What If It Goes Right?

This is a tale about hard lessons learned. It is a story about love, in some form and about chances. Taking chances, or namely, not taking them.

Whilst I was studying at university, during my first year, I developed an enormous crush on a mutual friend of one of my school friends from London. I went to Leeds and there was a large haul of South West London school leavers who descended upon the city, only making the experience better. Not only were you constantly meeting new people but you also had the comfort of familiar faces from home at virtually every turn. Now this felt like the crush to end all crushes, I fell hard and can recall vividly the first night that I met the boy in question. It was a Wednesday night at a club in town, specialising in 2 for 1 pina coladas and commercial house music. I remember that I had made a last minute decision to meet my friend there as it wasn’t a venue that I normally frequented and now that I think of it, I don’t think I ever returned. So in my mind, our meeting was clearly a case of fate intervening.

When I first set eyes on him, there was no denying that I fancied him. He was tall, tick. Funny, tick. Loved dancing, tick. And just generally had a brilliant, warm energy exuding from him that made him instantly attractive. When I discovered that he too was from South West London, I was thrilled. We danced a lot and I can remember him drunkenly spinning me around the dance floor under the red lights of the darkened club. We swapped numbers at the end of the night, a ruse on my behalf as I casually dropped in that I was driving back to London that weekend if he needed a lift. A cunning plan to enable me to spend more time getting to know him, four hours in the car together felt very appealing. Over the weeks to come we spent time together in groups and on our own and as we started to realise the number of mutual friends that we shared, the nights out and groups of people began to increase. The best one was a regular Monday night event when the boyfriend of one of my best friends from London travelled up to DJ and we used to go every week without fail. Some of my favourite but also frustrating memories were the after hours parties we used to have at my university halls. We would come back to continue the night and I can remember sitting on my bed, drunkenly chatting with him into the early hours, me wanting so badly for him to make a move, to touch my leg or my back or even better, kiss me. The chemistry was always strong but for some reason neither of us ever initiated anything. In any normal scenario I would have assumed that this chemistry was a fabrication in my head and he wasn’t interested as nothing had happened but then at the naive young age of nineteen all I could fixate on was asking myself why did he continue to initiate coming back to my flat after nights out if there was no interest on his part? To this day, I will never know. When we were both back in London for the Christmas holidays he invited me to meet him for drinks on Christmas Eve, my very favourite night of the year and I cursed myself for the hangover that I was suffering with from the night before that forced me to stay at home. If only I could say that was the only missed opportunity that occurred in our time knowing each other.

The peak of our relationship occurred on February the 14th of the following year. By this time I had made the decision that nothing was going to happen otherwise it would have done so by now but just as is always the way, as soon as you write something off, it rears its head again. For me, this came in the form of a text message — “Happy Valentine’s Day!” Well this was nice, a great message to begin the day with. We started a back and forth communication and moments later my phone was ringing, it was him! We hadn’t really spoken on the phone before so this was pretty exciting. He explained to me that his friend from London who was dating one of our mutual friends was arriving shortly in the city centre train station as a Valentine’s surprise but the issue was that he didn’t know her address, he’d never visited before. No problem, I knew where she lived and had a car — I would pick up my friend and we would head into town together to pick up his friend and drop him off at his girlfriend’s. A much better plan for an otherwise uneventful day designed to indulge loved up couples which being single at the time, didn’t do much for me. So I rushed to get myself together, jumped into my car and headed to collect him.

