Perfect First Date
What should you be like on your first ever date, does anyone have a definitive answer? Cool and casual; or hot and sexy? Perfume or deodorant? Cheerful conversationalist; or the unattainable diva? Should you talk while eating or not? Should you offer to pay or not? And at the end of it, should you expect to be kissed or not?
All these questions kept haunting Naina throughout the day. And right now, she felt like throwing herself out the window when the tenth dress she tried on got rejected by her wing-woman Rumi. Rumi kept wanting to make her look sexier, but Naina was like ‘Nah!’ to everything that made her look better than her original unattractive, unsexy inner self. She believed in consistency between packaging and the commodity.
She had marginally won by a solid wall of an argument which went like this:
“What if he doesn’t recognise me with all this? Huh? Or what if in future he’ll only recognise me like this? And what if he expects our future babies to look like this? He could sue me for fraud, you know?”
The exasperated Rumi simply threw her hands up, “Okay! No fake eyelashes. Happy now?”
Rumi had been trying to set her bestie up since she herself got steady in a relationship, in which Naina had played a major supporting role. Happily settled herself, she decided to take on the magnanimous responsibility of her happiness, unrelenting in her efforts to set her up. She finally succeeded when a colleague’s single male cousin enquired about her after an office party where she had gone with her. Naina vaguely remembered the big buff guy from the party and thought he didn’t look gross for once and Rumi’s joy was through the roof. And all that joy showed on Naina’s face and body tonight! (Before you pervs get any ideas, she just dressed her up fancy and put fifteen layers of makeup on her face, nothing more.)
But it was already too much for the socially awkward Naina. Even without the pressure of sitting in front of a total stranger, having a conversation, AND sharing a meal, there were the concerns of “shorts shouldn’t be visible under the dress”, and “food shouldn’t be stuck in the teeth”, and “try not to snort while laughing”. At this point she was just hoping to get through it without complete mortification.
The Date and his cousin, Rumi’s colleague Isabella, arrived right on time. The big buff guy wore a fitting red T-shirt that was a size too small and offered a preview of his naked body, and had his hair styled into an airplane wing. His cousin who looked more normal, wore a collared black and white top with black jeans and had short bob-cut hair. Even before Isabella could spot them and wave hello, the Date was already striding in their direction with a large ear-to-ear grin plastered on his face.
“At least someone looks happy about this date!” Rumi whispered in Naina’s ear, evidently pleased.
Isabella had to catch her breath first, as she caught up with her over-excited cousin and finally got a chance to introduce everyone. However, much to everyone’s surprise, the Date did not look like he was ‘pleased to meet’ them. Instead he looked from Rumi to Naina and back to Rumi in a just-seen-a-ghost-and-shit-was-real expression and simply caught Isabella by the arm and took her aside for a private discussion.
“What is going on?” Rumi wondered aloud, but Naina could already guess it.
The guy mismatched the names to the faces, and ended up on a date with the wrong girl.
Her decked and painted self being the ‘wrong girl’.
Mortification, complete!
However, unexpectedly, after a few minutes of side-bar, the opposition returned with smiling faces, indicating that nothing was the matter and the date could officially commence. Naina still had her doubts but well…. At least she didn’t have to actively try and impress this guy anymore. She could simply enjoy her meal.
Rumi and Isabella, the ‘two match-making aunties’ as Naina had started calling them in her head by now, moved to a different table in another corner of the restaurant, in order to give them “some space”.
The Date asked her casual questions, related to work and interests. She replied to him appropriately and asked the same in return, and voila! They found they had nothing at all in common and were already at the very end of their conversation, exactly five minutes into their date. After a few minutes of comfortably awkward silence, the Date spoke again,
“Your friend.. Uhh Rumi, is it? What does she do?”
HAHH! Now he’s showing his true heart. Naina was equal parts smug about how right she was and equal parts surprised at his cousin’s skills in convincing him to attend a date he didn’t even want.
She replied, “She does the same as your cousin. Since they’re colleagues, you know?”
The Date laughed, not at all embarrassed and kept asking, “Yeah, I heard a lot about her from Isabella. She even said that she was in a relationship. How nice!”
Naina, with a dead expression, “Yupp…”
He kept smiling, but she could see the welling up ocean of disappointment in his eyes as he lowered them towards his food.
She thought, “Awww….”
This time Naina took the initiative and spoke, “But you know, you and her have a lot in common.”
