Sorddin

1:23 AM
Tues­day, 25th Octo­ber 2011

Nate was alone, stand­ing on the foot­path out­side of his apart­ment build­ing, con­fused and unsure of him­self or of the future.

He slow­ly walked up the three flights of stairs. His con­fu­sion was most­ly caused by feel­ings he had nev­er felt before and did­n’t know the right names of. Not know­ing what to call these strange new feel­ings was both­er­ing him far more at the moment, than what these feel­ing might mean.

Deep down in the being he was sure he had made the biggest fool of him­self, and screwed up his one and only chance of true hap­pi­ness. The per­fect­ly messed up end­ing to a tru­ly crap­py day.

Falling out of bed, orange juice on the cere­al, cof­fee in the office shirt, black out, can­cer, and now this, the date from hell.

Maybe he would be in luck, maybe Glen would be asleep and he could just sneak in and…

“Nate! Your back!” Glen chirped.

Nate shrugged and slumped down in the couch, there was no way he was get­ting out of this.

“So… how did the date go?”

“Worst date ever.” Nate mum­bled.

Glen frowned. “Oh real­ly? I’ve told you about that guy whose aunt pulled a knife on me?”

Nate nod­ded. “Okay, maybe not ever. But MY worst date.”

“Nate, don’t take this the wrong way, but you haven’t got a clue what your talk­ing about. Tell me every­thing.”

The last thing Nate want­ed to do.

“Besides,” con­tin­ued Glen, “I did lend you my ‘lucky’ shirt.”

Nate nod­ded.

“Well… it all start­ed with your so called lucky shirt did­n’t it.”

Glen frowned and raised one eye­brow.

“We meet at the cof­fee shop. Turns out his name isn’t Bri­an. So I made a fool out of myself there.”


Glen inter­rupt­ed. “So what is his name?”

“Er, Lex. Any­way, so I kept get­ting his name wrong, after about the tenth time he cor­rect­ed me. So embar­rass­ing. But then he said he did­n’t like my shirt. He said some­thing about ‘lik­ing what I had been wear­ing ear­li­er’.”

Glen smirked. “When you where shirt­less?”


Nate frowned. “Oh… that makes a lot more sense.”

Glen shock his head and got up and went into the kitchen and turned on the ket­tle. “So then what hap­pened?” He shout­ed out.

“Well. We ordered cof­fee. He ordered decaf with soy.”

Glen stuck his head out of the kitchen. “Does­n’t mean he’s a stinky hip­py.”

Nate nod­ded and went into the kitchen so he could con­tin­ue this con­ver­sa­tion with­out hav­ing to shout. “Yeah. Well, turns out he’s lac­tose intol­er­ant. And the wait­er got the order wrong. He downed half his cof­fee before he noticed it was milk and then he ran to the bath­room. I was left sit­ting there for 25 min­utes wait­ing for him to return.”

Glen made two large mugs of black tee, one in his bright blue mug, the oth­er in Nate’s pink mug. “Sounds like Lex might have had a crap date too then.”

Nate sipped his tea. “That’s the point. The first time we meet and he gets sick. Why would he come back for more?”

Glen lead the way back to the lounge room. “So… this was at what 8? 8:30? Its now 1:30. What have you been up to for the last five hours? Just mop­ing around and feel­ing sor­ry for your­self?”

Nate shock his head. “No, Lex walked me to the front door. We’ve been talk­ing and had more cof­fee and food and walked around a lot.”

“I’ve had rela­tion­ships that did­n’t last that long.”

Nate sipped at his tea slow­ly.

“So what else did you do wrong?”

Nate frowned. “Crit­i­cised his reli­gion, and a few of his oth­er stu­pid beliefs, his pol­i­tics, you know… all the sub­jects to avoid.”

“But he kept talk­ing to you?”

“Well… yeah.”

“And he walked you home?”

Nate nod­ded.

“The there is only one ques­tion that real­ly mat­ters.”

Nate frowned, a lit­tle wor­ried about what this ques­tion could be.

Glen smiled. “Was the kiss any good?”

Nate blushed deeply at this and just nod­ded.

Glen smiled more. “Going to see him again?”

Nate shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Glen smirked, a strange lit­tle smirk that made him look more like an elf. “Can I have his num­ber then?”

This caught Nate by sur­prise. “What, no way. No.” He almost yelled. The con­vic­tion in his voice sur­prised him­self.

Glen nod­ded and got up. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. ‘Worst date ever’ my arse! I’m going to bed.” And with that Glen head­ed off to his room.

Nate sat on the couch and fin­ished his tea. He was still con­fused.

Noth­ing had gone right today. He was sure as he sat there in the dark­ened room and tal­lied up all the things that had hap­pened.

Fear and anx­i­ety kept rat­tling around in his head, but so did these new feel­ing. He still was­n’t sure what they were called. But he had nar­rowed it down to two labels. It was either love or lust. That just con­fused him more.

He got up, put his emp­ty tea mug in the sink and fell into his unmade bed.

It had been a bad day. One of the worst. He was sure. Had­n’t it?

—
Part of my cre­ative writ­ing class. Week­ly Assign­ment 7.