The crush

It was an absolutely perfect day. The palm trees rustled softly and the breeze carried the subtle fragrance of freshly cut grass. Rick absolutely loved the atmosphere of the old university campus with its grand broad walkways and beautifully restored old brick buildings.

Rick was walking by the conservatory and peeking in the glass at the exotic plants when his attention was suddenly drawn away by the sound of Tracy's voice.

"How's it goin Rick?" Tracy grinned

"Not bad. And you?" Rick turned and caught his breath. Standing next to Tracy was Maria! She had her long brown hair pulled back and beautifully braided.

-------------------------------------------------

I want to attempt to try for a "romance" with this story. A believable and possible sort of romance. Perhaps more challenging than writing "porn"?

great beginning. good luck.

Rick

"Tracy!" Kelly yelled enthusiastically. He was carrying his wetsuit and board. Rick liked to go surfing in the morning too sometimes.

"Excuse me for a minute" Tracy said and darted off in Kelly direction.

Maria grinned knowingly, her eyes sparkled, then she gazed into the conservatory. "The orchids are beautiful." she said nervously.

The gardeners had recently added an orchid display under a canopy of tree ferns and exotic palms.

"Those little ones are the Ghost orchids." Rick said carefully moving closer to her. Rick glanced at her soft thick beige sweater but resisted the urge to reach over and put his arm around her.

"It's a jungle in there" Tracy said loudly and Maria jumped.

"Tracy!" Maria said "You shouldn't sneak up on people like that!"

"I'm sor-ry.." Tracy laughed. "Kelly's gonna drop his stuff then we're gonna get some breakfast."... " Do you wanna join us Rick?"

"Actually I just ate.." Rick admitted

"Well then we'll see ya round!" Tracy smiled.

So far we have;

"Pywakit" as Maria
"Flurtayshus" as Cameron (best friend)
"Kale" Camerons boyfriend and semi-pro surfer
"Sexy_Beast1999" in a as yet undecided role

Maria

Maria watched as Tracy took off, leaving her alone with Rick. She'd seen him at Tracy's birthday party last week, but although she'd been attracted to him at the time she just hadn't been able to work up the courage to approach him then. She'd just moved to town, and was having enough trouble adjusting as it was.

She looks back at the orchids and sighs; they're so delicate looking... so perfect. Nervous about being this close to Rick, she blurts out the first thing that comes into her head.

"That Tracy... she's gonna give me a heart attack some day with her sudden entrances." Maria smiled softly as she continued to look at the orchids after stealing a glance to see if Rick seemed interested in talking.

Cameron

Cameron roared into the on-campus parking lot like a bat out of hell swinging into a parking space just barely missing another car. She threw her mustang convertible into park and glanced at herself in the rear view mirror. Her thick chocolate hair was windblown into a mass of curls that fell heavily down her back and her cheeks were flushed from the breeze that had surrounded her on the drive over.

She ran her hands over her face, trying to wake herself up and thanked god for having a relatively flawless complexion. It meant she didn’t have to fuss with make-up like most girls she knew. And she thanked god for that as well because she just didn’t have the patience for blush and eyeliner. She guessed she was as her grandfather used to say, a “natural beauty.”

Glancing at her watch, Cameron saw she was running fifteen minutes late. If she wasn’t in class by twenty then her professor would lock the door and she’d be counted as absent. She snatched her back pack off the back seat, slung it over one shoulder and broke into a run. Just as she hit the quad her cell phone rang and she fished it out of her jeans pocket never breaking stride.

“Yea?” She panted into the receiver.

“Babe where are you?” Kale, Cameron’s boyfriend of eleven months whispered into the phone from the class she should already be in. “You are so late.”

“I know. I’m there. Two minutes!” She answered turning the corner on one of the broad walks headed toward the conservatory.

“Two minutes is all you’ve got.” Kale admonished and then all she could hear was the dial tone.

“Shit!” Cameron cursed and looked down briefly to shove her phone back in her pocket when she ran smack into the broad back of some guy.

