Where I Learn From My Mistakes

2: Staking Claim

Fate was on my side, it seemed. Two days after I had first seen – and fallen hard at first sight – for Bernt on that Business Law tutorial, I ran into him again, this time at the library.

I was in the printing area, waiting for the printer to spew out the notes I needed for my next class, when I turned and saw Bernt, of all people, standing at the printer right beside mine. I whipped back head back to stare down at my printer, my head thudding sickly in my chest.

Holy crap. This was my chance, wasn't it? All I needed to do was turn to him, smile nicely, and say hi...

Absently realising that my printer had stopped its groaning and shuddering, I grabbed the papers from the tray and stuffed them into my bag. I was still trying to figure out how to casually introduce myself to Bernt when I turned and saw him watching me.

There was a light in his beautiful blue eyes that told me he had somehow – miraculously – recognised me. I had frozen under his gaze, my eyes wide, my hand still half in my bag. We stared at each other for a long, drawn-out moment.

Then, slowly, his lips tilted upwards into an uncertain smile.

It was at that point in time when I completely lost control of my facial muscles and they shifted themselves to rearrange my face into a scowl.

Bernt stepped back, a startled look spreading across his face.

I swept past him after that, heart pounding, a well of self-hatred pooling within my chest. I scrunched my face up even as my feet led me away.

What the hell was wrong with me?

Why hadn't I just smiled back like a normal person? And why hadn't I said hi?

What use was it that fate was on my side, if I was the one mucking things up for myself?

***

"I can't believe I overslept!" I groused, slipping into the open seat Lilly had left for me in the Marketing lecture we had together. "I missed the Biz Law tut completely!" And it was the only chance I got to see Bernt too, I lamented internally.

"Don't worry," Lilly said, "she didn't cover anything that important. I'll lend you my notes, if you want."

"Thanks," I said gratefully, pitching my voice lower as the professor started speaking up front.

Fifteen minutes into the lecture, Lilly spoke again in a low voice. "You know," she trailed off, pausing to look closely at me before diving back into her sentence, "I had coffee with Bernt just now."

I stared at her, my mouth falling open. "Bernt?" I hissed, retaining the sense to keep my voice down even in the midst of my astonishment. "As in, cute Swedish guy in our class – that Bernt?"

She rolled her eyes at me, huffing a little at my apparent obtuseness. "How many guys named Bernt do you know?"

I was so shocked, it took me a moment to find a suitable response. "How... Did he come up to introduce himself, or something?" An image flashed in my mind of the day he had tried to smile at me and I had rebuffed him.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. I could've been the one to have coffee with him, if only I'd smiled back. Said hi. Anything but frown and walk away.

"Well, no," Lilly said, twirling a lock of hair around her finger. "I offered him a piece of chocolate, and we started talking."

"You..." That casual statement of hers had stunned me. I shook my head in disbelief, "You offered him chocolate?"

"Well, I had lots of it," Lilly said, a little defensively. "Sharing is good, isn't it?"

But Lilly never offered strangers anything. Even when it came to guys – even when a guy she didn't know smiled at her, she would often cast her eyes away disdainfully. So Lilly offering a guy food out of the kindness of her heart? Completely unheard of.

"Oh," I said, because there was nothing else to say if I wanted to avoid outright confrontation. "So... How did it go – having coffee with him, I mean. Was it something like fika?"

"What's fika?" she sent me a sideways glance. "Sounds..." She made a face that suggested she'd just heard an expletive.

"It's... a Swedish tradition... A... coffee break of sorts..." She knew nothing about Sweden, I thought, helplessly resentful. I knew more about his culture than she did.

She didn't seem all that interested in my explanation. "Anyway," she went on, "he was telling me about how he liked green tea more than coffee..."

I didn't want to hear about her 'date' with him – but at the same time I wanted to hear more about my crush.

"What else did you talk about?" I asked.

"About all sorts of stuff," she shrugged. "Like... Just everything and anything."

She wasn't going to tell me? But she'd told me everything about her dates with her ex-boyfriend Alex, back when she had been dating him. My stomach was falling straight to my feet, but I mustered up a smile. "Sounds like you had fun."

"Oh, yeah," Lilly said, smiling now. "He's kinda interesting."

"Are you two friends now?" I asked, at one last attempt to try to figure out her feelings towards Brent. "You could introduce me, right?"

"That's..." She pursed her lips. "That'd be a little weird, out of the blue."

"Why would it be?" I asked, feeling that sour sensation come back into my stomach. "People introduce each other all the time. Besides, we're in the same class – you could just invite him over to sit with us sometime."

She shrugged. "I don't know... He has his own group of friends in class, you know... And it'd be weird... You should just go say hi to him yourself."

The way she had, I read. She wasn't going to help me with him.

"Right," I said, lowering my gaze back to my half-written notes. So much for eh, he's okay.