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He was tall and broad-shouldered He had strong ar into the sleeves of his shirts His hair was light brown, his face oftento so alone, he seemed to have the confidence of a person with a mission

I was in line to enter the dining hall e finally spoke I earing the saray shirt I’d worn the day before, and it occurred to ht notice

After he swiped his ID to get in, he hung back behind his friends and carried on a conversation with the guy running the card ot up to the front of the line, he stopped his conversation and looked at me

“Are you following

I was iht he could see it

“Sorry, stupid joke,” he said “I’ve just been seeing you everywhere lately” I took my card back “Can I ith you?”

“Yeah,” I said I wasmy mailroom friends, but I didn’t see them there yet anyway And he was cute That was a lot of what swayed me He was cute

“Where are we going?” he asked me “What line?”

“We are going to the grill,” I said “That is, if you’re standing in line with me”

“That’s actually perfect I have been dying for a patty melt”

“The grill it is, then”

It was quiet as we stood in line together, but he was trying hard to keep the conversation going

“Ryan Lawrence Cooper,” he said, putting his hand out I laughed and shook it His grip was tight I got the distinct feeling that if he did not want this handshake to end, there was nothing I could do about it That’s how strong his hand felt

“Lauren Maureen Spencer,” I said He let go

I had pictured hi, and he was those things to a certain degree But as we talked, he see to say This cute guy who had seemed so much surer of himself than I could ever be turned out to beentirely hu and probably funny and just coh with himself to seem as if he understood the world better than the rest of us But he didn’t, really He was just like me And suddenly, that made me like him a whole lot more than I realized And that made me nervous My stomach started to flutter My palms started to sweat

“So, it’s OK, you can ad to be funny “It’s you who have actually been stalking me”

“I admit it,” he said, and then quickly reversed his story “No! Of course not But you have noticed it, right? It’s like suddenly you’re everywhere”

“You’re everywhere,” I said, stepping up in line as it moved “I’m just in my normal places”

“You mean you’re in my normal places”

“Maybe we’re just cosmically linked,” I joked “Or we have similar schedules The first ti time there between Intro to Psych and Statistics So you must have picked up a class around that tiht?”

“You’ve unintentionally revealed two things to

“I have?” I said

“Yep” He nodded “Less important is that I no you’re a psych major and two of the classes you take If I was a stalker, that would be a gold mine”

“OK” I nodded “Although if you were any decent stalker, you would have known that already”