Flirting Over Coffee

That day on the elevator with Luke and my friends was epic. Luke said hi to me and the legendary teasing went off like clockwork. I was blushing beyond belief which only intensified the teasing even more. Seriously, who would even believe we weren’t still stuck in high school? My friends basically still behave like kids. With adult vocabularies. Haha! When at last we got to the ground floor, everyone started piling out and left Luke and me to ourselves.

“Sorry about that. My friends are really silly sometimes,” I said.

“Can I take you out for coffee or something?” he blurted out all of a sudden, disregarding my embarrassed apology and completely taking me off guard.

“Like a date or something?” I asked, and how very silly of me.

He laughed. (Somewhat nervously, if you ask me.) “Yeah, something like that,” he answered, his stupidly cute grin not leaving his face. I couldn’t say no to that!

And now here I was, spending a weekend afternoon off of studying with an insanely cute guy. I was wearing a cute peach flowy dress that fell short of my knees with my hair up on a messy bun and a pair of beige wedge sandals and he was wearing a grey shirt, dark jeans, and black Chucks. Exams? What exams? (Although admittedly, I had brought study materials with me, hahaha! Because I’m a nerd like that.)

“Sorry, I didn’t realize you had exams this week. You could’ve told me,” he part-apologized to and part-blamed me. It was probably the third time today. He apparently only found out last night from the elevator posts and he didn’t have my number to confirm if the date was okay with my schedule. But really it was. We were just hanging out at this coffee shop near school, which was literally packed with other lower level students from my college, study materials all spread out in front of them. I was able to score a small table for the two of us since I came in early to study for a little bit.

“It’s just like a study break, really,” I told him. Luke was sitting opposite me and our calves kept brushing on each other’s in our cramped space. He smiled shyly before taking a sip from his iced mocha, and you wouldn’t think it was him who had the guts to ask me out. My mind immediately went back to the first time I saw him: he had been sipping from a coffee tumbler then with a smile on his face, too.

Luke was a breath of fresh air, in my opinion. I did not have to talk to him too much about medicine and stuff, and I found that relaxing. Almost everyone I know beyond medical school always had so many medical things to ask whenever I was around: “I have a lump, is this cancer?”, “Can I take this medication with this other one?”, “How many more years are you gonna study it?”, those sorts of things. The conversation Luke and I had that day was so lighthearted and relaxed as if we had been doing that for years.

I found out that I was right, he was indeed an IT specialist who worked at the seventh floor. He was relatively newly hired (still just a couple months) and he previously worked at a smaller company that went belly-up just last month. I complimented his smart strategic move then, and he smiled saying it was all just a stroke of luck: he never knew the old company was running out of gas and it only so happened that a friend had connections with HR that his name was put forward once an opening came through. He mentioned he was kind of worried when he first started working for the hospital since he only ever worked with a small company before, but that he was adjusting with his new work environment quite fine.

He also talked about the first time he saw me: I was getting out of a cab in a great rush (no surprise there), although it was still 5 minutes before 8 in his watch. He remembered because, apparently, I almost bumped into him had he not gotten out of my way immediately, and he had to wait for another elevator because I closed the doors on him. Talk about embarrassing.

“Oh my God, I am so sorry about that! I am never myself when I am in a hurry!” I apologized profusely.

“Nah, it’s fine,” he waved my apologies away. “Employees get to time-in at the hospital ground floor, so you never made me late and there’s no harm done,” he finished with an amused smile, both hands palm up and gesturing with a shrug. How was it even possible for him to get any cuter?

Oh, and we talked about me as well. And I was quite embarrassed to admit that I lived only two blocks away and still had to take a cab. He laughed it off, shaking his head while muttering “rich kids” at the same time. And then I had to explain.

You see, even though I study medicine and essentially everyone in my batch are filthy rich socialites (as is really expected with a top-notch school such as mine), I myself do not come from a wealthy background. My family belonged in middle class and my closet have only ever met Forever21, H&M, and Zara at the best of times. I was an academic scholar (my parents would never be able to afford sending me to medical school along with everything else) and they are barely making ends meet to pay my rent and send me monthly allowances while they send my other three siblings to private schools. Bottomline: I am not rich, and that had to be clear.

Luke seemed taken aback with the passion in my clarification, but he merely shrugged it off and said sorry instead. I had to ask what he was apologizing for and he admitted he didn’t really know, he just felt like he had to, and we both laughed at that.“I am not rich either, so we’re on equal footing here,” he joked.

All in all, I had a great study break with Luke and I was looking forward to seeing him again. He walked me to my apartment building and was cool enough to offer a second date after my exams instead, which I found really, really sweet. Oh, and by the way, we kissed.I was never one for kissing on the first date but I thought those lips weren’t just good for smirking, and I was right. We’ve been texting ever since.