“Hey, watch where you’re…” The familiar voice began as two hands shot out to keep her from falling flat on her butt. Ricks laughing face appeared before hers when she finally swiped her hair out of her bright green eyes. “Cam, tell me you’re not late again.”

Cameron reached up with one hand, grabbing Rick’s cheeks and squeezed his lips together in “fish” fashion.

“I’m soooo late!” She laughed planting a sloppy kiss square on his lips. “Gotta go!”

She took off again at a dead run but could hear Rick shout, “Hey is that my t-shirt?!”

“It’s mine now!!” She laughed and bounded up the stairs, disappearing into a beautifully bricked building.

Rick

"I wondered what happened to that t-shirt!" Rick smiled.

When he turned back to Maria he noticed her face had clouded over and she wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Hey" Rick reached over and lightly cupped Maria's elbow "She's just a friend.." Rick said softly " I mean Cam isn't my girlfriend she's just a really good friend."

"Sure." Maria nodded but didn't smile immediately. It was clear that she didn't believe that a woman who would kiss a man so openly on the mouth was just a friend.

"I've gotta go." Maria turned as if to leave.

"Wait!" Rick scrambled to block her retreat "Do you want to go get some coffee? A muffin? A bagel? If you have time before your first class."

Maria eyed him warily but relented. "Okay, I've got a little time. Only if you're sure she's not your girlfriend."

Rick grinned as wide as his face would allow "I swear on my life."

Maria

A whirlwind of thought tore through Maria's mind. What was that girl doing in Rick's t-shirt? Why had she kissed him if she wasn't his boyfriend? Something seemed fishy about the whole situation. She thought back on her breakup a few months ago with Alex and was suprised to find how hurt she still felt about it. She took a deep breath and pushed it all away; she was on the other side of the country now. Time for new beginnings.

"A cup of coffee, huh?" She watched as Cameron raced around a corner down the way, then looked back to Rick and shrugged. "Sure, why not? I've got an hour before class anyway. Although... we haven't been introduced, have we? You're Rick, right?"

"Ah, Cameron, just the 18 minutes late." Professor Rawlings handed her a set of photocpied notes as she scooted to her seat next to Kale.

"Now this is a very practical class, here by the ocean as we will be dealing with the class of invertebrates known as Cnidaria. Which are more commonly known as?"

The silence was deafening before Kale ventured, "jellyfish."

"Good, an important thing for a pro surfer to know eh?" The students in the lecture room gave a little laugh to the somewhat sarcastically toned remark before he began his Powerpoint lecture showing first the trailing tentacles of a large posoinous example.

Kale didn't mind the attitude; Rawlings hadn't felt the thrill of competition, the feel of being in the tube. And strictly speaking, he wasn't pro. Not yet.

Kale was distracted as he thought Rawlings had never known the wildness of waves, not known their ancestry as Kale's Hawaiin people had. It was part of their soul, this knowing of the sea, knowing the genealogy of the waves that haunted its surface.

The storms that bred them gave them their life, vitality, near untamable nature as they roamed thousands of miles from their conception. As they reached landfall, for final moments they cried out with their voices pulled from the depths and then, just then, men and women could try to call out to them, to touch them. The surfer was an artist as much as any dancer, any painter. Their canvas was blue, green, white, lasting minutes at the most but each one could make you feel immortal.

He made his notes, smiling at Cameron, feeling the easy closeness of her hips on the bench next to him, looking forward to the end of the class.

When it came he slipped his hand under her tee shirt - surely Rick's tee-shirt (who else had a Green Acid Final Tour shirt?)? He rubbed her back while leaning in and kissing her cheek as she finished off her last few notes.

"So, did you steal it straight off Rick's back?" Kale grinned as he looked at her his eyes indicating the shirt. "Mind you, it suits you better than it does him."

They trailed out of the building back into the sun; the question had been partly light hearted but he didn't remember her saying she had borrowed one from Rick. He'd done his best to control his jealousy; Cameron herself would be the first to say how well he was doing. But still, it surfaced. Now and then.

