Only As A Friend

“Hey I want to talk to you for a second”  He looks at me impatiently.

“Yeah” 

“I’ve got two things to say to you” Now he looks really urgent and impatient.

“Yeah, what is it?”  seeing how anxious he was, I could kinda guess what he wanted to say. 

He might ask me out right now. Maybe. There’s a possibility. I mean the timing is right, because if he’s not coming to school tomorrow then that is the perfect time to say anything. 

“Do you want the mock papers, I can give them to you if you want” 

“What papers again..?” 

“Mock exams papers”

“Ahh.. so what about them?” 

“I.. have the chemistry and the physics papers”

“Oh.. Ok... I already have the physics papers, but you can give me the chemistry papers” This is a little weird. Why is he so persistent on giving me mock papers…?

“And the second thing I want to say is..” He suddenly stops and I look up at him, it’s clear that he’s nervous, so I just try to avoid making eye contact with him as much as possible. 

“Well, the thing I want to say is..” He stops again. He’s too nervous to keep going. And now I know what’s going to happen. I’ve gone over this scenario so many times in my head, but this isn’t how I planned it to be. This seems rushed and he seems too impulsive about it. I don’t like it. I don’t want him to say it. 

But. Before I could say anything, he says it. 

“After WACE... Do you want to go out with me?” 

“Ohh what.?”

I start to move away from him... It wasn’t how I planned it, everything was so hectic. I took a moment to breathe, and I realized. My heart wasn’t skipping a beat. I wasn’t excited that he asked me out. I was just frozen. Just frozen. 

It was then I realized, I don’t like him. 

I start to walk backward away from him. I avoid making any eye contact with him and look around us to see if anyone I know is around. Audrey is at the distance, and she’s walking towards us. Before I could say anything else he starts to walk towards me. 

“This isn’t a joke you know,” He says with a half-hearted smile. 

“I’m being serious” He’s now looking at me, eager to hear my answer. If only he knew that, my answer is probably going to hurt him a lot. 

“Umm... No.. I’m sorry” Those are all the words I can find to say to him at that moment. 

“I’m sorry” I repeat, hoping that he’ll understand what I’m trying to say. 

“You’ll think about it and give me an answer right..?” 

“Umm yea..?” But my answer isn’t going to be any different from the answer I gave you just now. 

“Okay then bye” I turn around and walk away from him. I make sure that I don’t look back. And I pretend that everything just happened doesn’t bother me at all, so I just pretend to crack my neck and just keep walking. 

It’s been one day since this happened, and I still haven’t given him an answer. I’ve talked to two of my friend about it and both of them encouraged me to do what I was already going to do. Carefully and cautiously reject him. 

I feel bad. I feel really bad. I feel like I led him on, all this time. Okay, I’d be lying if I said that I never thought of him as a potential boyfriend. Yes, I did imagine. But then I realized, I can’t even imagine holding hands with him, hugging him. So there you go, I don’t like him. 

And so I decided to write him this letter and give it to him. I thought long and hard about it. At first, I was going to tell him in person, and I tried to tell him in person. But when I started to look for him, he’s already left school. So I thought I should just text him when I get home. But then again, he deserves more. After all, he did help me, countless times. So I decided to write a letter to him. 

Hi. 

At first, I was going to tell you at school today, and then I was going to text you. But I guess I’ll just do this instead. 

I like you. BUT as a friend and ONLY as a friend. 

If I say yes, it’s not going to be fair to you or me. 

So it’s a no from me. Sorry.