Hey, want to grab a coffee after the final? It'll be a relief to talk about something not related to Business Management, or business at all.
Sandry looked at the message on the screen for a full five minutes, going over every single detail, and held her breath as she pressed the small little blue "send" button. It's madness that an innocent-looking text message could send her into such jitters. Her hands shook, and her breath was ragged. She had to remind herself to calm the fuck down- and actually study for the final.
She and Briar were taking the same class, and by pure chance, he had asked her complete his group of four. She recognised the other two girls from classes she'd had before, but Briar was someone totally new: and for good reason. It was his second semester in the school, a transfer, but despite that, he was still a year above her even though they were the same age. Sandry took the Business classes because she had to; Briar took them because he wanted to. Tris had a natural talent for it, and Daja was extremely shrewd. Sandry felt out of her element, but Briar helped ease that.
She didn't know what to make of him, at first. He was someone who blended in the background, or so she assumed. She always sat in the front, like the dutiful student she was, and he always sat in the back, like the delinquent she assumed he was. It was only during the first group meet they had, where she was early, he was on time, and the two others fifteen minutes late, that she actually spoke to him when it was just the two of them.
"Briar is a strange name," she stated, calling to mind the first thing so to end the awkward silence stretching out before them in their small corner in the library.
He smirked and shot back, "Sandry isn't any better, Princess."
Needless to say, their relationship had been slightly rocky at first. But Sandry soon became accustomed to the teasing remarks and the sarcastic replies, responding to them with a quick wit she didn't know she had. And, because of the nature of their group, all four gradually became friends- despite their many (many) differences. Sandry even chose some classes for the next Fall semester because she knew Tris and Daja were taking them as well. She tried to do so with Briar, but their schedules were too conflicting: she liked morning classes, while he enjoyed evening classes, and the time in between, one or the other had a conflicting class.
She can't say when it started. Maybe with the teasing, and the flirty smiles, and his green eyes that were always on her when she would shyly glance up at him. At some point, she began to recognise that drop in her stomach, the slight feeling of lightheadedness, the quickening of her pulse, as the unmistakable signs that an infatuation had begun. And she despaired.
For all her looks and charms, whenever Sandry felt herself falling for someone, she instantly became an awkward duckling. Her cheeks would flare bright red, she suddenly could not meet the person's eyes, her voice would waver between too soft to hear, or too broken to understand. It was mortifying.
Thankfully, her encounters with Briar were confined to the group meetings, where she had Tris and Daja to balance her out. If she began to do any of the above things, she would concentrate more on what either of the girls were saying, and tune out Briar. In the instances she had to speak with him - because, obviously, she had to speak with him - she would address the whole group or pretend that he was one of the girls. It wasn't perfect, but it worked for her.
All of this ran through her mind instead of the material she was supposed to be covering, and she glanced at her phone for the hundredth time. Granted, it was late, but for a university student in the week before finals, 2 a.m. was early. So that meant that either, Briar was so confident in his abilities that he was asleep, or that he saw her message and was thinking of a way to put her down softly. She expected the latter, but didn't doubt the former.
Eventually, Briar and all thoughts of her message drifted from her brain, replaced by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Authoritarian leadership versus Laissez-Faire.
She woke up the next morning to a chirp from her phone. She groggily sat up, disturbing the many papers and books arrayed around her bed, and checked the time- 9 a.m. Which meant she only had about three hours of sleep. Wonderful. Yawning, and debating whether she should sleep a bit longer or crackk open another book, another chirp came from her phone, reminding her what roused her in the first place. First: Confusion. Who would message her so early in the morning? Then: Hope, and panic laced in one. Was it Briar returning her text? She was almost too nervous to find out.
She took her phone in her hand and hit the home button, and reading the preview of his message, her heart began to sink. She was expecting this, but still- seeing his words on her little screen was so final.
Hey Sandry, I'd love to have that coffee with you! But I thought you should know, I do have a girlfriend. Hope we can remain friends.
