All those things unsaid

It all goes back to that Friday

It was a normal day of September, a random Friday I would say, one of those days in which no one really wants to work seriously and if they can, they just run out of their office as soon as possible. Well, not for me.  My office is not exactly close to my house and once I leave in the morning, I always make sure to come back very late. 

Colleagues in the office are never the same, you can bet that in a month something will change. Either someone new is recruited or leaves, and not because the job is terrible: we are in the academic world and if you do not travel, you are no one. Basically, if you are some sort of a liquid cat that just assume the shape of wherever it sits, it's a great advantage. Otherwise, it's going to be a struggle. 

On my side, I'm on the struggle ship. I've already lived for seven months in Spain and I'm gonna go back in three months. Am I happy? Sort of. I like the independence and the free time that I have there, I hate that almost everyone and everything I love is more or less at a thousand kilometer from me. But let's go back to the office. 

With one colleague on a trip and the other one invited to join a lunch outside, I was already planning to eat my pasta with aubergines in front of an episode of Anne of Green Gables, when unexpectedly a couple of guys from the third floor decided to join me.

Those guy from upstairs were a random appearence in our everyday office life. I still had no clue of how many people worked in that side of the chemistry department, I just knew that sometimes someone new appeared out of nowhere and I looked like the only one genuinely surprised. I guess those seven months away from here were causing me a lack of knowledge that I couldn't fill in simply opening a book. Which, by the way, I hardly had time to do.

Turns out that Guy and Andrew would have had lunch with me, so goodbye Netflix. I ended up alone in my office, sitting at a desk which was not mine (of course, mine was in Barcelona and my arms were not long enough to reach it) and having guests. These guys had been eating with my colleagues for who knows how long and I just realized I barely spoke to them. And that day, I would have been alone with them, amazing. Netflix sounded more simple.

However, there we were and suddently I was listening to weird stories from the Russian experience of Andrew, that started off in a funny way and ended up with a food poisoning, which made me question how much I still wanted to eat my lunch after earing such disgusting details. People are so stupid. And of course I don't mean Andrew, he was sweet and funny. But the girl who got poisoned? Well, far from being a genius, at least, not in this life. 

And then there was Guy, sitted in his personal version of the lotus position, eating in silence and making me feel uncomfortable because of the unbalance of the conversation. Yeah, I'm that kind of person. I happened to speak to much and cut out people from conversations in the past, so now I'm super aware of what goes on in social situations. It's weird, 'cause I'm also a good listener, but if people make me talk, it's the end. 

I tried to involve him in the conversation, but with Andrew and his wealth of stories it was just impossible, and the fact that I barely knew him wasn't helping at all. And while I was thinking what to say to make him share some of his experiences too, I looked at him. I don't know exactly what happened, but that is the moment when something changed. 

On Monday morning, after the weekend, things where no more the same. 
When he opened the door and entered to ask who would have joined him for lunch, I started shaking. I looked right into his eyes and I knew that overwhelming feeling meant something.