The moment she walked into the restaurant, the room went silent for at least two seconds as everyone stared at her. But she didn’t mind. She didn’t seem to be bothered by the attention. Her eyes searched the room until they spotted me. I waved shyly and her face lit up and she waved back and headed my way.
I could tell that this young lady was happy. She walked freely towards me, giving anyone who looked at her a free spotless smile. Meanwhile, my heart was pounding. It had taken every bit of courage to walk up to her that night.
Akinyemi and I were having lunch at this same restaurant that day when she walked in with her friends. They headed to the counter and ordered their meals. Akinyemi had been saying something but I hadn’t been listening, my eyes were fixed on her. That was when Akinyemi saw her.
“She’s cute,” he said.
I scoffed, “no, she’s perfect.”
Akinyemi laughed, “dude relax, she’s not bad, but perfect? Nah”
I frowned and looked from him to her trying to see what it was about her that he couldn’t see clearly.”
“Well, if you like her that much, go talk to then.”
I felt my face redden, “I-I can’t.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged, “I don’t know, she’s with her friends, she might not answer me. Besides what am I going to say to her?”
I suddenly couldn’t look in her direction again as my heart began to pound.
Akinyemi looked confused, “Are you saying you’re too shy to talk to her?”
I didn’t answer. I suddenly found the food in front of me very appealing to look at.
Akinyemi said he didn’t believe I was shy. “That’s just not possible,” he said shaking his head.
“I don’t understand, we’ve been friends for so long, you should know that for sure.”
He disagreed again. He was so certain because he remembered me doing something back in school that a shy person wouldn’t have done.
I stared at him. “That’s not true. I never did that.”
“Are you joking? Dude, I was so impressed that day. I couldn’t do it but you did.”
He was serious. I sat quietly for a while, trying to retrieve that event from my memory but kept coming up against a wall.
“She’s leaving. It’s now or never.” Akinyemi said.
Suddenly, it didn’t matter that I thought I was shy. I got up and didn’t mind that my heart had just changed to a higher gear. I caught up with her just outside the restaurant.
“Excuse me,” I said.
She and her two friends looked back and I suddenly wished I was invisible. But it was too late. They were waiting.
I looked at her, “Sorry, can I talk to you for a moment?”
She looked at her friends, then back at me.
“Sure,”
Her friends moved away and she smiled at me The moment her lips curled up into that smile, every last bit of tension in my body disappeared.
******
The night went better than I could have hoped for. For the first time in a long time, I stayed outside of my head long enough to have actual conversations without worrying about making a wrong impression.
But she made it easy because she always had an answer to whatever question I asked just as much as she was eager to hear what I had to say too.
At the end of the night, she said, “There’s this question I came across recently that I found very interesting. It says “if you could start over if you are offered another chance to do anything again, what would it be?”
“Is this an hypothetical question?”
“Yeah, but…”
“But it’s not for me. See, meeting you was my chance to start over at love.”
She smiled and waved me off but I was on a roll.
“Think about it as a book. Up to that day when I met you, I had been writing a tragedy. But I finally turned to a new page and I’m ready to start writing afresh a story about you.”
In that moment, I felt unstoppable. Because I knew. Just looking at her across from me, I knew something good would come from this.