Rick

"Yes I'm Rick!" he grinned breathing a sigh of relief.

That Cameron what a character! Rick enjoyed the kiss more than he admitted but he felt a tinge of guilt. After all Cameron had a boyfriend, named Kale. And Kale was a semi-pro surfer!

Rick couldn't help smiling when he looked into Maria's incredible eyes as they walked across the campus in the direction of the Coffee House.

"I saw you at Tracy's party... But I didn't get a chance to meet you."

"That's okay." Maria shrugged. "What are you majoring in?"

"Civil Engineering. You know I'll design bridges and dams and things."

Maria and Rick stepped into the coffee house. "And I was going du-de!" A blond haired guy with long hair was talking to a another guy and a similarly blonde girl. "Don't you think you should get your big gun? Those are some pretty gnarly waves!"

Near the counter a girl and a couple of very intellectual looking guys were talking. "He realized that if he stayed in Medical school he was just going to end up getting exploited for his brains." The girl was explaining "So, he had to drop out. He moved to New York and Winter was just starting, and he said it was really hard to find a grill to sleep on at nights.."

"I'll just get a regular cup of coffee." Maria said. She added a little cream and sugar and headed for a table with Rick

"So Maria, what are you majoring in?" Rick asked sneaking a quick peek at her breasts. She wasn't really busty in fact she was a little slimmer than his "ideal" but somehow she was still very attractive and it just felt good being with her.

Maria

"So, Maria, what are you majoring in?"

Maria sipped at her coffee as she looked back at him. She still hadn't gotten over how everyone out here on the West Coast seemed so tan, and Rick was no different. It really went well with his dirty blond hair and his blue eyes, actually

"Geology, believe it or not. Specifically, paleontology. You know… dinosaurs, and all that." She smiled tentatively, gauging his reaction as she took another sip of coffee. She'd found that people tended not to take her seriously when she told them what she was studying… her parents certainly didn't understand. She'd had more than her share of arguments about the topic, in fact. One thing it was certainly good for, though, was using it as a personality test. Anyone that made any jokes about it or asked her what she was really majoring in just saved her the trouble spending a few weeks to get to know them and be disappointed. She found herself hoping surprisingly strongly that Rick's reaction wouldn't be a laugh or a joke.

Rick

"Rocks for jocks?" Rick laughed and Maria shot Rick a dirty look. Oops!...

"No, it's cool" Rick countered noticing the look on Marias face. "I'm minoring in geology myself. Civil engineers need to know at least a little geology. We need to make sure that we're building on stable bedrock. Maybe I'll see you in some classes?"

Maria relaxed a little. God she was beautiful!

Cameron

“Not his back. His closet.” Cameron quipped as they moved out onto the front walk.

When Kale didn’t immediately respond Cameron stopped on the top step and turned to Kale, her hands going to his waist and pulling him toward her. She searched his eyes for a long moment.

“What?” He asked not immediately meeting her gaze.

In the silence she admired the sculpted bronze features that attested to his native Hawaiian heritage; the strong jaw line, the prominent cheek bones, the intense hazel eyes that passion burned behind at all times, his 6’3” frame that towered above her.

“Are you jealous?” Cameron asked a little smile tugging at her lips.

Kale shook his head quietly in the negative leaning down to nuzzle her neck.
She kissed his head above his ear and felt the silkiness of his jet black hair against her lips.

“Hey,” she murmured. “Cause you know if it bothers you, I’ll take it off. I’ll take it off right now!”

She leaned away from him and made a move as if she were going to tug the shirt over her head.

Kales grin turned salacious. “Please do.”

“Perv!” She laughed kissing him lightly on his lips.

“Yea but I’m your perv.” He replied smartly and slid his hand into hers and led her down the steps into the quad.

Cameron nodded in agreement. “You got that right!”

“So why were you late this morning?” Kale asked as they made their way across campus

Cameron stopped short. “Oh my god! I forgot to tell you! You remember how I met Nalu last week at the design conference. Well, Big Island Swimwear called this morning and they want to see my designs!