It was as if she told someone the report of their prostate cancer was only a case of itchy balls.
“Really?!”
“Yeah… totally.” And she went on to list all of his hobbies and made them hers. The Date kept going, “Really?” and “That too?” and “So crazy!” the whole time. Naina smiled at him in encouragement, feeling that she had outdone herself in so many ways.
After about ten minutes of excited discussion on this topic, Naina received a text.
Rumi: Looks like all’s going well. *wink* *wink*
An evil smile spread on her face and she replied : Splendid!
She put her phone back down and turned to face her Date again. She said, “Sorry, it was just Rumi telling me that she’s off to see her boyfriend downstairs.”
He turned his head around with the speed of light, zupp! towards where the other two people were sitting and he did really see Rumi wave goodbye at Isabella and walk out. His gaze followed her till she disappeared from his sight. Such a heartbreaking scene!
After a few minutes of watching the Date depressingly toss around the food on the plate with his head lowered, Naina decided to give him amnesty.
“You know, I think you should go after her.”
The Date looked up like a death-row inmate given, not just amnesty, but also a fully paid trip to Disneyland. He thanked her sincerely and hurriedly, and just dashed out the door like his butt was on fire. His dash turned a lot of heads in the restaurant, and one particular bob-cut head that belonged to cousin Isabella actually got up to run after him, calling his name aloud.
Naina smiled at an evil plot well executed and proceeded to enjoy the rest of her meal with a satisfaction only single-hood could offer. But only a few bites later, she was interrupted again, this time it was the Date’s cousin, alone, looking extremely apologetic.
“I’m so so sorry on behalf of my idiot cousin. I really don’t know what his mother smoked when she had him.”
Naina couldn’t help but laugh at this. She never expected Isabella to be so different from her cousin. She assured her that it was alright and she was doing just fine by herself. And she repeatedly asked her to not feel bad about her.
Ultimately, Isabella successfully invited herself over to Naina’s table with the bait of ‘apology’ drinks, and the two had their meal in much more pleasantness than from before. Once finished they walked out of the restaurant and alighted the mall escalator going down, all the while chatting happily.
Suddenly they were distracted by a commotion from the ground floor of the mall, as a crowd had gathered around two people fighting, or more accurately one person savagely beating up another person while the said another person kept shouting incomprehensible declarations.
“What is going on?” It was the second time this evening that this question was posed; and the second time Naina knew the answer very well, but chose to stay silent.
As they walked to a lower floor Isabella could easily recognise her cousin being the one getting beat up, and wanted to rush to help him, but Naina caught her arm and held her back.
“Are you sure you want to get involved?”
Isabella was struck by her question and realised that she really couldn’t get involved because ultimately it was her cousin who was extremely in the wrong and had already made her lose a lot of face, more than once, in front of her colleague.
By the time they leisurely made their way to the scene of action, it was already over and the crowd had dispersed. On the side, the big buff ‘Date’ was sitting dispiritedly, with bumps all over the side of his face, while Rumi passed on wet tissues to her bigger and buff-er boyfriend Jijo who had just beaten him up and was currently crouching next to him tending his wounds.
It was the hard-shell-with-soft-core brother-in-law Naina was extremely proud of and absolutely adored.
After regrouping, everyone left the mall together slowly, maintaining the sombre atmosphere of a collective ‘forgive and forget’.
Watching the two depart, Rumi couldn’t help but lament to Naina, “I’m sorry about your first date.”
All her faith in her own matchmaking skills had been crushed to dust this day. She expected to be given an earful of taunts at her foolish insistence till the day she died. But her worries turned out to be unfounded.
Naina said, “Actually I had a really good time!”
Both Rumi and Jijo turned to look at her in bewilderment.
Naina kept staring forward, ignoring them and spoke again, “In fact, I think I should properly express my thanks.”
Isabella had just finished deciding between scolding her idiot cousin or consoling his broken heart, when someone shouted “Wait” from behind them. The very second she turned around to see who it was…. that someone had already thrown herself at her and kissed her.
Isabella looked at Naina with wide eyes of shock and disbelief, but the other only smiled and said, “Thank you for everything tonight.” and turned around and left to be with her friends again.
And that, my friends, is how a perfect first date sometimes looks like.
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Author’s notes on Names:
A Rumi is the roomy;
Jijo is the Jiju (brother-in law);
Isabella is a bella;
And Naina is saying Nahi and Na (no) to the Date.
