He passes through the room like a bubble in champagne, unattached, teflon coated, and somehow freer than the rest of us. “Jordie’s here,” Leong says in an excited whisper.

“Yeah,” I sigh, adjusting my mask, “saw him.” She smiles like a cat behind hers. Leong knows I’m crushing on Jordie and she finds it delicious information which she waves at me like a flag whenever he’s around.

We’re processing in, distancing and passing table to table. Leong can be with me because, as roommates, we’ll be quarantining together. Lisa joins us, she’s back from the restroom. “Jordie’s here,” she says, bouncing up on her toes to better scan the room.

I don’t look at him but he fills my horizon like a thunderhead. He’s all I can see, even when I’m not looking at him. We reach the end of a row of tables and bam, there he is, six feet away. He says hi, I say hi - I’m very professional as we exchange looping, harmless euphemisms for settling in for spring semester - then he’s called to the next station.

“If only we weren’t so busy,” I say, holding this fiction in front of me like a shield. “Yeah,” Leong and Lisa say, practically together, and smiling like thieves.