*NB: none of this is embellished, it’s written exactly how I remember it but it’s been a few years so some of the details are hazy. Names are changed to protect the not-so-innocent. All parties were adults at the time.*
EMILIA
This is a story about one of the ones that got away. The thing about Emilia is she was a freshman when I was in third year of design school, she was super smart which means she was freshly 18 and definitely inexperienced. I noticed her long dark hair, piercing blue eyes, and prominent cheekbones and clavicles in the studio fall semester but felt skeezy going after someone barely out of high school, so I didn’t. Her youthful runner’s build wasn’t what I typically was into, but she was so striking that I couldn’t look away. She must have caught me, because she was suddenly everywhere I needed to be and it couldn’t have been coincidental. She pursued me without really knowing how. I later found out she never had a boyfriend, had barely been kissed, but the magnetic attraction I had to her was mutual.