She doesn't notice him at first, lingering at the edge of group conversations. A little bit older than her (at nineteen her circle has been largely gymnastic connections), one more sleepless undergrad in a sea of sleepless undergrads. Sweatshirt-wearing, messy-haired, slouch-postured fella who doesn't remember to tie his shoelaces. He barely speaks, occasionally adding a word here or there but never taking center stage.
Then one day he slips in a comment about mauling by tigers combined with Winnie the Pooh and the struggles of aspiring magicians, and it's so out-of-place, over-the-top graphic that she can't help but laugh. Loudly, gracelessly, alone and unrepentant. It seems to shock him for a moment, staring under raised eyebrows. Then a grin spreads across his face, and if he's ever faded to the background before he sure as hell won't now.
Guy Kopski is a physics major, likes robots and slasher films and fighting games. Kind of lanky looking without being tall or short, more like he just doesn't fit in his skin. Plain in the face with dark eyes, a small chin, scruffy eyebrows. But he's mastered deadpan deliveries when he feels like making them, voice smooth through the absurd and the morbid and all of his teasing. And it's clever. Harley, who smiles wide until she squints, who hums under her breath, who sticks out her tongue and talks with her hands, is absolutely enchanted.
So she starts to play back, mentions offhand the tragedies faced by bakers driving over the speed limit who find themselves brutally dismembered. She's on the brink of giggling throughout, and Guy nods sagely with his full attention before remarking yes, and what will their poor family think when they find the body covered in filth and frosting? Their companions are appalled, so they continue the conversation just the two of them, then exchange numbers afterward.
He always invites her to hang out when he has a few friends over, or to share a table over dinner. At first she isn't sure what to make of that but he starts making absentminded comments about the atrocities she must have committed to get hair like that, how she looks like a strawberry in her red and pink. A dangerous, so-cute-she-might-kill-someone sort of strawberry. He illustrates this by making dramatic, spluttering wheezes while sliding sideways in his chair, eyes rolling back in his skull, limbs splayed awkwardly. She's pretty much braying at him by then, and it occurs to her that maybe he's even nervous.
So she drops small hints, mentions movies she'd like to watch, asks if he's ever had a girlfriend (maybe two in middle school), mentioning when she has free time. Eventually, fumbling, he asks her and she chuckles and says took you long enough before telling him it's a date.