A Little Big Crush

Dinner for Two

Dinah didn't hear from him regularly. After their magical date on the beach, he contacted her few times in between. There were so many instances her fingers nervously hovered over the keyboard, dying to text him and ask to see him.

But she never did. She learned early on in life that the man is the one they did the pursuing and that she could ultimately ruin everything by sounding too desperate. Besides, nothing screamed desperation more than constantly texting a guy and being rejected.

Pretty soon, that beach date became a distant memory- but still one of the best dates she'd been on in a long time.

One late afternoon a couple of weeks later, as Dinah sat at her desk and furiously wrote comments on a student's paper, a ping sounded from her phone. She leaned over to peer at the screen and saw Dario's name appear.

Dario: Hi

Dinah rolled her eyes. Yep, that's him just popping up out of the blue. She told herself not to respond to him, completely ignore him, but... she couldn't.

Dinah: No, absolutely not.

Dario: What do you mean?

Dinah: Absolutely not. Not interested. I haven't seen you in weeks. You keep avoiding meeting me.

Dario: I'm not avoiding you. Things just happened.

Dinah: You could've told me. You could've said that you couldn't make it. We made a plan to hang out at Starbucks. That was the last time we were going to meet and you bailed.

Dario: I don't remember that. We never confirmed.

Dinah: Never confirmed? Unbelievable. I'm done. Don't want to talk to you anymore.

Dario: Do you have fun with me?

Dinah: What?

Dario: Do you have a good time?

Dinah: You always ask that. Who cares about that  if you are unreliable?

Dario: I just want to talk. Maybe we can see each other tonight.

Dinah groaned in frustration, holding on to her red ballpoint pen tightly. It's always the same thing with him.

Dinah: Maybe being the key word. It's never set in stone. I fully expect you to cancel on me the last minute.

Dario: I'm not going to cancel on u.

Dinah: Don't wanna risk it. Going out with a friend.

Dario: Guy friend?

She chose that moment to put the phone down and continue checking her students' work. Let him think it over and believe that she was going out with another guy.

Dinah grabbed the phone again. But instead of answering Dario, she tapped her good friend Christine's Facebook messenger chat and typed in...

Dinah: Hey! How are you?

Christine: Good, girl. Just here at work finishing up something for a presentation I have to do . Ugh.

Dinah: Damn, I was gonna ask if you wanted to go to Happy Hour tonight.

Christine: Hmmm... Maybe I can go. I need to finish this PowerPoint but maybe we can meet at 7?

Dinah: Yes, that's perfect. I've got some guy trouble.

Christine: What happened?

Dinah: Dario contacted me out of the blue.

Christine: Is that the shady guy? What did he want? Did he want to apologize for being an ass?