He is Perfect

Author's Note

I am almost done with my homeworks. The next chapter should be out tomorrow or Saturday early morning.

I have been reading about dumb cliches in stories and someone mentioned the random group assignment with the love interest. People say that it is stupid and it does not happen, so let me tell you a story.

When I began college I befriended this guy. He is shy and a complete loner, almost stereotypical; He is a nerd with glasses, but handsome as well. He is some sort of genius who got perfect score in the entrance exam for medical school in the best university in my country. He dropped out when he got a scholarship to study engineering in the US. Some of my friends had crushes on him.

I sat next to him once on the bus ride from the English school to my dorm. I talked to him about books. The conversation shifted to anime and manga. It turned out we both shared a passion for thriller stories and suspense. He invited me to his apartment next Friday to play videogames and cooked lunch for me. He walked me to my dorm and soon we were spending a lot of time together.

One day we were playing videogames in his apartment again, but this time his roommates were not home. We were sitting next to each other really close. In multiple occasions I thought he was going to kiss me but he did not.

In one of our previous conversations he had told me that there was once a girl who was a close friend of him. They stopped talking because she tried to kiss him out of nowhere. I did not understand if he was just telling me a story or warning me. I was not about to find out that day.

He did not kiss me and I was convinced he just saw me as a friend. In retrospective I should not have been such a coward. He often gifted me chocolate just because. He talked to me and no other girl. I should have known, but I did not.

Almost seven months after I talked to him that day on the bus, he invited me to watch a movie. I told him we could watch it in my room. We sat on my bed and watched Edward Scissorhands. Near the end of the movie he paused it and called my name. I turned to face him. He leaned ever so slightly and everything seemed to slow down. The moment I had hoped for so long. I could feel his breath on my lips but I pulled away an covered my mouth with my hands. He looked at me tilting his head slightly. He was in shock. I began sobbing like an idiot.

"I am sorry. I am so sorry," I said. "I really do love you. You have no idea how much, but I just started dating someone else one week ago. It would be unfair for both of you if I kiss you now." He covered his face with his hand. "Do you love him?" he asked. "I do." I was not lying. Somewhere along the way I had fall head over heels for my boyfriend, but that is a story for another day.

At that point I loved both of them. If he had kissed me before, I would have kissed him back in a heartbeat. I am not a player though. I could not hurt the two men that I loved. I pulled him into a tight hug and he cried on my shoulder. He broke the hug and gazed into my eyes. I had never seen him show so many emotions in just a look. He looked hurt but at the same time he did not look like he was angry. In fact, it was still a loving look. He excused himself and left my room. I did not go after him. I called my mother crying my eyes out. I calmed down enough and texted my boyfriend's roommate, who was also my friend. I was still a mess. I just kept sobbing and asked him what to do. He asked me if I loved the other guy and I half lied. I said he was my first friend in town and that hurting him like this was killing me. Those things were truth. That night I went to my boyfriend's dorm and told him what had happened. Minus the I think I love him part.

Time passed by and somehow we still talked but we did not hang out as we used to. Each time we talked he asked me how my boyfriend and I were doing and it broke my heart a little. He asked if he was treating me right, which he was. I did not lie to him. However, one day I fucked up. I fucked up badly. He completely stopped talking to me. He ignored me for two years and I did the same. I knew I had done something wrong but it was not as wrong for him to act like I did not exist.

He is studying electrical engineering as well. We had the same classes since sophomore year. Even then he would talk to my boyfriend and leave if I got near them. I began avoiding him as well. This semester in hour electromagnetics class, there were four laboratory sections. Each section was divided in two. From those two sections random groups of three people were selected by the teaching assistant. My boyfriend and I registered for the same lab section but he ended up in the different schedule after the split the sections in two.

Guess which group is the only two people group in my section? The guy I am sitting right now next to has not changed one bit. He is as goofy and as much of a loner and nerd as ever. He was shy the first day and I talked to him because we had to work together the rest of the semester. He began talking to me again. Today is the last laboratory activity of the semester and he had stayed talking to me after every single laboratory activity. We went back to square one, when we still were just friends.

Both of us are too darn prideful to apologize. Without this Deus Ex Machine we would have gone the rest of our lives ignoring each other. So, yeah. I believe in the random group assignment cliche. 🤷🏻‍♀️