#ILoveYou #YouLoveHer

#HowDoYouSeeMe

Tia

All my life, everybody has seen me a certain way. What do you see? - Lena, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Ever since I stopped talking to Laura, or is it Laura stopped talking to me? I've been eating lunch alone at the office.

But this lunch time, this other guy, I think his name is Jake, approached me.

"Hey, do you want to grab lunch?" he asked.

Don't he usually get lunch with another group of people?

"Um, sure," I replied, not quite sure why.

"I had to finish an important email, and then they grabbed lunch without me," he explained, even though I didn't ask aloud.

I nodded, and we proceeded to walk to the cafeteria downstairs quietly. There is people person and there is the opposite of people person. That person being me.

"You know, I've been working here for almost a year and I don't think we had one conversation with one another," he said.

"Really?" I asked.

"Nope," he replied. "Because I don't know one thing about you that wasn't told to me by one person or the other."

"What did they say about me?" I asked, genuinely curious.

"Nothing interesting," he answered.

Nothing interesting, as in, he doesn't think that I'm interesting? Or...?

His facial expression changed. He suddenly looked amused. Is it something I said? But I haven't replied to his answer yet. Or maybe my face did.

"I knew it," he exclaimed.

"Know what?" I asked. "You look as if you just found out some juicy gossip."

"I did," he replied. "In a way," he added.

"How so?" I challenged.

"Nobody can be that perfect," he answered. "That good. That nice," he added, as if nice is a bad word.

"Of course not," I replied. I'm certainly not, if that is what he was insinuating. "I never claimed to be," I added.

"But you do try your best to pretend," he pointed out.

He has no idea how accurate his observation is.

We arrived at the cafeteria, ordered our food and then found a table to sit down.

"Why would you say that?" I asked.

"I don't know," he answered. "Gut feeling," he added.

"You just said that you don't know one thing about me," I reminded him.

"I trust my gut," he insisted.

And then we proceeded to eat our food silently.

I honestly don't know why I agreed to grab lunch with this obnoxious guy. But deep down, I know, that he is right about me.

-

"What do you think of me?" I asked Nate during one of our regular board game dates.

"Is that a trick question?" he asked with an eyebrow raised.

"No," I replied.

"And since when did you care what other people think about you?" he asked.

Always? "I didn't ask about what other people think. I asked you," I answered instead.

"Well," he considered. "I must've seen something I liked or I wouldn't be here, right?" he asked teasingly.

"Rather, you didn't see anything that you didn't like," I corrected.

"No," he insisted. "When you love someone, you see all their flaws, but you learn to embrace them."

"Did you just say that you love me?" I asked taken aback.

"Yes, I did," he replied calmly.

Nathaniel

Tia looked at me a little shell shocked. Is it because this is the first time that I actually used the L word?

"You don't have to say it back," I said, observing her gaping mouth and her face, trying to very hard to come up with a reply.

"What flaws?" she asked instead.

"Seriously?" I replied. "That is definitely a trick question and I'm not answering."

Mich said that when you love someone, yes, you accept them flaws and all. But when you fall out of love, even the tiniest flaw gets amplified.

What was once cute can turn into the most annoying thing. I thought of Mich and all her annoying little expressions. And her insisting to be her authentic self around me. Unfortunately, authentic, to her, means evil.

Tia haven't replied to my retort, instead she turned her attention back to our game.

I followed her cue, truly afraid to say the wrong thing.

Michelle

I know exactly who I am and how I portray myself to different people. Even if that means I save my niceties for complete strangers and have no filter when I'm with my friends.

Tia however...

"Why is she suddenly questioning how she's perceived?" I asked Nate, who just filled me in how his most recent date with Tia.

We all know that she's the nice one. The pretty one. The perfect one. Nate never fails to remind me of that. And that is why Tia is who he ended up with. Who he picked at the end of the day.

Never mind that fact that I never asked to be in his pool to begin with.

He shrugged.

"Oh I also told her that I loved her, and she replied by literally gaping at me, like a gold fish," he added nonchalantly.

Wait, what?