About Yesterday

Two hours since we have been sitting at this table, a hundred and twenty minutes and counting. He keeps stealing glances at me but looks away whenever my eyes turn towards him. I am dying to get a bold look into his eyes, there is a craving building up inside me, a yearning for that chance to lock eyes with him and search into his soul. I want to get to know his truth from deep within and I need him to create a path for me but every single time I get close to those two openings, he shifts and looks away. 

I want to get to know why he is so protective and cautious, why he is so swift to hide. It seems like he has mastered his dodging skills in a long time because for the two clocking hours that we have shared physical space, I have not even gotten to catch sight of the color of his iris. In my last attempt to get to him, I momentarily lay my palm on his left hand and gently rubs it, with hopes that my physical touch might send him to finally lock eyes but he hardly acknowledges my gesture. 

He settles his gaze under the table instead and I begin to feel that he is surveying my shoe size, which makes me insecure and so I drag my feet a bit and he adjusts his gaze. It is tough being a female with feet large enough to fit into a size seven pair of sneakers and it doesn't help that the only available shoe options are either hideously large, very expensive, or put you closer to owning more unisex shoes than you desire. His adjusted gaze lands on the cigarette pack he has been knocking on the table for about half an hour now. I silently accept my defeat and shift my focus to my phone.

Things are beginning to get weird, my ice cream sundae is turning into an ugly brown smear at the bottom of the cup and his urge for lighting up a cigarette rises with every strike he does on the table with his cigarette pack. He senses the tension and tries to create some calm with a chat but before we can settle on a subject of conversation, he snaps his fingers like an awakening sign, fiddles into the pockets of his leather jacket, and reaches for a pair of sunglasses. He puts them on then goes ahead to propose a beer pong game for later with his buddies. 

I detest his suggestion. The thought of submerging myself into an activity that defies sanitation on many levels and puts me in a possible position of gulping flat beer is not going to do any good to the cultured personality I have spent the last two hours building. Also, living with the thought that his friends might forever refer to me as the "girl Jimmy brought to beer pong" is not necessarily the kind of icing I need for my cake, so I build a defense to avoid the beer pong talk altogether.

"Thanks but no, that's so juvenile."

He finds the statement openly humiliating. No. Actually. That is an unjustifiable understatement. Jimmy gets wild! He pulls his chair closer to the table, leans in with his hands tightly clutched, and for the very first time, sets his view straight into my eyes, with his sunglasses on of course, then barks at me.

"Juvenile! You just described an activity my friends and I do to unwind as juvenile?" Long, tension-filled pause. "I don't mean to question your reasoning but since you are mature enough to classify a game that involves alcoholic drinks as juvenile, maybe you can also justify your maturity on the way you consume your mussels. Oh! You think I didn't notice the way you were clumsy with that seafood you ordered? What makes you think that I am here to entertain your insults anyway?"

I cannot allow him to go on. He is threatening my temporary cultured image before it's even due and he is making it difficult for me to pretend not to care about the attention he is drawing to us. I feel compelled to give a comeback so I fix my back straight on my seat, takes a deep breath then responds.

"You have gone through a lot of trouble defending one trivial activity. But you are right about the mussels, there's a background story to that. Every time I meet someone new and food is involved, I order something foreign or something I have never eaten before so I can get to remember them by it so excuse my clumsiness. Like in this case, you get to be the Mussels guy. I also have a..."

"Do not call me that!"

"What?"

"Don't call me mussels."

"Okay then, maybe this time I'll shake off the rules a bit and go with beer pong guy instead. Besides, metaphorically speaking, you don't have enough muscles to make you fit for Mussels guy. Furthermore, your flabby belly qualifies you more as the beer pong guy."

I can now tell that Jimmy is not going to take my comeback lying down so I brace myself for anything he decides to throw my way. Before I can figure out how to dodge his next bullet, he violently pushes his chair back, grabs his pack of cigarettes then storms out of the restaurant without a word. He leaves me anxious and confused. I can not even begin to sum up his bill and mine because the figures that are playing in my head result to an amount I am not comfortable parting with.

With my mind racing and convinced that he is not coming back, I decide to make my first rescue call. As I rush through my phone book in distress, I notice a figure hanging above me and I pray to God that it is not our nice waiter, Ben bringing forth the bill. I pretend to be busy on my phone with the hopes that the figure will go away but instead it taps me on the shoulder and speaks in an indifferent tone.

"What money transfer mode do you prefer?"

Our eyes lock for the first time and I finally notice the beauty in his brown eyes. I almost hug him but my intuition reminds me of how I was mean to him earlier and the stench of cigarette smoke emanating from his breath also draws me back. I am delighted that he is back and even more because he is offering to pay for the bill. I type my number on my phone then shows it to him and a few seconds later, my phone chimes with an amount that covers the bill and a little more, which I am guessing should cover for my taxi back home. I smile at him and say thank you. He looks at me and says the unexpected .

"I knew your real name wasn't Jenny." 

He smiles, he is beautiful when he does. He is right too about my name. I had coined it the first day we met and exchanged contacts at the mall because I thought it would be cute to have him know that we had matching names; Jimmy and Jenny. I never got to look into his eyes then too because he was wearing those pair of sunglasses. 

"Is Jimmy your real name?" I ask in an attempt to achieve humor even though I already read his name from the alert message and it is something very specific to his foreign origin.

"How about we hold that until next time? I hope there is a time so I can make it up to you, sorry about today." And I find myself hoping that there will be a next time.