history. Eventually she met his parents, who, during a quiet family dinner told Benny that his dad’s late second wife, Vanessa, who was Benny’s older sister Hannah’s mom, had also been a student at the university he was learning to teach at while going for his doctorate and subsequently becoming a professor. Benny blushed, telling them it wasn’t anything like that, they were just friends.

But it was very much like THAT. He was crushing on Natasha hard, but too shy to make any first moves. That had to always be Natasha. And she did.

One Summer afternoon, she had made him come with her to the swimming lake, during their watery frolicking she kissed him. Just like that. When she realized how much his body reacted to her, she asked to go back to his place and at 22 years of age he finally experienced another first he had been dying to have.

After that day Natasha started referring to him as her boyfriend. She had long gained his parents’ approval, who both liked the spunky, outgoing, but also goal-oriented young woman for their son. She pulled him out of his shell, while he kept her grounded. Natasha’s parents felt similarly about him. Within a few months after them becoming a couple, she moved into his townhome half with him.

In just a few months’ time the former shy nerdy loner had become a young man happily in love.

While this chapter is stand-alone and concluded in itself, I am sure their story will be continued …