Author and Columnist
As I do not have clearance to use names (as in, I am not close enough to say, Oh, I plastered your name all over the internet and you are mad Um... forgive me) I shall use terribly clever pseudonyms.
People get mad at you for better reasons than your using their names. In general, if you do not have the go-ahead to use their names, they would prefer that you not mention them at all.
Too bad. You are going to do it anyway. Stories are more interesting to read than your emotions in a vacuum.
Until then, they shall be referred to as CG and Irish Bird (If you know my thought pattern at all, you should have no trouble figuring them out based upon the titles I have awarded them in lieu of names).
CG stood for "Cleavage Girl" because you are a jerk. She wore low-cut shirts on occasion. I can only provoke flickers of her face, freckled and pretty, bright eyes, a pouty smile, and the lyrical fry to her voice. I cannot picture her cleavage. All this to say, you could have better dubbed her for any other of her qualities.
You call Irish Bird this because her surname was Irish and sounded birdlike. Better, but not a suitable pseudonym. At least I can remember her actual name because of it. I can't say the same for CG.
Anyway, I was slightly moping early this week on having lost out on a chance for true romance with Miss Eileen. I wasn't crushed to pieces, ala Kate or the betrayal of Nick and Jen [...], but slightly sad.
Slight moping is appropriate. You are not burdening young Eileen because she made a choice.
You make too much of high school drama still. Let it go. It is not a flattering look.
And what to my wondering eyes should appear but Marco nee Zacky and his adorable dear. Veronica (the verse cannot bear the foot. It is lame).
Cute.
I lamented, as I am wont to do (perhaps too much), that I would greatly like to have a relationship as sound and wonderful as theirs seems.
Veronica was a peach, but theirs was not as idyllic a relationship as you made it out to be here. Whose can be so young?
I informed them, albeit in shorthand (She, who gave me a book of Pablo Neruda's love poems that smells delightfully of tea, claims she is too shallow for me. I'll live.), that she and I were no more than friends.
I loved that book and its scent, intentionally wedging it tight in my bookshelf so that the smell of it (of Eileen?) remained. I fell into a sideways infatuation with Neruda's poetry -- which deserves a read -- as an aspect of adoring Eileen in absentia. That is a blessed thing to come from your small affair.
Eileen was leagues deep.
They chit-chatted and decided that Irish Bird and I would be an ideal couple. Listing her virtues she wears whatever she pleases, she works in a soup kitchen, she has blonde hair to here (Veronica signals to her shoulder, though I expect she means to Irish Bird's shoulder, not her own), svelte, cute, etc. In fact, they made the pronouncement that is like thwacking Fate (the Jungian deity, not the force) on the shoulder (her shoulder, you understand, not another's) and telling her to attack. They said we'd be perfect for one another. Oi! After I made the ever deep proclamation Hook me up! they insisted that I was already friends with her.
Oh, this hurts. Let's proceed.
About to give up hope, I heard her friend say that she had just obtained a new white car. Irish Bird said she did not like white cars. Fate handed me an index card that read, You do not like white cars Are you a car racist This seemed amusing to her and we spoke from the bottom of Hudson Hall to the blood drive occurring in Dutchess Hall.
Ooh, bold gambit. Let's see how this plays out.
I thought things had gone well enough that I could venture to give the lass my phone number. I thought that this is what was done in polite circles.
Evidently not.
I don't think it was the phone number as much as the presumption. If you had slowed down a bit, allowed your precious Fate to work her magic, you might have been friends with her.
I was later informed that she found me scary.
Yes, this is far from the adjective you want others applying to you. In what you describe, you are a bit much, but not scary. However, you are not the one who gets to arbitrate how this woman felt about you. You somehow scared her in that interaction, possibly by aggressively not playing it cool and following her to the blood drive.
I left her alone because, well, I'm not scary and figured any attempt to prove that would backfire in a less than comedic way. Heck, I forgot who she was except once making a sad face over the badly ripped page in my notebook.
You did leave her alone, so points there. You shot your shot -- and you had done this successfully often enough that you didn't think twice of giving this young woman your number.
You cannot easily talk your way out of unsettling someone. It is rarely, if ever, worth the attempt.
What is creepy, though, is it now occurs to me that this young woman was likely one of the many initial inspirations for your beloved protagonist, Shane Valentine. It is far from a one-to-one relationship, but there is DNA there when I try to think of Irish Bird.
Because I like to keep Fate amused and both Veronica (who I suddenly want to call Ronnie, but won't) and Zack (who I call Zack) claim Irish Bird thinks highly of me, I asked Veronica to mention me to her and see her reaction.
Scary to well-regarded with no interactions between? You are right to be skeptical.
You see her once at a carnival years later. She is with a crowd of friends and looks at you with an expression that is more revolted than fond.
I remember no other meeting, so Veronica mentioning you does not seem to have borne fruit.
But I respect [CG] greatly, as she is the only other person to regularly and correctly answer in class. She also has a pleasantly twisted sense of humor, which she demonstrates with me often.
CG sounds delightful, and you dubbed her based on her breasts.
I'm not going to let this one go.
My next and final question of this round was, Would you like to go for coffee this weekend
Good job. That is a reasonable offer based on a month of gradual contact. This is how people ask one another on dates. You are finally doing as I asked of you. None too soon.
Right now, it is 223 on what some like to call Sunday morning but sensible people (the ones that went to bed 2 hours ago) call Saturday night. I have not been called. I have not seen a letter in my in-box. Maybe I can still salvage and get the silver Maybe she will actually want to see me Maybe I was on-line writing this for you when she was trying to call Maybe I should go to bed Yes, I think I shall.
I barely remember a date between you, though I know one occurred. I am not optimistic that CG considered it a date, but something happened between you that did not apparently deserve her gaining an actual name.
You share the class until the end of the semester -- you are writing this in February, so you have a ways to go -- but I recall no further connection. .