The Look

A couple of days ago I received a message from someone I once knew. When I saw the name, I gasped out aloud. This is the chap I met while on orientation programme at the seaside camp in summer way back when. We were in the same team and I remember us exchanging assessing looks. Our paths crossed again when we met after collecting our A Level exam results. He’s a bright, smart and intelligent chap and he then went to study Medicine in Dublin, just like H and the chap I fancied.

We met again when I went to Dublin to visit my friends in spring then in summer of my first year (just before flying back home) and summer of my second year after I came back from backpacking. And we bumped into each other on the (then) compact city of Dublin, at the Malaysia Hall (we hung out, chatted and played Scrabble together) and I even went to his digs in posh Ballsbridge to check out his hi-fi system. He even asked if I wanted to go ice-skating but me, being afraid of making a fool out of myself as I am very capable of doing, refused (when he asked, I immediately had this vision of myself being on the ice unable to move after I fall down). He replied saying he’d hold my hands to ensure I wouldn’t fall. I looked at him and wondered how I was going to tell him that I don’t simply hold hands with guys.

In my early days of Facebook-ing, I did search for him but didn’t find him. I always had this feeling that he may be interested in me then and I wondered what I would have done if he had actually pursued me. Would I have killed off my ‘infatuation’ over that other chap? Perhaps. Would I have said yes to him? Possibly. Would it have worked? Maybe.

Anyway, back to his message: he reminisced about when we first met (saying I didn’t look friendly) and about that summer and the things we did and then asked if I had married. I replied saying that yes, I have been told that I don’t look friendly, that I look aloof even arrogant at times, and no, I’m still not married. He replied that he actually wanted to approach me back then but thought I seemed cold to guys. (So I was right after all, he was interested in me then). I replied saying that to be honest, I thought we could be more than friends then too but I wasn’t going to make the first move. Anyway, we can’t turn the clock back now, can we. And why he was telling me all this now when it’s a bit too late already.

Because he is now married and has opened his own clinic in a major town down south.

He replied saying that he was also feeling a bit inferior about approaching me because I am a city lass and he’s from a rural town. And I was at that boarding school while he was at an MRSM.

I so wanted to weep for what could have been but what good would it be now.

Last night, my mate called me from the holy city of Makkah and I asked if he could talk longer. When he said yes, I told him about the chap and about what could have been. He echoed what I had been telling myself: If it’s not meant to be, it’s not meant to be.

Because some things are just never meant to be.

Thank you for the memories of those summers anyway.