Yesterday I was sitting at a Starbucks inside of a Barnes & Noble when I saw an HB9 waiting in line. I keep glancing over but I was looking at her from behind, she never turned around for eye contact. Despite that I still kinda felt like she knew I was staring at her. Next thing I know she's gone. A few minutes later I'm walking around looking at books. I think to myself how nice it would be if I found her in the foreign language section which was where I was heading. Sure enough, there she was. I go and stand next to her and start looking at books on the shelves. There was no one else around. The area is pretty tight and we're close together so after just a few seconds she takes a couple steps to the left to give some space. I pick up a random book and started looking at it with one hand, sipping my coffee with the other and causally trying to see what book she was holding. At the moment I realized I had waited way too long. At least 10 seconds had gone by since I walked up and I felt that anything I could say at that point would come across as awkward and completely inorganic. I put the book back down and walked away. Idk why I didn't just ask "What language are you learning"? as soon as I got there. That was the plan. If it was the same as me, perfect. If not, just as well. I know enough about other languages to thread the conversation 100 different ways. Instead I did nothing. My confidence was shot for the rest of the afternoon.