Kate, the girl who asked me out when we were 11 years old, and I blatantly rejected because I was foolish and thought it was a joke.
We were in year 7 – I remember everything quite well. It was the last day of school for the year. I was shooting hoops with Andrew at lunchtime, a friend of mine, and your friend came up to me with you trailing only about 3 meters behind her. But I didn’t see you (I don’t know why, I must have been blind or something), I only saw your friend. Andrew and I stopped shooting hoops and your friend walked up to me and asked me, ”Do you want to go out with Kate?”
I knew a lot of Kate’s back then. One of them, I hated, and that’s who I thought she meant. I didn’t know she meant you, even though you were only about 3 meters behind her. I do not know why I didn’t see you. I said, “No” in such a tone as if to say ‘are you kidding me, there’s no way I’d ever go out with her’.
Your friend walked back to you and you two walked away. That was when I realised she wasn’t talking about the Kate that I didn’t like, but she was actually talking about you. I thought she meant the other Kate, the one that I hated, and I thought the whole thing was a joke.
I became too scared to admit the truth to you. I just wanted to drop the whole subject. You personally approached me in the last few minutes of class for the year and asked “No?” You didn’t seem upset, but I know you were.
Forgive me, Kate. I was too scared to tell you the truth. I didn’t know what to do. I would have said yes if it were not for the misunderstanding. I replied “no” in a sincere voice. As sincere as I could. And that was it, we left and parted our separate ways.
After that, in the school holidays I could not stop thinking about you. You were constantly in my mind, but there was no way for me to contact you. I didn’t have internet, Facebook or MySpace or Bebo. I looked your last name up on the phone book but there were too many to call. And so I left it at that.
For some reason, I had a dream about her last night. In the dream, I felt like I liked her. A lot. The more I think about you the more I realise I do like you but we haven’t seen each other in 7 years and we go to different universities, and things will have definitely changed.
In the dream, you lived in a Halls of Residence really close to mine. I would try to talk to you and show interest in you (knowing you liked me back in Intermediate School) and walk back from lectures with you but you would politely walk in a different direction, saying you had to go somewhere else.
Isn’t love so cruel? Now there’s no way for Kate and I to ever get to know each other, just because of my silly mistake. I did send her an apology (last year), telling her the truth. She didn’t reply.
-Harper