Maria

After glaring at Rick, Maria closes her eyes for a moment and fights back the urge to shoot back some insult, or worse, to just stand up and walk away, leaving Rick at the table. "That's no way to make friends," she tells herself. As she opens her eyes, she listens as Rick sputters out some damage control. At least he seems to have realized she wasn't amused by the joke, and as he told her he was minoring in Geology, she even felt herself relax a little. Classes were always more fun when you knew someone in them.

"Maybe I'll see you in some classes?" he asked. Maria shrugged.

"Wouldn't surprise me, I suppose." She blew a wavy lock of dark brown hair out of her eyes, one of those strands that always seemed to get away from her braid, then glanced up at the clock. "Speaking of which, I've got a class in about half an hour and it's all the way across campus. It was nice meeting you, Rick. Seeya around!"

Rick

"Wouldn't suprise me, I suppose." Maria said blowing a wavy lock of brown hair out of her eyes. "Speaking of which, I've got a class in about half an hour and it's all the way across campus. It was nice meeting you Rick. Seeya around!"

"I'll see you 'round" Rick nodded holding up his hand

The guy with long blond hair next to the door was shaking his head. "Rick.." Forest said looking semi amused "..that was a total wipe out dude!"

"I don't know.." Rick said walking over to join them. "She did say it was nice meeting me and that she'd see me 'round."

"I don't know dude." Forest said shrugging his shoulders. "She looked a little bummed."

"Come hit the surf with us tomorrow." Karen suggested. "It will take your mind off of her."

"And bring your big gun." Forest added "There's supposed to be some heavies tomorrow!"

"There's a big storm off the coast." Karen explained..

"Thanks I'll be there! It sounds like fun. I'll see you guys... But I've gotta go to my boring Statics class.."

*****

Rick kicked hard as he dove under the wave. It was hard to duck dive with a big gun. Forest had been right the waves were absolutely huge today.

"Dude what did I tell you!" Rick heard Forests voice as I paddled across the powerful pulsing ocean that was rising and falling beneath him. He could hear big waves breaking ominously behind him.

"Forest don't you think we're out here far enough?" Rick shouted laughing. He saw Forest kick out over a low rolling wave and paddle smoothly in his direction.

"Rick dude this is where the primo waves are gonna be breaking! You don't want to waste your time in there with those little ankle busters.... like Karen and Doug."

"You call those ankle busters?" Rick laughed.

"Dude" Forest interupted "There's Kale! And do you see that killer set coming!"

Forest was right. Rick could see a ripple heading across the ocean in our direction. Then the first monster passed under him. He saw Forest take off but he didn't even try to catch it. ..Had he really screwed up with Maria?.. He paddled for the second but it was bigger than he'd anticipated and he missed it. ..Maybe Forest was right.. he was ready for the third and he paddled hard and he was there! ..Maybe I don't really understand girls?.. His takeoff was a little shaky but the huge face of the wave was glassy smooth and he ripped down it preparing for his bottom turn.

It was almost surrealistic. There was Kale, coming from his right. Kale had the wave and Rick was dropping in on him!

"Oh my god! I forgot to tell you! You remember how I met Nalu last week at the design conference. Well, Big Island Swimwear called this morning and they want to see my designs!" Cameron said quickly, excitedly.

Kale smiled and pulled her to him. "Wow, that's great!" He let her go them grinned again saying, "you'll have to model that one you had made up the other week. I remember it got real small around here," he ran his hands over her firm ass. She stuck out her tongue and poked him in the chest.

"You weren't concentrating on the desin much when I wore it for you. as I remember I didn't wear it very long."

He growled and slid his hand around her waist as they walked towards the coffee shop.

"Hey," he suddenly thought, "do you think Big Island might think about sponsoring my surfing? There's the competition coming up next month and my recent couple of wins might make them take notice."

She pulled him closer as they walked. "Give them a try."

Rick

The near collision with Kale snapped Rick out of his daze. Rick made a smooth backhand turn bending his knees well. The wave began to tube over his head and his back skimmed along the wall as the green room started closing around him.

