Clutching Defeat From The Jaws of Success
Early in high school, before I had any confidence, I found out that my best friend’s cousin had a crush on me. She was really hot, but I always thought about her as my friend’s cousin, so I never realized that I had feelings for her (Probably didn’t until she said she did.. men are creatures of opportunity).
Anyway, I was in another state for the summer because my parents are divorced and she hits me up on instant messenger. She talks to me every day for a few days, which was weird, because before this I hadn’t had very much contact with her.
A friend of mine tells me about 4 days in that he ran into her and gave her my info so she could contact me, and being the superb wing man he is, wrestled out of her the reason that she wanted to talk to me. She told him that she liked me.
This was ideal, because when I have time to think and no insanely hot girl staring at me, I can be the smoothest Casanova in the world. Over the next month, I had her admit her feelings and I mine, but because I’m so smooth.. I decided to not ask her out until I could do it in person. It was going to be great.
Fast forward a little bit, I’m back in the same state as her, everything is going great. I go over to my best friend’s house to meet her. My friend isn’t there, and she’s babysitting my friend’s little brother. Let’s keep in mind, I’m a freshman in highschool. Have some pity on me. I see her wearing the cutest outfit.
She smiles warmly when I enter the room and my brain melts. I don’t know how to talk to her anymore, so I smile back and say “Hey… *look at my friend’s little brother* How are you, James?”
And continue to pretty much ignore her for an hour before awkwardly leaving without saying much more than a sentence to her. She immediately called her friends to let them know what happened, which I can’t really blame her for.
I was so embarrassed by it, but apparently she didn’t understand my awkwardness and suspected that I had been so smooth over the internet and had lied about my feelings about her, so it was all just a game to her.
I couldn’t recover from it, her friends were mad at me for being a jerk and she didn’t want to see me ever again. I regretted that for a long time, because after all of that I wasn’t able to turn it off again. I really liked her now.
I would see her sometimes, because I played a lot of basketball and I would hang out at my best friend’s house because it was close to the courts I played at. I like to think that I didn’t go to her house (yes, my best friend was a girl) to see her cousin.. but I think I did sometimes.
It was always awkward and always made me regret being such a baby, so I stopped doing it pretty soon after. I’m not sure what the source of my nervousness was, even to this day. I always suspected that I was awkward because I was afraid of rejection.
That couldn’t possibly be in this case.. because I KNEW with certainty that I wouldn’t be rejected. She was more into me that I was to her.
I’m happily married now, but I still view this as one of the two events that I regret in my lifetime. The other was much worse, but not really along the lines of this question. Story credit: Reddit / perfectdesign