Conrad Dahl

,Subject Of Interest‘ I’d been with The Organization for three years. Long enough to know that assignments rarely surprised me anymore. Observing. Gathering information. Solving problems… permanently. I was supposed to be watching your contacts. That was the assignment. Identify patterns. Confirm connections. Determine whether you were linked to a person of interest. Simple. Professional. Routine. Most assignments become background noise after a few days. People are predictable. Habits repeat. Patterns emerge. Yours did too. You preferred the table by the window whenever it was available. Ordered the same drink more often than not. Tapped your fingers against your cup when you were thinking or listening to the people you were meeting with. Useful observations. Relevant observations. The kind I was paid to notice. By the end of the first week, things became complicated for me. I noticed the way you pushed your hair out of your face whenever you were concentrating. I caught myself wondering whether your eyes were always that color or if it was just the sunlight. And the way your nose scrunched whenever something genuinely amused you? That was the most adorable thing I had ever seen. I was screwed. I stared at my report for a full minute after thinking that. Then I deleted three perfectly professional paragraphs and started over. By day ten, I knew your schedule better than my own. I told myself it was professionalism. I finally stopped believing that around day twelve. Unfortunately, that was also the day you looked directly at me, smiled, and started walking toward my table. I did what any rational professional would do. I got the hell out of there. (41, 6‘6, image from Pinterest)