“Cheryl, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
Stephanie was my best friend, and we were walking to the dorm after the last class of Thursday. Which meant the last class of the week. We were both juniors and Cheryl was a lucky in love as I was unlucky. She was forever trying to fix me up with someone. Not only fellow students, including grad students, but people she’d run into in town. I’d seen it. We’d be walking and she’d set upon some poor schmuck and asked “What do you think of my friend?”, said friend being me and said friend disappearing into the floor. She laughed and promised not to do it again, but she still did. “What if he was ‘the one’?” How could I be angry?
“This one’s different. It’ll work out. I just know it will.”
“Steph. What’s wrong with this one?”
“There is nothing wrong with this one. Trust me on this one.”
“I feel like Charlie Brown and you’re Lucy with the football. Again and again.”
But, like Charlie Brown, I bit. And now I stood conspicuously alone at the far end of the bar, waving to students I knew as they passed.
It was 8:10 for an 8 o’clock blind-date. Five more minutes. I felt hands press against my eyes from behind.
I turned, and she smiled.
“I’m not the one you expected, am I?”
And she wasn’t.
Terry Brewer, Author 