I met him the first day of school.  I was sitting in the advisor’s office waiting to drop a class when the guy across from me (not “him”) said, “Hey!  My name’s Brenden and this is my roommate, Lukus.”  I introduced myself to this friendly, energetic guy and attempted to say hello to the tall, good-looking, blonde-haired guy sitting next to him, but he would barely look up from his paperwork.  So if a few grunts and a quick glance constitutes as meeting someone, then I met him on the first day, thinking he was completely stuck-up.

Brenden and I kept running into each other and had several classes together, and being the super-friendly, eager-beaver freshman that he was, we became friends.  We even started working together at the same store in the mall and I’d catch rides with him to work.  After a couple of weeks, he informed me that Lukus had told him that I was in several of his classes.  Really?  I was in Lukus’ classes?  How did I miss him?  Oh right, he was the quiet, studious, shy guy on the second row, and I was the out-going, ready-to-make-college-friends girl who sat in the back section where the biggest crowd was.  The problem was, I actually wanted to learn, not just make friends, while I was at school, and I figured that it was time that I got my studious act together.  I was actually excited about my humanities class (I know, I’m kind of a nerd), but our little back-row crowd was a little more interested in the Meg Ryan movie that we’d seen the night before.

Once I heard that Lukus was in my class, I looked for him the following week and spotted him sitting alone, prepared to take notes.  I had been wanting to move away from the back-row-movie reviewers, but didn’t want to just sit all alone.  Lukus however, hadn’t been very friendly, but at least I’d already met him, and he did remember me enough to mention to his roommate that I was in his classes.  I decided not be daunted by his prior aloofness, or that fact that he seemed to intentionally be sitting alone, and walked right up to his row, all the way down to the seat next to him, and plopped myself down.  “Hi”.  Without looking up, a “Hi” from him.  Then, silence.

Lukus actually intimidated me.  He was probably the first guy to ever intimidate me even though I wasn’t even interested in him in that way.  I was actually kind of casually dating someone at the time, but neither of us was all that interested in each other.  We simply had a mutual interest in the school paper, he being one of the editors, and I, being a former high-school editor, trashed the college paper to his face without knowing at the time that he was on the newspaper staff.  But instead of getting pissed off at me, this guy hired me to write for the paper and ended up recommending me the following year to be a page-editor (another scholarship!).  This relationship was barely a blip of the semester, but it serves to point out that I was not yet attracted to Lukus, even though I found him objectively, obviously good-looking.  I mean, the merits of his looks were pretty plain to see for anyone:  six-foot-three, medium build, thick blonde hair, a strong jaw, and dimples (if you could get him to smile).  He was also an edgy dresser of the musician mould, and being the proud owner of a pair of snake-skin printed pants, I liked that.  But at the time, I was just glad to have someone quiet to sit next to, who also took excellent notes.

What follows is a little embarrassing.  It wouldn’t be so much so if only I knew that only friends or strangers might read this.  But alas, I have no assurance that our parents, or our children, or our pastor, or a boss, or someone else who is difficult to expose your flaws to won’t read this.  But I prize the honest truth, and the honest truth is that there’s not one of you out there that this hasn’t happened to in some form or another, so I embrace my story and all of its gritty, fleshly, honest-to-goodness truth.  The fact is, what led me to think of Lukus in that way was simply Lust.

I called one day for Brenden so we could arrange our ride for work.  Lukus answered with a deep, gravelly-sounding voice and informed me that Brenden wasn’t there.

“Did I wake you up?”  I asked.

“No, I was just getting out of the shower,” he said.

And all of a sudden, I was completely and utterly distracted by the thought of Lukus “just getting out of the shower”.  I don’t think I need to spell out the track my mind suddenly went down for you to get the idea.

I made some sort of fumbling apology and goodbye and hung-up.  My roommate, Mandy, noticed my fluster and asked, “What’s with you?”

“He was ‘just getting out of the shower’.”

“Oh.”  She’d met Lukus.  She got it.