For a long time now, I had wanted to ask her the question. Again. I had already asked once before. I had preparing myself for days now. “I have to ask her again,” a part of me said to myself, “I cannot let her play with my heart any longer.” But then another voice shouted from inside me, “You moron, it’s been only three months since you last asked the question. Don’t be hasty again.”
These conflicts are the worst. These voices, they fight like unruly street boxers ad in the end leave you at sea, for no one wins. But then however much ambivalent you might be, you have to decide on something. You’ve got to play the referee and, after twelve good rounds raise one voice’s hand, forgive me for being abstract, and slip a garland around its neck.
I decided that I would ask her again. I was nervous as hell. She messaged me at about one in the noon that she’d call me after she got back home from college, that is, at around three. I visited the loo an absurd number of times. That, my readers, elucidates best the kind of effect a girl produces on a boy. And, in our case, a boy endowed with courage of no small measure. You must have gathered as much from the facts of the previous chapters. You must have silently appreciated my guts and said to yourself, “Boy! He is fearless,” and now you must be let down by my attitude. Well, all I can say is: have faith in my audacity. Even the bravest of souls totter sometimes. I bet that Hitler, himself, would have gone weak in his keens, faced with such a daunting task.
Bertram Wooster would have gulped in one of the famous Jeeves potions at a time as stressful as this. But I had no Jeeves by my side and am not much of an ethanol consumer. Nut the occasion demanded some. So I went to my refrigerator and took out a two-litre bottle of Coke. I poured it into one of my father’s beer mugs which I sometimes use for cold coffee. I added some lime and drank my preparation just as Wooster drank Jeeves’s to soothe his nerves before any enormous task. Coke, I am told, has caffeine; so it is bound to calm you down. It was the closest thing to vodka or rum that was available.
I glanced at the clock after each second. I walked up and down my room nervously, time and again felt a strange sensation in my stomach again and kept visiting the loo. This went on till three. I finished the entire bottle of Coke between these visits. But it did no good.
All this while, memory of the last time kept coming back to me. What if I get a “No!” again? I comforted myself by arguing that this time around things were better and surer. But hadn’t I thought the same the last time too? Boy! That had been a painful night. I still remembered vividly the kind of effect it had on me.
It is worth recounting the story to you all. And I will begin from the beginning this time. It is high time I told you about myself more, about how my romance started.