"Boss!" Forest yelled as Rick punched out the end of the tube.

"I meant to do that!" Rick grinned paddling with Forest back into position.

Another huge wave passed under them and broke.

"Primo ride!" Forest complimented " But Rick dude you sort of dropped in on Kale"

"I know, I guess my mind was somewhere else..." Rick said gazing intently at the pier.

"Still is." Forest laughed then paused "Isn't that the girl you were with yesterday?"

Rick could see a girl standing towards the end of the pier watching but she was a little too far away to recognise clearly. Her long hair waved subtly in the gentle breeze.

Maria

Maria made it to her paleontology class, but although she normally found the subject quite interesting she found she just couldn't concentrate. She kept thinking back to Rick, the way his hair kind of flopped over his eyes, the way he kind of smiled with only half of his mouth when he was kidding around, the way he seemed genuinely ashamed when he'd blurted out that silly joke. "Rocks for jocks," she thought to herself. It didn't even make any sense in context… she was hardly a jock. In fact, she really didn't have much patience for the jock type… normally. Football players were too aggressive, basketball players too loud and talky, baseball players too boring. But surfers… now that was actually new territory. Back home, of course, there weren't any at all, except for what you saw on TV now and then. Maria had always been a strong swimmer, but she'd never tried surfing before. Never even thought about it, actually, and here she was wondering how hard it was. Didn't seem like it'd be that tough… just balance on a board and don't fall off, right?

Suddenly, the students were standing. Maria realized she'd been daydreaming the entire time, and had missed much of the lecture. "Damn," she thought to herself. "Hopefully I didn't miss much important!"

****

Maria didn’t have any classes the next day; she'd left the day blank on purpose, scheduling her classes all to happen on three days a week. It made those three days pretty much useless for anything but classes, but it left four days to relax, study, and enjoy herself. She called Tracy but got her voice mail. She thought of leaving a message, but then decided not to. She hadn't really explored town much since moving in a few weeks ago; her time had been mostly taken up with registering for classes and then taking classes during the days, and then getting the whirlwind tour of campus and the local party scene with Tracy. Maria wasn't too big on parties, though, and classes weren't a really great place to socialize, as much as some of her friends back east had tried. She found herself wondering what Rick was up to, and then shook her head. It wasn't like her to crush on a guy like this; normally she was a lot more level-headed. She sighed, then threw on a t-shirt and some shorts, tied her long brown hair back in a pony tail, and decided to go out for a walk. Maybe down to the beach and back, maybe to the coffee shop where she and Rick had talked the day before. She wouldn't know till she got there; that was part of the fun!

Before long, Maria found herself at the beach. The waves were coming in rather heavy, and she could see clouds on the horizon. Of course, with waves so heavy, there were plenty of surfers out. Maria spotted a pier and strolled out onto it. Some kids were fishing off one side, so she went to the other and leaned up against the railing and watched. Was one of the surfers Rick? She couldn't tell from here. The pier had one of those coin-operated viewing scopes, but she didn't have any quarters on her, so she had to content herself with her own two eyes.

Hmm… it didn't look that tough, actually. Easy enough to paddle out there on a board, it seemed, and once they stood up it couldn't be much more difficult than skiing. Maria'd only been skiing once; she'd been okay at it but the cold was none of her business. With the warmth of the sun on her shoulders, she thought that surfing might actually be much more to her tastes.

Of course… trying it out meant finding a board, getting a new swimsuit, and finding someone to teach her the ropes. Maybe Tracy could help? Learning to surf would be a great way to show Rick that she wasn't only just interested in fossils.

Maria blushed as she suddenly realized that she'd been thinking about Rick in the back of her mind all this time. She rolled her eyes and straightened up. How had he managed to make such an impression on her in so short a time?

