The Dinner Date with Three Chairs

I met you around a year and a half ago.

And by meeting you, I do not mean we shook hands and had dinner in a not-so-fancy restaurant which I could barely afford. It was unrequited. You passed by the 3rd floor of our school building, and I was inside my room waiting for the teacher. I couldn’t help myself but look outside. I’ve never seen you around before, or maybe I just didn’t notice you since I was almost always preoccupied. These damn requirements and examinations never seem to end, you know.

Because of you, I’ve always liked that time of the day. I would stand outside our classroom and look out the windows, pretending to be amused by a couple of children running around and playing at the quadrangle. I didn’t want my true intentions to be that apparent. The last thing I would like you to be aware of is the fact that I was secretly admiring you from a distance.

Every time I’d sense from the corner of my eye that you were there, I would immediately pace towards the drinking fountain, and you would be heading towards the stairs. That stretch of narrow floor between our classroom and the wall perpendicular to the far end of the hallway was the only place where I would find myself at point blank range from you.

You aren’t really that pretty or eye-catching. You are petite and simple. In fact, you are too simple. You don’t wear any make up or lipstick, and your fashion is somewhat limited to shirts, blouses, sneakers and skinny jeans. I never saw you in a dress, except in pictures which, in order for me to see them, I had to wait for a couple of weeks for that friend request to come through the queue. You almost always wear a backpack – a trademark of students under our college department – and you often carry your books by hand.

But something about you seems to tug my insides in all directions every time you are there.

Maybe it’s that flashy yet effortless smile. Or maybe it’s the gleam in your eyes. Or maybe, it’s you as a whole. You have this unique aura – friendly and welcoming, but indifferent and insouciant at the same time. Oftentimes, our eyes would meet for a split second, and I would spend the rest of the day wondering if you were really looking at me or it was an unconscious gesture. Either way, my face beamed at the thought of you doing that. I might sound desperate, but that gave me an ounce of hope that maybe one day, we could be friends even in the most trivial sense of the word.

After a few weeks of secretly admiring (because I don’t want to use the word stalking for obvious reasons) you, I found out that one of my friends was once your classmate. I no longer hesitated. I asked for your number, and if I remember it correctly, this friend gave it with the condition that I wouldn’t disclose who she is and that I would be the one to explain everything to you.

It was a bold move, I know. I know no one wants some stranger suddenly texting you with “Good mornings” “Good afternoons” “Good evenings” and all those so-called “pretentious group messages”. You didn’t reply to those, and I was thinking whether I got the wrong number or you simply didn’t want to entertain unregistered numbers. Then one day, I decided to personalize the message. I put in your name.  

Finally, I got a reply. But it was the typical ‘Hello. Who is this?’ kind of message.  I don’t want to reiterate the entire process of how all these transpired or I would bore my readers to death, but that was the start.

That was the start of what?

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We became the best of friends.

I know it sounds like a “well-that-escalated-quickly” moment but it took us some time and a series of blind leaps in the dark before we attained that status. Even though I didn’t say it explicitly, I am aware that you know I like you. Like: such a subtle word to describe what I truly feel, but I know it was better that way.