The walk to his home filled me with anxiety.
The cold air bit at my red-hot cheeks and my boots clipped along the uneven pavement. Perhaps these were signs. Omens of what was to come. If they were, I did not heed them.
I continued to tramp briskly toward my destination and in the distance, I saw him standing outside his door awaiting my arrival.
This wasn’t the way I wanted to do this. I had wanted to drop the letter in and run away, leaving him to reel in its indulgent vulnerability alone. However, pushed by the needs of others I’d been made to forewarn him, or at least alert him to my impending presence, and now I must face him in a less romantic fashion.
I’d written him a love letter, you see.
I’d known him from afar but after not seeing him for a while a spark of heat ignited within me on that August evening, when he walked into the restaurant and joined us all. Suddenly, I was embarrassed when before I was not. I was silent and awkward when previously I’d been confident and opinionated.
It’s bizarre the way a crush can make you feel so alive but so afraid of acting alive, forcing you into the mould of a statue too scared to say or do anything that could turn them away from you.
As he stood watching me approach in the distance, I became hateful of this wonky, unforgiving pavement; I knew I wasn’t gliding gracefully like a swan to reach him and instead likely replicated a hobbling witch in a fairytale. Not exactly the image you want to portray before confessing your feelings to someone.
The mysterious, ethereal lover I had wanted to emulate was lost the moment I phoned in my warning and now I was an awkward, fumbling teenage girl again – the one who used to hide from boys she liked.
I hoped that he felt the same and would immediately take me into his arms and kiss me with a long-held desire that I had been unaware of. I had hoped he would declare his love and we would simply slot in together like it was meant to be.
I had hoped many things that did not come true.
But as the gap closed between us and I stumbled through his door, hope was all I had – well, that and a paralysing embarrassment sizzling beneath the surface.
I sat at his table, letter in hand while he made us tea in the kitchen, and all I could feel was the heat within me: the heat of fear, desire, passion, love, embarrassment, and excitement.
And then he entered the room.
