We’re back at Starbucks, this time Harry is early. In fact, he sat in a booth beaming with joy. I slide across him and start with the classic question “how was your final blind date?”. I hardly get to finish my sentence before he responds with “Not final date now!” I smile and ask to just start at the beginning. He leans back in his seat, his eyes sparkling with excitement
“I didn’t know I had a type until last night”, when I ask what that type is he immediately responds with girl number three’s name. I burst out laughing, Harry eagerly continues.
“She was running late, so I was getting nervous and then I saw her and I just froze and thought ‘wow’, and I’ve got a thing for a full front fringe and she had that and her eyes are just gorgeous and I was just standing there and she went are you harry and I just went ‘yeyyes..yes’.”
He continues his slightly incohesive rant praising her for ordering cider, and how they played the pointless game since other people had hijacked trivia. Before I know it, the story has jumped a couple of hours ahead, they have now left the pub and the board games behind and are walking home.
“I walked her home and then I went, ‘Oh I’m home’”. I giggle nervously, I had been well aware girl number three was Harry’s actual neighbour, not realising how awkward it must have been at the end of the date. “It was annoying because I wanted to instigate some form of contact, I wanted to hold her hand or something, but I just didn’t know how to instigate that. And then we hugged, and I really wanted to kiss her, but I didn’t know if she wanted to kiss me, so we just hugged again.”
For a second his face stops beaming with happiness, a veil of regret falls over him. I distract him quickly by asking how he felt afterwards, the smile returns. “I went inside, and I just took a big breath and just thought ‘what just happened’, it went so much better than I ever expected”
By this point I feel myself grinning just as much as Harry, he continues “It’s just this warm fuzzy feeling inside, I wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget”. My heart is starting to become unbearable heavy with second-hand butterflies. I find myself putting my face in my hands, asking him to tell me more.
“The best way to describe her as a person… ‘gorgeous’ summarizes her. Because aesthetically she is just very good looking and as a person, she is just so pure and wholesome. She is kind off like a puppy in human format”
Harry stops for a moment and gets serious “I knew your judgement would be good, I didn’t think you could match me so well but somehow you did.” I beam with pride and mumble something along the lines of ‘no bother’, while on the inside I secretly high five myself in every possible way.
“Because for the first two girls it was such closed
conversation, but she would ask me questions back. So every single story just
ended up in twelve different tangents, it was amazing”.
“It was a good thing we were drinking because that meant we had to pee a lot so
we could text people about how it was going.” I burst out laughing remembering the
moment I received Harry’s text on the night of the date. To quote, he texted “omg,
she’s amazing”, this led to me and my flatmate jumping up and down our flat out
of sheer excitement.
Minutes later we got a text from mystery girl number three herself reading: “he is so lovely”. This led to us cracking open a bottle of prosecco to celebrate to unexpected success of my match making.
I lean back in my seat, looking at the Scottish man who is floating on cloud nine. By now friends of him have come round to congratulate him on his date. He’s receiving hugs, texts and high fives. I imagine this is how athletes must feel after winning Olympic gold.
Just after I’ve ended the interview, mystery girl number three texts Harry. Panic overcomes him, he looks at me with big eyes, “what do I reply?”.
I tell him to just be himself, later that afternoon they’ve arranged a second date. As I leave Starbucks I cant help and smile to know I’ve played a small part in transforming the bravest man in Scotland into the happiest man in Scotland. At least for today.
Great post 😄