The one who was painfully shy

Dormcest. I've been told to avoid it, but only after the fact.

I lived on a co-ed floor my freshman year of college with a bunch of art, music and engineering students. It was a bizarre combination, but it seemed to work out well. We were all a little dorky, awkward, creative and comfortable staying in on a Friday night.

Two doors down was this adorable sophomore named Micah, he was from a very rural part of the state. He told me once that there was so little to do in his hometown, high school students either drank a lot or watched TV a lot. He was the kid who had no friends and watched TV. Micah was super quiet and shy.

We had these Ugly Betty moments, you know where Betty and Henry see each other and can't stop smiling? It was pretty cute. We would listen to music and watch TV, I remember he liked U2 as much as I did. I would get that feeling in my stomach every time I got to the top floor of the stairwell or got out of the elevator. It was pretty obvious that he liked me, and I'm usually incredibly oblivious to these things. I think my stupid compulsive liar of a roommate might have just come out and told him I liked him, I'm not sure. I've tried to block her out.

Finally one day I dragged him out to the stairwell and had some awkward little talk with him about how I liked him and I knew he liked me too. I don't think we kissed since we were both way to junior high about the whole thing. Micah and I did get to hang out on Halloween though. We ended up going to a haunted house where they wanted us all to hold hands as they led us through the "scary" rooms. All I kept thinking was that this was a great idea, get someone to make us hold hands, that's all we needed, someone to force us to hold hands. We kept holding hands as we went home. How freaking junior high. This was my first year of COLLEGE remember.

He was an architecture student and his department worked them hard. Lots of hours building models in the studio, Micah wasn't around much. And when he was, he was still SUPER shy around me. I was like, okay, we already know that we both like each other, why are you still tiptoeing around me? I'm sick of making all the moves!! About two weeks after "the talk" in the stairwell, I was in his room and there was this weird energy between us. He says something about not having time for a girlfriend at the moment and I'm like "fine, you're lame anyway."

For the rest of the school year, we kinda avoided each other and I still got that feeling in my stomach every time I got to the top of the stairwell or got out of the elevator.