The Day After

Chapter 2

The whole interaction with her, Jessica, was weird. Like does she like me back, are we friends? I’m okay with being friends. I mean she wouldn’t have even given me her number. I wish I would have talked more, or maybe it was enough? I’m not sure when she will text me. I look at my phone expectantly. Did she get my number, she was fiddling with my phone for a bit, I’m sure she saw the number. I just sit at work, not really doing anything. I look around and I see my coworkers appear busy. There’s plenty of things that need to be done, but there’s no point in it or end in sight. I get overwhelmed thinking about the work I need to do and how the only reward for being good at my job is just more work.

But thinking about her gives me something else to think about and I feel happy thinking about her. I start thinking about potential conversations we can have. Like it’s some form of visual novel. I break out some paper and start drawing some potential dialogue trees of what we could say. like “what do you do for work?” or “What about Persona aside from Ryuuji do you like?” Then I try to make follow on ideas. “I work in HR” or “I work in sales” and I try to come up with something to respond with because I am afraid the conversation will be boring otherwise.

I start thinking about “well what do couples do for dates?” I had a couple of ideas when it was just imaginary, but now it could be a reality I’m not sure. And as more time passes in the work day I’m not sure she even likes me like that. We could just be friends and that would be a good change of pace since I don’t even really have those. She hasn’t texted but granted we met last night and now it’s only been like 16 hours or so. Maybe she’s tired or maybe she’s busy like me but instead of thinking way too much about these things she is just living her life.

I decide that maybe I will take my mind off of her and just focus on work for now. I don’t want to think about it too much, like I would hate to put in all this effort and it not amount to anything. Like what if she already has someone? She could already be dating someone and just humored me. But then why did she put her name in as Goober instead of Jessica, but she had instructed me to call her Jessica. What if Jessica isn’t her real name. I just feel unprepared for all of this, just in High school and college I just didn’t talk to girls because I felt weird and gross. I can tell that my actual effort today has just been sluggish. I thought I would stop thinking about her and the whole situation, but now I just can’t. Like this whole interaction probably never happens. How many people can say that this is how they met. I just feel like there is something more to this, like it is destiny or something. I get a text.

“Hey it’s me, are you free Saturday?”

I am always free but I can’t tell her that. I want to be cool and tell her that I had other plans but I already played the loser card earlier with showing her my ID. I guess she’s making the location plans too? I’m fine with that, I wouldn’t even know where we would go. I don’t feel in any control at all, but that’s fine, I just feel like she’s way better than me and I should let her choose what to do.

“Yeah! I’m free Saturday, what did you have in mind?”

I text it immediately and impulsively but I can’t be sure if I chose the optimal words for continuing the conversation. Maybe I should have taken longer to text her, like I am busy right now and need to get work done but I don’t want to take too long. I don’t want to look desperate but I am kind of desperate. I try not to look, just worried I messed it all up and then I’ll have to go back to coping with my endless amount of work and existence with Otaku stuff. I try to just focus on the computer screen. It feels like 10 minutes.

“There’s a sort of summer festival thing at Wright Park nearby. I was planning on going anyways with some friends, but it could be cool if you tagged along”

“Sounds good I’ll be there”

I just immediately text without thinking

“Uh what time?”

I text again. I should have put it in with the first text, I can’t be making double texting mistakes. People hate when you do that.

“Let’s do noon, I’ll be by the tree”

“Wait what tree?” I’m confused, am I being pranked here?
After ten minutes no reply. I tell myself it’ll just work out in the end and to not worry, I’ll just check every tree in that park.