The Coffee Shop

“Do you want to have a coffee with me?” a sweet but unknown voice was felt by my ears. When I turned my head towards the source of sound, I could see a beautiful young lady with a smile in her face. I was in the bus stop waiting for a bus to return home after a tiring day at college.

“Yah! sure, why not?” was my response. This was the first time any girl had asked me for a coffee and my instantaneous reply to the offer must have made this fact quite obvious to the girl as well.

“Let’s go inside.” We headed towards the coffee shop which was just by the road. We took our seats. Before I could even ask her name, she started talking. “My boyfriend was supposed to arrive half an hour ago and we had planned to have coffee together.”

“But he hasn’t arrived yet. He is not even receiving my calls. I want to make him angry by having a drink with you.”

When a girl invites you to have coffee together for the first time in your life, the last thing you want to hear is that she has a boyfriend. Also she was so attractive that I had already fallen in love with her in these few minutes. All my dreams of having a beautiful relationship with her, in an instant, came to a dead end.

At that moment, my dignity was forcing me to say ‘I am Sorry’ and leave the place. But her allure was so irresistible that the manhood in me finally won the war against my self esteem and I decided to stay for the coffee. I didn't care about the purpose of staying; I just wanted to see her lustrous eyes for as long as I could.

I had never experienced having a date with a girl in which the conversation started with, “I have a boyfriend”. So I didn’t know what kind of questions was I supposed to ask. Should I be saying things like, “So, tell me more about your relationship”, “How did you guys meet?”, “I am sure you must have proposed him, right.”?

My mind wanted to ask questions like, “Are you having some soreness in your relation?”, “Are you thinking of taking a break?” but I didn’t want to behave in such a way to the only girl who had asked me for a coffee.

I didn't know what to say. The situation was getting really awkward and I was moving my head around and staring at the walls of the coffee shop.

Then she broke the ice and asked, “So, what do you do?”

- "I’m currently studying my bachelor's."

- “Which subject?”

- "MBBS"

- “Oh! Heard that you must cram up a lot.”

- “Yes. Sadly, that's the truth. A human body is really complex and we have to memorise everything about it. But, it's fun too.”

“So, what are you studying?” a question I had to ask after her question, a social convention.

“I’m studying bachelor's too” … “Civil engineering” she replied

“So, you must be really intelligent.” I praised a bit.

“Let’s not talk about studying. Let’s talk other things.” she proposed.

Had she barely said it, two cups of coffee arrived.

We both took few sips. Then as she suggested, we started talking about our interests, which for the majority, included hers. The conversation included many things like her dog, her previous dog that died of some disease, how sad she became for that. She also talked about the pollution in the city, a small pimple on her face for which she blamed the pollution and how ugly she had become after the pimple. We also talked about how difficult it is to study engineering and how her parents insisted her to join it even though she really hated maths. I don't remember how, but she even managed to divert the conversation to her ear rings, which were really pretty according to her. All in all, she was a typical of a beautiful girl; overly sensitive about her beauty with repulsion towards mathematics.

Although I was showing like I was happy from outside, deep within I was really gloomy. She was so charming but at the same time my mind could not come out of the fact that she was just using me as a tool to take revenge on her stupid boyfriend.  You could easily infer that her boyfriend was brainless. I often reach my college after the first class is already over but if I had a girlfriend with such a lascivious smile, even I would never be late on a date with her. Being late for a class could be understood but being tardy for a date with such a stunning girl is simply imbecilic.

But in contrast to my feelings she seemed perfectly joyful. She kept on laughing at my humourless jokes throughout the conversation. She didn’t seem to be even slightly bothered by the fact that her boyfriend was late.

Our conversation continued for what seemed to be like few minutes. But when I looked at my watch it had already been an hour. Then I pondered ,“Was I really enjoying our talks?”, because if I hadn’t been, time wouldn’t feel like flying.

It started getting darker outside. “I’m getting late, I have to go now”, she said all of a sudden. “Oh! And I’ll pay the bills.” She hurriedly stood up, went to the counter, paid the money, looked back, smiled for a millisecond and went away. “And your boyfriend?" I shouted, remembering that he was supposed to arrive. Either she didn’t hear my sound or she chose to ignore my words, she didn’t turn back.

Returning home that day, I started to analyse this strange experience I had. An unknown girl asking me for a coffee was weird enough but the fact that she had a boyfriend made it even weirder. Then a train of thought started running in my head.

“Why didn’t her boyfriend arrive even after an hour and half?”

“He would have at least messaged or called her to inform about the delay.”

“Her phone didn’t vibrate or ring even once. And it was lying on the table all the time”

“Did she even have a boyfriend?”

Then I realised that, my only words of praise for her in the entire conversation turned out to be false. She was not intelligent. An intelligent person never uses "I want to make my boyfriend angry" as a pick up line.