Adventures Of A Female Loner

The Coward & The Unicorn pt. 5

"She's my childhood friend". My heart started to inflate again. 'Friend' not 'Girlfriend'. "I'm taking her to the matric dance". My heart deflated. "I brought her to school so she could meet all my friends." My heart just kept crushing inwards. Before I could respond, his date came out. "I guess, I have to go. See you." And he waved goodbye and walked away with her.

You know the chapter in the book where the main character realises their mistakes and goes after their true love. Those are the best moments, but I didn't go after him until much later, and he found someone else. I had never felt that sadness before. The kind of sadness where you tried all sorts of things to get the attention of the guy you like, but they like someone else more than you. I couldn't even talk to my friends about it because they still didn't like him. So I just kept this all to myself, and channelled my energy into my school work and organising the best matric dance ever.

The matric dance day came. I got to skip a whole day's worth of classes to help setup the venue before the event. The committee had a lot of fun raising money for the event, and we were finally going to see our vision come to life. I had so much fun with my friends, we all took a commemorable photo. The day was great, and then it was the evening. All the executive committee members were invited to the night. I wore a black dress with some high heels. I wore blue eyeshadow and blow dried my hair out and put on an Alice band. We arrived at the event early so we could greet the matrics as they entered the foyer. We took turns. I made sure to choose the turn where I wouldn't have to be face to face with Daniel as he walked in with his date. I did get to see suitor D come through with his date and she was gorgeous. She was an ex-student of the school, and she was in a pure white crystal dress with a deep v-neck cut showing her abundant cleavage. I was happy for him :). I think he had a fetish for asian girls though because she was also asian hahahaha. He was the shocker of the evening. Everyone was talking about them and they walked in. Good for him :).

Then I saw Daniel arrive in the distance. He wore a brown suit that matched the colour of his hair. His hair was slightly pulled back with a little bit of gel. He always looked great and he looked great this evening too. He extended his hand towards the limo's door he was coming out of and a deinty hand held on to it. His date was also wearing white, and she wore a dangling headband with little ornaments to match the roaring twenties theme of the night. She was much shorter than him and she wore kitten heels. He was holding her like she was a precious kitten. I left the foyer. Yes, I was jealous. Prickly jealous.

Everyone settled in, and the heads of the committee had to stand up in front of everyone and give a speech. I was one of them, but I refused to give a speech so I just stood there. I locked eyes with Daniel for a bit, but looked away because I couldn't look at him with her. It was dinner time, we all led our way to the buffet table, I was dishing up all the things I liked, and Daniel joined behind me. "You look beautiful," he said. What was I hearing? Huh? My mind went blank. "Thanks," I responded. "You, you too." What kind of response was that? I was so confused. I quickly made my way to the table. All the grade 11s were chatting amongst themselves while eating, and I thought nothing much of the out-of-blue compliment. I shoved it in the back of my mind. I wasn't special to him. He asked someone else. He didn't talk to me in real life. He didn't start to greet me again. I did. I was the only one with the feelings. He was just being polite.

Afterwards, the DJ started playing dance music. People made their way to the dancefloor. I took loads of pictures. We took part in the dancing too, and we were having so much fun. I forgot about Daniel. We took photos of the place, and then we all went outside to take photos of each other next to the limousines as if they belonged to us and those photos were hilarious. Dessert was then ready to be served. We ate again, and the slow music started to play for the couples. I might have seen wrongly, but Daniel was hovering around my table of grade 11 girls. He chickened out and disappeared. We sat for a bit and had a few cool drinks. About 10 minutes later, it was like the second day of high school all over again.

Daniel walked with confidence all the way to me at my table. All the girls at the table stopped their conversations and locked their eyes on him. He extended his hand out towards me, and asked "Would you like to dance with me?". I could feel my heart beating at 100x speed. This was happening all over again. He was looking at me with those big brown eyes like in junior high all over again. I nodded and said "yes" :). He took my hand and we walked together passed the crowd and to the dancefloor. I could feel the stares, but all I could see was him. It was the best feeling ever. Somewhere in his stupid heart, he still liked me. Still liked me enough to do it all over and ask me in front of everybody to be with him. I was so happy my feelings weren't one-sided. We got to the dancefloor and he put my arms around his neck and his hands around my waist. We were looking straight into each other's eyes. This was not a movie. This was happening in real life. We were in each other's arms with no care for anyone else in the room.