Will do!

So here is another flashback to my own drama.

I’m sitting at a huge table. It’s round and really enormous, sitting around 10 to 12 people – all Uni students, guys and girls. There’s lots of food on the table.

It’s evening, and we’re seated out in the open.

I look up, and I can see the sky, kind of a pulpy, glowing a soft orange-red.

End of day, beginning of night.

For some reason, I’m seated next to the guy that I’m crushing on.

For some reason, he has been coming to see me quietly, every night, and talking to me, random stuff – movies, TV, hobbies, etc etc – we just talk.

So we’re sitting there, and no one at the table knows he’s been coming to see me most every night…tonight’s out, though, since we’re here.

He’s not looking at me.

That’s because all his attention is focussed on the laughing, attractive, wild-eyed girl across the table. My best friend. For some reason, she’s sitting across from him, and I’m sitting beside him. I don’t even know how that happened.

She’s saying something outrageous to him, her head thrown back, her eyes alternately sparkling and narrowed and wicked, her face flushed. I know her. She’s on a high, because she’s so into this guy, and she’s oblivious to everyone else, including me.

She looks so beautiful.

My heart sinks. Like a stone, down to my flip-flops.

Cool Guy hasn’t looked at me, not once. He hasn’t spoken to me, either, even though we’re sitting so close, I could just reach over and brush his arm. I hear them flirting and laughing and I look at him grinning at my best friend, out of the corner of my eye, and I look at her and see how alive she looks, and I feel so jealous and confused and miserable like damn, what is this? Why does he keep coming to see me? What are we, exactly? Does he like me? Is that why he keeps coming back to see me? If he likes me, why is he flirting with her? Why is he ignoring me?

So the night drags on. Everybody is eating and joking and enjoying the drama of Cool Guy Flirting with Hot Girl, while I chew my salad and grow more and more unhappy and confused. Should I ask him what’s going on? Should I ask him what his – gasp, intentions are? (I read Jane Austen, okay) But I don’t want to know, I wail to myself. I don’t want a relationship…I’m not ready to have a boyfriend…the thought terrifies me, the idea of making room for another human being, a guy, for crying out loud, an alien creature, a total unknown, in my ordered, calm, peaceful life scares the hell out of me.

My napkin drops. I bend down to retrieve it, and he bends down, as well. Our fingers brush, a quick touch, and my heart is pounding so loud – can he hear it? – and he picks it up, the napkin, and passes it to me.

We straighten. Is my face flushed? I hope not. “Thanks,” I mutter. “You’re welcome,” he says, soft, quiet, intimate. And he smiles into my eyes, a quick smile, that odd softness again, that look that lingers just a bit too long – or maybe, I’m imagining it.

And then my best friend cuts in, and says something scornful, and he jolts up, and he’s looking at her and laughing – a joyous, rocking gust that makes my heart ache, because I love the sound of his laughter and I hate that she’s the one making him laugh like that – and he’s forgotten me, I guess, and the moment – our moment, if that’s what it was, and not a figment of my pathetic, juvenile imagination – is gone.

The meal ends, and I get up. When I look up, he’s at my elbow.

And then amid the pulling back of chairs, and the scrapping of feet on the ground, he’s bending down, and saying, low in my ear, just for me to hear: “Tomorrow.” He gives me that little quirk of a smile, and there’s that odd look in his eyes again, almost a tenderness, and I catch my breath, and nod.

“Bye,” he says, still looking at me, like he’s as lost in me like I am in him – surely I can’t be imagining it?

“Bye,” I breathe, and then someone calls him, and he strides off, leaving me confused, flustered – and happy.

@azzo1 @bbstl @wishfultoki @13infamyss @msrabbit @ndlessjoie

Merry Christmas!