The fact wasn't that he had put her down so kindly that bothered her; it was the fact that he read right through her intentions in the messages, but more importantly, that, in all the conversations they had before - revolving around past relationships, Daja's current love problems, even Tris' hopes - Briar had never, not once, mentioned this girlfriend. And he had continued to flirt with her.
So Sandry did the next best thing to finding out the truth: She stalked his Facebook profile. And sure enough, bright as day, she saw it, or rather, her. She was not in his current profile picture, which is why, when Sandry gathered her courage to glance at it, she hadn't known. She was in the previous one, and they were quite obviously a couple: arms around waists, looking up at each other, adoring stares. It almost made Sandry want to puke for the cuteness of it. Further evidence was found in the many posts where he would mention her, or where she wrote on his wall, or the pictures that they took together. Sandry's only consolation was that the posts were less frequent than a month before, or even a month before that. Maybe he never spoke of her because they were going through a rough patch. All of this was too personal for Sandry to ask, of course.
As to the coffee she so bravely asked him to- she pretended it never happened, and that she was, indeed, too busy to have coffee after all. Then she employed her next best weapon: avoidance.
It went on like this for the whole of the next semester, but when the Spring semester began and she couldn't help but cross his path to and from class, she began to talk to him more. Now, with a closed heart and an unwillingness to be pulled in by his charm again, but still with the open friendliness they had before, The teasing remained, the lingering glances- not to much. And, she found, that she was fine with it. She truly felt normal talking to him. There was no more thundering heartbeat or stuttering- she was herself, and it was freeing to realise that the clutches of infatuation had released her.
So when she received a text from him a month before the semester ended, she answered it enthusiastically: Yeah, sure! Coffee sounds great!
As usual, she was early. Strangely, so was he: he saw he enter the school cafe and waved at her from his table. He had already ordered for her (a caramel coffee, skim milk, no sugar), and held his own chai in his hand. For the first time in the time she had known Briar, he looked nervous. He even resorted to small talk, which was, to Sandry, a sure sign that he was avoiding a subject. Eventually she put her coffee on the table, looked him straight in the eye, and said, "Okay, what's wrong." No question, just a statement.
He shot her a quick grin which lasted a second, before looking at the swirls of cinnamon in his tea. "Berenene and I broke up." Sandry sat back in her chair, stunned. Never had he talked to Sandry about his girlfriend, and here he wanted to have a post-break up angst talk with her? She didn't have the patience for this. Before she could interrupt him, he continued. "Things were bad for….a while. She was expecting things from me which I wasn't willing to give, and after a long time, I realised why. She had begun to suspect it, of course, which was probably why she tried so hard to keep going but…I wasn't in the relationship any more. I couldn't. Not when I knew I had fallen for someone else."
A part of Sandry soared when she heard that, but a greater part of her felt heavy. If he had mentioned this a year ago, even six months ago, she would have been wild with hope Now… "Briar, I don't…"
He caught her eyes and her sentence trailed off. "I realise now that I should have taken you up on your offer for coffee last year. But I was too focussed on trying to save a dying relationship, too loyal to Ber to want to do that to her…But I think dragging it out for another year was even more cruel."
Sandry looked at her coffee, took a deep breath, and then looked at Briar directly. "So what exactly are you proposing?"
His mouth tilted up into a crooked smile as he asked, "Go out with me?" She took his hand and saw his eyes lighten, but when she didn't answer, he soon withdrew his hands. "You're going to say no, aren't you."
She gave him a small smile, but nodded. "If you had asked me this before, my answer would have been yes. But…too much time has passed. I've moved on. And I think, Briar, you should too. We've missed our chance."
I suspect all of you to have forgotten about me, about this story. Hell, I did too. Fanfic isn't my style anymore, but there are times when I have an idea that I can't shake and must put down. Don't expect more, or regular updates.
Cheers.