I wish I could say that the following turn of events ran smoothly but as with every overly dramatised teenage fantasy, you can imagine it wasn’t the case, the jaunt didn’t start well. First there was terrible traffic — EVERYWHERE. The kind of traffic where there are no shortcuts or back doubles that you can take, every turn and corner was blocked. I obviously relished the opportunity for more chat with my crush but I also quickly realised what a pointless exercise this would be if we couldn’t actually do the job we had set out for. We were already late but it wasn’t the end of the world, his friend had left himself plenty of time and was happy to wait. However, that soon changed. Suddenly, out of the bonnet of my car started pouring thick fumes of dark smoke along with an undeniable burning smell that seemed to be increasing by the second. My car was old and had experienced some issues before but nothing quite as bad as this. To make matters worse there were so many cars everywhere that there wasn’t even an opportunity to pull out of the traffic and pull in somewhere safely. As it continued, now with the addition of a very suspicious sound coming from the engine and an accompanying warning light on my dashboard I realised that it was the radiator overheating — fuck. What should I do now? My friend wasn’t a driver and didn’t know much about cars but it was clear that we needed water. So he quickly called his boy to tell him that we had to abort mission — he would get a taxi and just have to call his girlfriend for the address — not ideal but we had bigger issues on our hands! So off went my crush looking for a solution, returning swiftly with four large bottles of Evian to feed the coolant in the engine. I was quite impressed. When we were able to find a spot to duck out of the heavy queue of traffic looking like something out of a 90s US rap video, smoke billowing all around us, we poured the water in carefully and waited until slowly but surely the smoke started to fade away.

After the car ordeal was over the time had come for me to drop him home and head back to mine to get ready for a night out with some of my other guy friends. A party that I had no real interest in going to but hey, today had already been one of my best ever valentine’s days so whatever happened next was simply a bonus. We pulled up outside of his halls and next came the defining moment of this tale, the climax of the narrative and to this day one of my biggest regrets. It sounds unremarkable but he asked me if I wanted to go up to his flat to have a drink. A simple drink but in my mind could this have been a more perfect end to a more perfect day? Despite the drama of the car, we had spent close to four hours together talking and laughing and obviously my crush had grown exponentially. As I have already mentioned I had no real interest in the party I was going to that night and he had already mentioned that he wasn’t doing anything so who knew what one drink could turn into, and it was valentine’s day after all, the most romantic (debatable) day of the year. You would think I would have jumped at the chance. But did I? Reader, I did not. I politely declined. Not because I didn’t want to. Not because I had somewhere better to be. But because I hadn’t (shakes head), washed my hair that morning. I said no to a drink with my biggest crush ever, on valentines night because I hadn’t washed my hair. I am officially awarding myself the trophy for the worst decision ever made. So I said my goodbyes, he got out of the car and we went our separate ways. And that was that. But the worst part of this story is that we just sort of drifted a bit after that. Not because of it but I think that it was almost the pinnacle moment in our friendship. We’d already had many nights when it felt like something should have happened but didn’t and perhaps this was our final opportunity to see if something might. The next time I saw him was months later, back in London and he had a girlfriend. That was it, I had missed my opportunity. I was crushed.

If I learnt any lesson from this scenario it was to take chances and don’t let opportunity pass you by. Now, nearly twenty years on, my crush is happily married and has a young baby. I actually saw him recently in a very unexpected scenario. Whilst preparing for a high stakes event at my last job, I walked into the room where the event was taking place and had to do a double take. Standing before me, there he was, still looking as lovely as he always did, just a little older. His familiar warm smile beamed with recognition and we shared a warm hug and a brief chat. I was very surprised to see him there in what seemed like a deliberate choice from the universe because the strange thing was, I had been thinking of him just a few days before for the first time in a very long time. He popped into my head randomly and I genuinely think that it was the universe preparing me for the fact that I was going to see him and also more importantly to use this sighting to bring her lesson to me into sharp focus — don’t miss chances over ridiculous reasons like not having washed your hair! I’m not saying that there would have necessarily been any real potential between my crush and I but I am fairly certain that we could have shared some great experiences even just for a short time. Now I will never know and I wish I could say that it is a scenario that I have forgotten about but it is quite the opposite, it regularly comes into my head. So remember life is for living. So wear that best item in your wardrobe, make the effort, go on that date, live fully and say yes a bit more. Because who knows what opportunities you might miss if you don’t. Our time is precious and limited, let’s use it well.