There she was, the most beautiful girl in school, standing by her locker, fixing her hair in front of the small mirror hanging from her locker door. I sat at the other end of the hall, tuning out whatever Eli was talking about. I had my new edition comic book in my lap as I weakly stared in her direction.
"Yeah, man so what do you think?"
"Huh?" I snapped back into reality.
"Claire? The date?"
I turned my attention to the figure sitting next to me, still half confused on what he asked me.
"Come on man, were you listening to anything I just said? What's with you today?"
"Sorry dude, I've just been… preoccupied."
Preoccupied was an understatement. This was the third time today I'd seen this new girl, however, she seemed to appear more precious every time. One look at her, and my thoughts were somewhere in outer space. I glanced back in her direction as she was grabbing her books.
"Preoccupied huh?" Eli followed my gaze. "Want to talk about it?" he smirked at me, now realizing what I was gawking at.
I blushed at Eli's acknowledgement. I turned back, to catch a glimpse of my beautiful prospect turning the hallway corner before disappearing from my sight. Eli and I sat there for a few seconds silently.
"Eli…"
"Hm?"
"Can I ask you something?"
"Yeah, I do dress this depressing just to scare people" He offered a small smile in my direction.
I laughed in response. His sarcastic personality was one more reason to love Eli.
"Ok but really, what did you want to ask?"
I paused for a moment unsure of how to word what I wanted to ask my friend.
"Do you think I'm… desirable?" I tried.
Eli lifted his eyebrows, obviously amused. "Desirable?" he repeated.
I realized now that it sounded so much less pathetic in my head. I quickly attempted to reword my awkward question.
"I mean… do you think a girl could ever be interested in a guy… a guy like me?" I said almost breathless, half afraid of what Eli's answer might be.
He turned to look at me, very seriously this time, and without hesitation replied, "any girl would be lucky to have a guy like you Adam." He gave me a sincere smile.
A girl lucky to have me? Why would a girl be lucky to be with an awkward confused guy like me? I almost didn't believe Eli, regardless of the pure sincerity evident in his voice.
"You mean that dude?"
"Look man, there's plenty of girls out there. Some are ignorant snobs, but there are plenty of good ones." He paused… thinking of Claire I figured. "One of them was meant to be yours. You'll see."
"Thanks Eli, I truly hope so."
The thing Eli didn't know was, I already had a girl in mind—the girl that was "meant to be mine." I was just currently unsure on how to make her the mine part.