Let Me Be Your Hero

Chapter Four : Crushes and Confusion

I was sitting in front of my desk at home, right in front of my laptop. I had followed all the steps to finish the process of signing up, and all I needed to do was search for his screen name. The problem is...I don't know where to start. His screen name wasn't difficult to find, and once I opened the chat screen on his page, I froze.

I let my mind linger on every possible conversation starter I have used or heard over the years. I came up blank, cursing myself for not being very observant. It had always been natural to stir up conversations with people around me. Now, when it's my childhood friend, hero, and crush we're talking about...Well, that's a different story.

I was very desperate to find something that would be casual enough, yet showed that I still cared. But, what? I fingered over the keyboard, tracing the words 'I miss you' with my index finger. Never will I have the guts to push down on those eight letters and hit send. Never.

Instead I wrote a quick two sentence greeting. Sweet, short, and simple:

Hi, it's Melanie Sommers. You're my new online tutor, right?

I let my finger roam over the 'Enter' key, scared out of my wits to send the message. Should I? Maybe it's a stupid idea. Can I? Yes. Do I want to? Yes. Will I? Probably not.

What if he ignores me? What if he doesn't care? What if.

My thoughts were cut short by my accidentally pushing down on the 'Enter' key. Damn. This is the moment I completely shut off into panic mode. The screen flashed with a small rectangle and bold black letters saying 'Message being sent' with a small blue loading bar underneath it.

"NO! no, no, no, no! I didn't mean it! I take it back!" I yelled while harshly grabbing my computer screen, shock overtaking my features. Then, since I'm such a genius I decided to pound down on random keys, hoping that the message will magically cancel itself. No such luck, the next window scared me more than the first: 'Message sent.'

"Noooooo," I groaned, falling into my desk with my arms under my head. All my dreams...crushed. Society will now reject me as I have failed the entire female species with my embarrassing antics. I must now run away into the forest and become a hermit.

I must've stayed there for a good five minutes dwelling on how to build my little shack in a far off forest. Why am I so completely in another planet when things like this happen? Why him anyway? If it was either Jon or Jalissa I was messaging I would have been calm and collected. With this guy, though, I might as well throw away all that confidence I possess.

'BEEEEEEP' a shrill tone was produced from my computer.

 One new message.

I quickly sat up straight, opening the tab with the red flag over it. I read over it, a smile replacing the grimace. It said:

Hello! Nice to speak with you again, Melanie. Let's start the tutoring. Okay?

He sent me a message! He remembers me! My face was a full blown grin, dimples and all. I replied as fast as my fingers could type with:

Sure. Let the tutoring begin:)

After that he began to ask me random math questions, to supposedly test what level I was at. Not once did he swerve away from the algebra questions—unless I asked him something out of topic. This disappointed me a bit, but in the end he disappointed me even more when he had finished his questionnaire, he logged off after writing 'bye.'

I just stared at the screen. Reading the whole conversation over and over, noticing that every time I would ask him a non-math related question he would reply with a quick answer then continue with the tutoring.