Part 1: The First Days

I noticed in the next couple days that she and her crew had set up shop in a stairwell on the third floor. Now, there were several staircases I would have taken to get to my 4th floor office. I chose hers because I could see her and hope that maybe, she would talk to me or say something. I don’t mean to come off as a stalker, but let’s be real here. Guys will look for any reason to get the attention of a woman they find attractive. I would use this stairwell as my way into a conversation. The only question was, “how?”
Her job was to exploit full motion video images downloaded from an aircraft that flew overhead. As an intelligence officer myself, I found my in. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of how to start a conversation with her and only her. Her crew was made of three other females and two males. It’s a very delicate situation to enter when you’re outnumbered by what looked like the surrounding guard force. I spend countless cigarettes on the roof of the building trying to think how to conversationally find a path. Every now and then, she would come up to the roof with one of her fellow crewmembers. I remember hoping on numerous occasions they would come with range so I could strike up a conversation; one body guard was easy to deal with than five any day of the week. But just when I would hide my cigarette and look up trying to spit something out, God, anything out, they would disappear behind some rooftop apparatus. I hid my cigarette because I was trying to make a good impression. Little did I know, but she was hiding her smoking from me. Her rooftop endeavors were to satisfy the same physiological addiction that gripped me. I used that staircase much more than I ever had to, sometimes going out of my way just to get a glimpse and sustain my hope she was take notice of me. What I didn’t know was that she had.