DAY 1 - Knows me a little too well | 50 days until I loved him

27-July-2019 (Let’s call it Day 1)

Same boring flat, Cambridge, UK

Pretty sunny (Well! Weather is one of the most unpredictable scenarios in Cambridge)

If you watch enough movies or read enough books, you often run into a familiar theme. So, it happened. 'Aleana and Ryan are two friends who have agreed upon dating each other'. I opened my laptop to start writing something based on this. Although I have read a couple of novels which experiment on friends-turned-love and FWBs, I wanted to do the background check. So, I searched on Goodreads about how novel my idea would turn out to be. Fifteen results came up on the first scroll. Not bad at all! I scrolled and scrolled to five ‘Read more’ buttons and finally figured out that there are 98 fiction books similar to the storyline I wanted to write. With that roadblock, there’s no way I could write a prologue just based on dating my friend. Ryan handed me a cup of Earl Grey Tea and sat near me on the couch with his legs hitting my laptop screen intentionally.

‘Could you stop that? I’m working’, I was already furious on my own decisions from last night.

‘Are you writing something about me? Hey, I clearly want to be acknowledged, okay?’, he winked at me.

‘Stop being weird. I think we should talk so we’re on same page with this whole dating thing’

‘I’m all ears’

‘I’m not up for a friends-with-benefits kind-of scenario. If you’re okay, I’d be more than happy to not bring sex at all into this relationship’.

‘I’m not okay. Why would you want that?’, Ryan interrupted.

‘Because sex makes the girl vulnerable. While dating and allowing myself to be vulnerable with someone else is always a risk, when it's you, I have more to lose, far more at stake than just a date’, I explained clearly.

‘Did you just read that on quora? Rules to date your best friend?’, he giggled

‘No’, I took a pause and looked at him. He placed his hand on my shoulder. ‘Ok, yes’, I confessed.

‘I know you, Al’, he said.

‘That’s my next point. You know me way too much and that’s not going to work out’

‘Do you propose a solution?’

‘Yes, let’s go out tonight and pretend that we don’t know each other, that we’re strangers meeting for the first time in a restaurant. Most important of all, we’re free to move on and start dating individual people if we find someone we like. Basically, no ties in our dating relationship. Also, please clean the living room and kitchen, it’s your turn’

‘Ughh, Al, this is the awfully boring rule of all’.

Housekeeping can be quite tedious. Some people love it. Fills up their life. Some people let things fall behind. I stay middle ground on this.

I had a lunch planned with my course mates that afternoon and got ready for that. During the lunch at a nearby busy fast food centre, I uttered my idea of dating Ryan for getting a good storyline, so I don’t lose the job I’m about to get. That’s the moment when I had to hear the tsunami of discouragements in the world about dating my flatmate. As you may know, girls are already filled with strong and misguided intuitions and with all the confusions around me, I was doing the sin that any girl in my place would do, OVERTHINK.

I returned home and took a shower to get ready for my date with Ryan. I wore a black dress I shopped that afternoon. I heard the main door creaking. I fast walked to the living room to see Ryan entering.

He claw-stretched his fingers saying, ‘The handle is too icy, Al’ and looked at me with surprise. ‘Whoa, is that the dress I pinned on pinterest last Christmas?’

‘Maybe. I just found this in Zara on my way back this afternoon’, I lied.

‘Voila’, he said sarcastically.

‘Okay, yes, it is. All this year together, I didn't realize you had such great taste in dresses. I'd never pick this out for myself’, I complimented.

‘You look good in it’, he complimented back, in a formal way. Ryan knows how awkward I get while taking compliments. ‘Help me in picking a shirt, Al’

‘Are you sure you don’t want few things to be an element of surprise during the date?’

‘I don’t want that. Now help me picking one. Blue or white?’, Ryan waved both the shirts oscillating them in air. ‘I know you’d say white and argue that white projects cleanliness, neutrality, innocence and delicacy. All that a girl wants’, Ryan mimicked me. I laughed until my cheekbones hurt.

I took a deep exhale and said, ‘This is not working, Ryan. I don’t get the excitement of going on a date with you, right now’.

‘Okay, I have a plan’, Ryan said.

Within a second, both of us uttered, ‘Takeout’, in perfect synchronisation. Ryan ordered one large farmhouse pizza from dominos, just the way I like. We started watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine. We both loved re-watching our favourite sitcoms.

As usual we started fighting over the last slice of pizza and I gave up. My advice out of experience is that ‘never mess with a foodie’. Ryan is one big foodie. He used to say the hashtags in my blog are tempting because they look like waffles.

After dinner, I went back to my room, to change my dress and sleep. Ryan came into my room handing my earring that fell on the sofa while we were having dinner.

‘Thanks, Ryan’.

‘You always lose one of your earrings and turn the whole living room upside down. Just taking the precautions from my side’, Ryan mocked at me.

‘You and your sick jokes’, I smiled. ‘Tonight was fun. Though it wasn’t what we were planning. It’s good to just be in a friend’s company’, I shared what I felt.

Ryan came closer to me and removed my other earring and placed it on my dressing table. He bent down with his lips against my cheek, brushing it lightly. That light touch sent shivers through my nerves and I was trembling. I reached up and pulled him down to me. I kissed him, breathing his breath, feeling what he felt. The whole day seemed so imperfect in every single way, but that moment, I never knew anything as perfect as that.

What it felt like, his lips on mine? I got reminded of the poem by Ally Condie in Matched. ‘Like a secret told, a promise kept. A shower of all my days – slivery rain falling all around me, where the lighting meets the earth’.