The following day Kale was up early. He'd heard about the waves from Forest, though he'd known for a while that something special might be coming in. Kale had managed to catch the wave, almost a double overhead, and rode down the face, every one of his senses alive to the speed, to his position on the board -

Then there was someone, a figure, dropping in. Kale and the other person were close, dangerously. Annoyed, Kale did a kick out and in the camlm behind the wave saw it was Rick. He wiped water from his face and set off out to catch another wave, muttering to himself. "surfing like a Quimby," he said, shaking his head. He'd have fun with Rick later pretending that he was really annoyed with him. Rick was a cool guy and Kale, though friendly was a bit of a loner and sometimes wished he was closer to other surfers.

Kale didn't spend too much longer out practising. Before a competition he scaled back on technical trainig and just went out to commune with the water, to get the feeling of flying just above its surface. There were a few too many people out that morning and he decided he might just go and see if Cameron was still at home for a surprise...visit. He smiled to himself as he drove along the quiet seafront towards her apartment buildings.

Cameron

Cameron turned off her sewing machine, clipped the last of the sunburst orange threads and held up the lycra garment. Her newest line of swimwear was being designed for female surfers. Her feeling was, just because they were in a male dominated sport didn’t mean they couldn’t look good while kicking ass.

She stood and placed the midriff style tank top on a special hanger with the matching ‘boy’ shorts and then admired all six of her completed projects. There was one suit in particular that she imagined would be her signature suit.

It was a deep steel gray tankini, with straps and a stripe in the accent color of fluorescent green. The bikini bottoms were the fluorescent green with one gray racing stripe to the left of center down the front.

The suit was paired with a matching rash guard; an essential accessory for surfing that looked like someone had cut the top off of a wetsuit and shortened the sleeves. The difference was the fabric was lighter weight, sheer and breathable yet able to protect from the cold of the water.

Madame Gilenier, her History of Fashion Design professor, had seen her mock-ups for the suits and thought they were wonderful. She’d been encouraged to make them as quickly as possible now that Big Island wanted to see her stuff.

Feeling extremely proud of herself, Cameron took the signature suit off its hanger, shed her clothes and worked the hardly there suit up her slim legs and down over her trim torso. It hugged her curves perfectly and felt like a second skin. Padding over to the oversized full length mirror, Cameron admired how the green in the suit made her eyes stand out, complimenting them perfectly.

The rash guard stopped just an inch and a half above her navel and the boy style bottoms rode low on her hips leaving two inches of her flat stomach exposed sensuously. The lycra bottoms then followed the curve of what Kale called her “J-Lo” booty and ended cupping the curve tightly. She had just turned to the side to check the fit when she heard the knock at her door.

Maria

Maria gasped as two of the surfers nearly crashed into each other, one swerving deftly away at the last minute. As if there wasn't enough to worry about with the drowning and the sharks and the waves, looks like you had to watch out for other surfers also!

A cool breeze blew in from the ocean and Maria hugged herself against it. As if one of the surfers felt it too, he began paddling in. She watched as he reached the shore and headed up toward the parking lot, squinting her eyes and finally deciding it probably wasn't Rick after all.

Catching herself thinking about Rick again she tossed her head in frustration. "Know what you need, girl?" she asked herself aloud, causing one of the fishermen on the other side of the pier to glance her way. "You need a hobby!" She nodded at the fisherman and smiled, then started walking back toward the shore.

Rick

"I was right, wasn't I?" Karen punched playfully at Ricks shoulder "The surfing helped clear your head!"

"Yeah you were right Karen. And the waves were great today!" Rick smiled.

"I think you'll find that I'm always right" Karen grinned

Forest and Doug were busy strapping the longboards down on a rack that Forest had mounted on the top of his little white bug.

"Okay dudes, everybody in. We want to make some classes!" Forest said raising his eyebrows.

Karen turned towards Rick "Actually I don't have any classes today."

"I do" Rick chuckled " I missed my Statics class today but it was worth it!"

Forest turned up on to the scenic palm lined Main Street that ran through the middle of the town. They passed little surf shops, restaurants with patios, and a coffee shop where Rick spotted Tracy seated outside drinking coffee with a couple really beautiful blonde haired girls he'd never met.

