Scottie has a crush, and it makes him blether, possibly in another language ….

Honestly, I thought these days were over. I thought that only in my teens would I experience times when I couldn’t get a guy out of my head. Even when I’d be going about my daily routine, he’d pop into my head for no reason. This is ridiculous. This is childish. I’m not a teenager.

And yet, I have a major crush on someone.

I guess I’ve known him for a while now, but kept my distance. I did so intentionally because he gets plenty of attention already as it is. He’s popular, charismatic, intelligent and highly successful. And he’s handsome. Very handsome. When we met first at a launch event in the city, I physically could not stop myself from occasionally turning around to look at him. If someone near me in the audience said something to me during the talk, I noticed that he had looked over every so often in my direction, leading to me catch his gaze. Even then, I could barely gather the courage to smile for any length of time at him. If I have picked up any skills of flirtation or charm in my few short years on this earth, he’s able to disarm them all in an instant.

I don’t see him too often, but when I do, there always seems to be some sort of run-in. Recently, I was out with some friends in a well-known bar in the city. We had only arrived and got our drinks in when my mates noticed him, which led to them looking over at him quite often. Thanks to my flawed eyesight (I’m too proud to buy glasses, but that’s another story) I couldn’t tell if he had noticed us, but I was getting embarrassed nonetheless by my friends glancing over at him.

“Oh Scott,” one of them said excitedly, “I think he’s coming over!” Sure enough, he was getting up off his bar stool and glanced over at us.

“What?! No! Turn around,” I commanded to them, panicking. “Stop drawing attention to him… us… you know what I mean! Just act cool.”

False alarm, it seemed, as he walked towards the cigarette vendor instead of where we were standing. I calmed down, thinking that my friends were going to be allowed embarrass me any more. But oh Lord, was I wrong.

I should’ve noticed that something was about to happen when my friends’ eyes widened and were fit to burst into fits of laughter at any point, but I didn’t. Instead, who comes over to us but Dreamboat himself, making my friends turn to face each other for moral support to stop themselves from giggling. I probably have never gone so red, so fast. From that point on, everything was a blur. My brain didn’t get enough of a warning to go into flirt mode, so anything that came out of my mouth probably resembled a drunkenly attempt to speak Arabic. I know he asked how I was, and I vaguely remember a hug, but all I could feel was the blood pumping around my cheeks.

He asked us what we’re up to for the night, which I could barely answer, but I asked him about his plans so I could quickly stop blabbering. He tells me his plans for later – where he’ll be, why and what time – which makes my friends suggest later on that it was something of an invitation to say hello later on. That theory had struck me too, but I thought it was just me being too hopeful. Soon, he excuses himself to go for a cigarette, which is perfectly timed, as I feel like I’m going to crumble from the sheer pressure of his full attention at any second.

Once he’s out of earshot, my friends burst into uncontrollable laughter, while I want the ground to swallow me up. All I thought was that I made a total fool of myself, and my mates probably made me look like a bit of an eejit as well. But it doesn’t stop there. Once my friends calm down, they’re ready for round two.

“So, are we going?”

“Going where,” I ask.

“To the club,” one of them replies. “He’s given you his schedule for the rest of the night – that sounds like he wants to see you later!”

“Yeah right,” I protest. I’m not exactly a Picasso painting, I think to myself, but I’m hardly a Mona Lisa either; why would he want to see me?

“Yeah, I don’t think you’ve a say in this anymore,” the other one replies. “You’re going.”

Sometimes, you just have to say “okay” to see what happens…!

To Be Continued…

[To read the previous instalment of Scott’s column, click here.]

‘Scottie’ Illustrations by Stephen Charlick