A play on words...

Heather Ivy was a tall, thin, pale blonde. With a bit more meat on her 5'11" frame, people would have used 'nordic' as a descriptive word. But thin as she was, 'gaunt' was a word often used by the more literate of the English majors in her life.

She was a junior at IOU Tech and this year she was an RA in her dorm, the most obvious benefit of which was that she had a private room and bath.

In November of the year, three months into the semester, she fell in love with a Puerto Rican kid who lived off campus. He was a Freshman, but older than her. She was all farm, he was all ghetto, but with a mind that understood and accepted the differences. He molded himself to fit what little yielding she had done to try to fit into what was still a strange world to her. People who knew them both could not understand how they had come to be a couple. But their 'understanding' was not something the couple needed and individually each one refused to answer any questions from the butt-inskies among their friends.

They hadn't been a couple long enough so Christmas Break wasn't a problem; each returned home alone. They emailed, IM'd and texted constantly. Her cell phone wouldn't take, send or receive photos, but she did have a digital camera and so they exhanged a number of photos, to the amusement of their respective families, none of whom gave the couple a snowball's chance in hell.

Back in school in January their 'coupleism' continued to prosper. And so did their academic endeavors: they both made Dean's list at the end of Spring Semester.

They'd held desultory talks now and again as the end of the semester approached, about what they would do, couple-wise, during the summer. He was honest and told her that the thought of spending time on a farm, where he couldn't make love to her whenever he wanted to, didn't appeal to him. And she was equally blunt in letting him know that being the only tall, skinny White girl in his barrio was equally unappealing. So they agreed to part for the Summer.

When the last school day was over, and they were packed and ready to depart, he held her in a final embrace. Their sadness was acute. She told him that the sadness was making her heart feel like a medicine ball inside her chest and it seemed to be trying to sink into her stomach. He put his hand over her heart (for a last quick feel) and told her that not seeing her for two and a half months was going to be the saddest thing he'd ever experienced.

And she asked him, "Will you still love me in the mourning?"

She had to finally explain her joke to him, writing it out, because he kept saying he'd miss her EVERY morning, AND the afternoons and evenings... When he finally got it, he laughed. But it was too late. She knew she'd just sown a seed of destruction and no weed killer in the world was going to prevent it from sprouting. What was going to grow from that seed would drive a wedge between them. Naive she might be, but she was farm girl practical and she figured he'd still be good to have around during her senior year, what with him being a great lay, and all. She was smiling when her taxi pulled away from the curb, leaving him standing by his bags, his eyes bright with moisture.