Coworker

Infatuation is carrying around a defibrillator on your hip like a fanny pack because you suffer from heart palpitations every time he glances your way. I wore heals to work once--big mistake. Every time he rounded the cubicle wall to ask me a question, I tripped over myself. My students guffawed at my lack of grace while helping me pick up fallen stacks of paper.

Adoration is finding the willpower to hit send on that text message you've been rewriting for an hour. After multiple revisions, a bought of panic, and two minor mental breakdowns, I settled on the classic "heyy," no capitalization (that would be too eager sounding) and two Y's for mild flirtation. No emojis, because we're probably not there yet. Place the phone screen-down because he doesn't get off work for another hour (you memorized his schedule), and you refuse to let yourself check for a text back until he's clocked out.

Desperation is sitting on the red couch an hour past your bedtime waiting for your phone screen to light up. Maybe he's fallen asleep. Maybe he didn't see your text. Maybe he regrets asking to exchange numbers. What if he's ghosting me? He didn't leave me on read! I scrolled through instagram for an hour, not really looking at the posts, just waiting for a message notification to grace the top of my screen.

Love is when you wake up the next morning in a pile of your own drool and look down at your phone to see a notification. "Hey! Sorry, I fell asleep! :) What's up?"