Jay first sees her at the deli. It’s a Tuesday; and he usually only works on the weekends because he has classes during the week, but Loco asks him to cover his shift because he is still -faced from a party the night before. So Jay agrees to work on Tuesday and that’s where he first sees her. She’s quite tiny, but curved in all the right places – not that Jay was looking! Her eyes are wide and bright, and when she talks her dimples show. She’s wearing a neon pink beanie and her foot taps absentmindedly as she waits in line. She makes eye contact with Jay as ChaCha composes her sandwich – turkey, lettuce, tomato and mayo on rye – and she flashes him a smile. The smile is dazzling, showing off the dimples at full blast. Jay falls a little bit in love.

*

From that day, Jay seems to spot the girl from the deli everywhere. Browsing the shelves in the campus library, carefully selecting fruit in the shop near Jay’s dorm, doing squats in the gym as Jay walked to the locker room (Jay admits he was looking that time), and walking across the quad towards the bus stop. Hell, Jay had even seen her checking her phone at the back of his History of Electronic Dance Music lecture.

Jay can’t help but smile when he overhears the deli girl spit a short verse to herself when the teacher plays a clip over the speakers. She looks up and catches him looking her way, so he nervously gives her a thumbs-up. She smiles, giving Jay another sighting of those cute dimples and waggles her fingers at him.

That’s an opening in Jay’s book.

*

Now Jay hasn’t actually ‘said’ anything to Deli Girl (he still doesn’t know her name) so far, something Gray consistently teases him for. So for now, he waves, smiles and gives a thumbs-up whenever he sees her. She reciprocates, which is enough for Jay at the moment.  One day, he is sitting by himself in one of the campus cafés. He jumps when someone taps on the window next to him and he is surprised to see Deli Girl on the other side of the glass. She gives him another blinding smile and a wave, and then rushes off when her friend pulls her away. Jay doesn’t even get a chance to react, she is gone so quickly.

It seems that Deli Girl has a load of friends, but no one that runs in any of Jay’s circles. Deli Girl seems to like to talk, but never to Jay. It’s sad, but Jay can even recognise her voice now, despite never speaking to her directly. Her voice is lovely; quiet and smooth with some sort of accent, New Yorker possibly? Jay hears that voice spit more verses at the back of his class; he hears that giggle when it accompanies a wave, one time hears her singing during a music workshop. Jay can’t get enough. He sees