Blindsided

Maybe it was:

the obscene amount of caffeine and sugar I consumed this week
the hours in a library carrel
the Fray's new album I downloaded as a finals gift to myself
the Skype date with X that started the closure

but one day this week I met the eye of a classmate and something was in that look.  I have not been looking, quite frankly given I'm going to be out of school in a year the last thing I want to do is schlep my heart through a relationship that will inevitably end. But back to the blindside.  It actually I must confess started with a hug that he rightfully needed.  Last Thursday as most of us were preparing to hunker down and frantically pull through the next 8 days, he was reeling from a pretty scary break in a day prior at his home - his laptop gone, home vandalized and that sense of peace, that all of us value more than our stuff completely gone.  I offered, like other classmates to do whatever he needed - a place to stay, a family to eat dinner with, whatever he and his roommates needed to email me.  I hugged one of my good friends, M good-bye for the Easter weekend, turning to him to pat him on the arm or some distanced gesture - I'm a hugger but I don't normally hug men unless I know it won't be misconstrued. He had his arms open.  Of course he got the hug.   Maybe that was the thing that broke the ice, I don't know.  But this week, Wednesday, I ended up sitting in a three hour lecture with him, arm against arm.  There is something oddly charged about that kind of contact.  Not intentional and not intentionally intimate either, just the kind of contact that makes you realize how little you actually touch someone when you're single. Maybe it was that moment, or the moment he offered his coffee,  after he finished it though... I had made a comment about him being done.  It was every moment after that, there something in his eyes, a little longer glance... a little more of an attempt to be closer.

So last night, when we were given kitchen duty - the two of us in our friends tiny apartment kitchen as the rest of the group went on a grocery run, we talked and I found someone deeper and even more interesting.

BUT there are two catches to the story - isn't there always?

1. I am trying to figure out if flirting is a universal language - because if it is, there are a lot of signals going around and nothing happening or maybe just a lot from my side hitting too hard or off target altogether.

and

2. He's not Canadian - he's Belgian actually and that's the biggest catch, because he might not be back in September and he's flying out in 7 days.  So that's were this story sort of stops - sure I hugged him last night as we left for our buses in opposite directions.

So long story short - I may see him Tuesday night, he might be back and I'm stuck here wondering what the hell just hit me.