(And how I would never ask him out)

She isn’t known for making confident entrances. She steps in as if she has never visited the place before, which is unintentionally a great display of acting on her part. Her face has this perpetual expression of being lost and confused pasted on it. The only hint that she finally gives about how she does know this place is when she  hesitantly throws her mild smile of acknowledgement at the guy on the counter. He, in return, does the same and asks their mutually consented standard question for her obligatory confirmation – “Latté?”  Affirmative. As usual. Then she goes to her favorite table and starts doing her favorite task of the day – Observing people. Regretting that she isn’t invisible and a bit annoyed at how she ought to be careful about not creeping out the people, she balances this act with reading a book or writing on her laptop. There’s rhythm to this – She enters the café, forcibly greets the guy who takes her order, goes to her table, spends two hours doing something that falls into the potential-topic-for-debate (Procrastination or productivity?) category and then she makes an abrupt exit. And she repeats this every day.

But that day – that day sun rose from the west. As she began to leave the café, she did something she had never done before! The guy, whose voice she had been listening to the entire time since he had entered the coffee  shop, was sitting with two of his other friends. He was doing that thing again – imitating the professor who taught him in the university he was studying in. The accent that he was trying to copy came out pathetically but that didn’t matter! No fake accent could possibly suppress the charm of his sexy voice. Coffee doesn’t get you high but pretending that it does, she went up to him and said, “Umm…I don’t know how to say this without being awkward. So, I am just going to get over with it. No perverseness is intended here, a compliment that’s all. I think your voice is great and you are really cute.” Did the girl with the confused face just say this? Did she just speak to a person she didn’t know? And, and, and that too not because she had to but because she wanted to? Bravo! And there, she turned and strode towards the gate. (Colloquially known as swag) She wanted to see his reaction of course, but if she had turned back that would have ruined the whole moment. Then the thing that she had dearly anticipated and yet not expected to happen happened. He hurriedly caught up to her and asked, “Hey! What’s your name?”

Of course, this is not an entirely true account of events that took place that day. When she went up to him and told him he was cute, he looked at her for a moment almost in disbelief and then burst out laughing. Her default expression of confusion took over her face again as his friends started laughing too. When the realization of what had just happened finally hit her, she turned and ran away as soon as she could. Her auditory senses received the stimulus of his voice, his disgustingly sexy voice, which was most probably addressed to her. Whether it was an apology or an extension to her insult she never got to know. She had voluntarily blocked her brain from deciphering the message. It took fourteen showers to wash away the embarrassment but yet the faint scent of it still lingered to annoy the fuck out of her at otherwise peaceful moments.

Of course, this is also not what really happened. She made a U turn before she could even think of a decent way to frame a compliment. She threw a short glance at the guy. The guy shot the glance back. And there it was! The moment! Their moment! She was looking at him and he was looking at her. Was that a sign? Could he be the one? Wait. What? Her eyes disconnected the contact immediately. She got out of the coffee shop and never saw him again.

Of course, this is also not what really happened. She looked at the guy. He was busy conversing with his friends. “He might be called cute.” She thought, trying to sound arrogant despite knowing there wasn’t anyone present in the vicinity who was capable of listening to her thoughts and praise her ‘ego-complimenting-desperate’ arrogance. Instead of turning to this hot guy she had been wanting to talk to this whole time, she turned to the guy at the counter and asked for the bill.  A few weeks later she found herself contemplating about various alternative endings for this trivial incident that ideally she should have forgotten about long ago.

Or maybe, this is also not what really happened. There was no such guy at the café.

~Musings from the coffee shop

P.S. You can find more posts on the musings from the coffee shop here .