How I Ruined My Almost Perfect First Date

Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash

I was fascinated with first dates since I started watching rom-coms. The first time you hold her hand, the prolonged eye contact, the awkward silence, the confusion about whether to kiss or not and so on. How perfect they all seemed and how much bewitched I was.

During high school, because of my insecurities and awkwardness, I ghosted a girl with whom I could have my first date. I assume she might have put a jinx on me, and I didn’t get an opportunity to go on proper dates during my college years. Somethings always messed up.

So naturally, I grew more and more desperate with my ideas of the first date. And when I finally got the opportunity, I messed up all over again.

If that high school girl is reading this, I am sorry, all right? Now remove that jinx. Will you?

The girl who agreed to go out with me…

She was beautiful. I asked for her phone number, and she gave me her Insta ID. I asked her to go out with me, and she denied it. How sad?

But one day, she agreed.

I was quite sure that it was a prank. But it wasn’t. She was standing right there properly dressed with her beautiful dimples flashing on her cheeks. I picked her up on my bike, and there it all began.

She was a smoker, and I wasn’t. But with her, of course, I was!

We had to buy the pack of cigarettes before going to the riverside. Because of my poverty (I was paid in peanuts at my job), I couldn’t afford anything fancy. So that was the most romantic location I came up with.

So the initial half an hour went in finding the shop where they sold her favourite cigarette brand. It was evening, and we roamed in the streets for that time, talked a lot, and we both had difficulty understanding each other, but we were laughing and blushing a lot. I could sense that.

When we got the pack of cigarettes, we sat beside the river and talked. She told me her story, and I remember feeling poor again because she had ‘rich’ friends.

While we talked, she smoked three cigarettes while I smoked that one cigarette. The cool breeze was becoming fierce as the darkness spread, and I forgot about everything apart from realising that it was my idea of the first date. Everything was perfect.

We walked a bit and had fruits shakes at a shop (The taste of which was umm…yuck!). Then she had a cigarette again ahead an ice-cream parlour(Of course). And while I made fun of that, the thoughts of kiss rippled in my mind.

Of course, without it, how could that date be perfect according to the countless theories of Rom-coms.

The Jinx

It was time to drop her back to her room. She sat at the back seat, hid behind me from the cold wind, and we remained silent. That silence wasn’t awkward, though. It was again, suffice to say, perfect.

We reached her home. She showed me her room from outside, we hugged each other. It was at that moment when I knew I had to do it. Of course, I had been thinking about it during our ride. Of course, I had been thinking about it while we were having those fruit shakes, or while we were sitting at the riverside, or again, suffice to say, from the beginning.

It was about touching those smoking lips with mine and ending that date perfectly. But when the moment arrived, I hugged her and took a reverse turn.

I told myself, it couldn’t have been more perfect. After driving for about five minutes, I told myself, ‘Actually, it could have been. WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T I KISS HER?’

I was so angry at myself. I wanted to rewind that date and change the ending. It had to be perfect as well. Could I just go back and ask her to come down and kiss me. Would that be romantic?

But I did something worse. I texted her how much I wanted to kiss her and why that was the only thought I had during the whole date.

Of course, her attitude changed after that. Of course, she didn’t reply to that text of mine, and for months I kept wondering if she enjoyed the date at all or not.

She didn’t tell me if she enjoyed that date or not for a long, long time. When one day, she did, she said, ‘I thought you to be a genuine guy, but your texts made me feel how stupid I was.’

Now when I look back…

I know how she must have seen that text. She told me so many things about herself that day, and the only conclusive statement I could draw was that desire to kiss in the end.

She was a shy woman. She told me about that initially. She told me how difficult it was for her to trust other people. But all I could think about was my idea of perfection and my idea of fantasy. How selfish was I?

Instead of making the other woman feel important, I was stuck in my labyrinth of fantasy.

Now when I look back, I wish I were more with her than in my idea of a perfect first date.