No. I did not. Because I am an eternal optimist who thought that perhaps that was a hurdle we could get over. Maybe he hadn’t tried homemade ice cream before? Maybe he’s never experienced the glory of a high quality bit of frozen dairy? Conversion is possible! A little bit of Roman’s homemade Moose Tracks ice cream, and he’ll have seen the error of his ways.
So the date continued. And continued. Andcontinued. Because I had no clue how to end it, and he seemed disinclined. We hung out for ten hours.Ten, and all of them capital B, Boring.
Finally, when I thought I’d be stuck with him forever out of a sheer inability to hurt his sweet, boring feelings, his grandma called with an emergency. Something about the TV remote batteries not working, I don’t know, but it sounded like salvation to me.
Until he walked me to my door, put his arms around me, and kissed me.
Kissed me!
And, okay, sure, yeah, I kissed him back. I like kisses. And maybe the kiss would be enough to overcome the boring, you know? What if he was my soulmate?
It was stupid of me. I knew I wasn’t into him on hour point two, and I shouldn’t have let it happen just because it was happening and I thought maybe I’d be wrong about the capital B, boring thing. I should have stopped him, politely told him I saw nothing here for us and allowed us to move on with our lives.
Sadly for the both of us, I did not have the heart.
Instead, I kissed him back, returned his after-kiss smile,and said goodnight. Then I went inside, brushed my teeth, and journaled about my terrible date and end-of-date stupidity. The journaling solved nothing, of course, but at least I had the whole situation documented for future reference should I decide to make a similar mistake later on.
What Ishouldhave done was text him to let him down easy and assure him friendship—andonlyfriendship—was still on the table.
Did dum-dum Elodie do any of that though?
No!
Dum-dum Elodie did some more journaling and self-reflection that went exactly nowhere, because dum-dum Elodie is a dum-dum. As if self-reflection without outward growth is going to do anything for anyone. What a waste of time. Adum-dumwaste of time.
Ruby, if I had told her about the situation, would have been tough-loving me into better behavior.
Unfortunately for me, the Soren date is not the only thing I’ve been keeping from Ruby.
I know.I know. It’s gross to keep secrets from your bestie. If she were keeping big, huge, life-altering secrets from me? I’d be crying into Roman’s homemade Moose Tracks for days.
It’s just.
Ruby is close to Roman, and I don’t want Roman knowing about the nature of my classes because he’ll beRomanabout them, and I don’t want Ruby having to keep secrets from her brother because I’dhatehaving to keep secrets from Sol, and so I didn’t tell her—about Soren, about the classes, about any of it.
Yeah, I’m cringing at my justification too.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
She’s going to kill me when she finds out. She’s going to take her cane and whack me with it until I am but a pile at her feet, begging for mercy.
Or, more likely, she’ll be upset with me for keeping secrets, confused about why I would, but proud of me for committing myself to schooling and then following through. Probably I should tell her immediately what I’ve been up to so that I can stop walking around with a Ruby-sized ball of anxiety weighing in my chest.
Probably dum-dum me isn’t going to do that because it would make my story as boring as Soren is, and despite what the readers say about wanting low-stress perfect communication in their books, if mine actually has that they’ll be DNFing and saying itlacked somethingwhen they tell others about it. Even this large bit of exposition is straying a little too far into massive info-dump territory, and we’re on the verge of losing people.
Time for some action, I suppose.
Soren’s eyes catch on the soy sauce on the corner of my desk, and his smile broadens. “Are you busy after class?” he asks. “The fro-yo place doesn’t close until midnight, and they added gummy bears to their topping options!”
I cough to hide my grimace. “I’m sorry, Soren,” I lie, “I have plans after this.” Plans to avoid being bored to tears for the rest of the night. Very important, those.
His smile falls, then lifts itself back up. “That’s okay. Maybe next time!”
I hum, unwilling to commit to that in any way, and soften the semi-rejection with a pat on his arm.
Mistake.Bigmistake—because he takes that as an invitation to lay his hand over mine, trapping it on his, admittedly nice, bicep for several moments until our professor calls the class to attention and he’s forced to let go or learn to write with his non-dominant hand.
My shoulders ease as my hand is returned to me, and I pull my laptop out of my bag, setting it beside my soy sauce. My school journal, pencil case, and water bottle follow, and I spendthe beginning of the lesson hoping Professor Eudora doesn’t say anything important while I set myself up to take notes.