"Don't you have to have two years of Calculus to take Statics?" Doug asked.

"Yeah, I'm just auditing it." Rick admitted "But I'm thinking about dropping it and picking up a geology class instead for my minor."

"Right on." Doug nodded.

Rick caught a glimpse of the back of a girl with long brown hair walking into a art store. She had the same sort of beautiful long brown hair as Maria. It wasn't perfectly straight. It had a beautiful wavyness to it and was tied back in a ponytail.

Kale turned to the dor when he heard it open a crack. Cameron's face appeared and she grinned.

"Close your eyes,"she said. He happily obeyed and he felt her hand in his as she guided him inside.

"OK, you can look now."

Yes, he looked. And looked.

"Wow. I remember the drawing but...it certainly adds something when it's three dimensional." She turned around for him then gave a catwalk style walk, sashaying hips and all.

"Paris, here I come," she grinned.

He nodded and started to approach.

"Ah Ah. You keep your hands to yourself, I don't want surfer paw marks on it."

His smile widened and she rolled her eyes and giggled. They both said it together. "You'd better take it off then." She pouted. "No time," she tapped her watchless wrist. "Classes, more lovely jellyfish."

He looked disappointed.

"But you can watch me get dressed if you like..."

He followed her like a puppy into the bedroom and, through many distractions told of his experience on the surf that morning and how he was going to play Rick along that he was annoyed. He grinned.

"Hey, if you see him first, tell him that I'm looking for him and make it sound grim?"

She laughed and headed for the kitchen for orange juice before they set off.

Maria

Maria hummed to herself as she walked back home. The thought of learning to surf seemed to grow more appealing with every step; what better way to shrug off all her baggage from out east and accept her new life here on the Pacific Coast? As she walked, she noticed a cute little art store and wandered in. Sometimes, these little crafts stores had some really nifty brushes, picks, and tools. They might have been intended for pottery or painting, but that didn't mean that they weren't great for fossil digs! As she picked up a brush here, a clay pick there, she continued humming, visions of straddling a surfboard and showing Rick her moves dancing in her head.

* * * * *

Maria started awake as the alarm went off for what seemed like the tenth time. "Crap!" she muttered as she noted the time. She'd been up till two in the morning the night before, surfing the net for what information she could find about learning to surf, and now she'd slept through her alarm, and class was in less than half an hour! She leapt out of bed, took a quick shower (no time to wash the hair, damn it!), tied back her hair and threw on her favorite green baseball cap and some clothes, and raced out the door.
Fortunately, the bus gods smiled on her. Less than 25 minutes later, she was racing toward the lecture hall. She forced herself to slow down as she walked down the hall, and after she caught her breath she entered and sought out a nice quiet seat near the back of the huge lecture hall; she sure as hell wasn't going to sit in the front and let everyone check out her "late to class" outfit!

Rick

"In the mid-1600's a young Dane named Niels Seensen came to the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany to serve as a court physician." Mrs Thompson read from a notecard as she flashed a slide of a sharks head on a large screen in the front of the large lecture hall.

"He liked to explore the hills of Tuscany. And one day when looking at a fossilized tooth, that was supposed to be a dragons, he noticed how similar it was to one he'd seen when he'd dissected a sharks head."

Rick skimmed through the beginning of the stratigraphy book he'd just picked up and breathed a sigh of relief. She's starting from the beginning, he thought to himself, I haven't missed much.

"..Steno suggested that the rock hadn't always been solid but had once been soft sediments that had hardened around the sharks tooth. From this idea Steno derived three famous laws of stratigraphy."

"Original horizontality.." Mrs Thompson flashed a slide of a road cut showing flat layers of rock and explained how sediments were deposity horizontally..

"Original continuity.." she flashed a slide of a long flat desert and explained how sedimentary layers formed continuous sheets that covered the earth.

"And Superposition.."

Suddenly the screen went blank. The projector dramatically lept off of the table it was seated on crashing to the floor. And a figure lunged at Rick falling roughly in his lap!

"Ooops.." she said as she looked up at Rick.