His snarky remark turned out to be the best thing anyone's ever said to me.
Back in my college days, I fell very neatly into the category of girls who efficiently filled a guy’s need for a friend or a little sister, but never for a girlfriend. I was obsessed with sports, by that time working the night shift and writing sports for a daily newspaper, fiercely independent, and a country mile from what one might define as hotness. In short, it seemed that I was a real hoot to hang with, but possibly not high on the scale of alluring young females to date. It’s OK; a decade later I’ve gotten over it, I promise. Seriously.
I say all of that so that you will have the background for the story I am about to tell. It involves the weirdest thing anyone has ever said to me and the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. At the same time.
It was late at night in a Starbucks parking lot. At least in my college years, Starbucks parking lots were kind of the place where things went down. It was hot in that thick summer night way, the type of heat that you kind of swim through, the type that catches at smells and magnifies them. In this case, coffee hung in the air, sweet and nutty. Voices and laughter came in waves as the Starbucks’ door opened and closed. I stood outside my car after a long evening of chatting with friends and waited. (These summer love stories will melt your heart.)
See, it was the last time I was meeting with a group of twenty-somethings that was organized through a local church. We met weekly at Starbucks but took summers off, which meant that I would be unlikely to cross paths with any of the other members until September. They were friends, but only in the sense that our friendships were rooted in our weekly meetings. The catch was, as these things tend to go, there was “this guy.” This particular one was cute, had an accent, and was just the right amount of goofy to make me think I might have a shot with him. We got along great, and I had begun to get the vibe that he might be into me. Here’s where I let you know that my “vibes” at the time were pretty undependable.
Right. So I was standing at my car. He was parked one spot over, and we stood there semi-awkwardly as I tried to give him enough time to ask me out. If it was ever going to happen, he and I both knew it had to be now. We trickled through the last possible stream of small talk, unlocked our cars, started to climb into our driver’s seats, and just when the proverbial and literal door was closing, he turned to me.