Mixed Signals - Christine

As Alan wandered down a mostly empty hall, heading to the cafeteria to get some lunch, Christine suddenly came up from behind him and planted herself right in front of him, blocking his path. She had her hands on her hips and she looked seriously pissed.

He knew from experience that she had a naturally intense look, so when she looked angry it didn't necessarily mean she really was. He halted in his tracks and waited to see what she wanted.

Christine waited what she felt was an appropriate interval for him to say something, but when he continued to show no signs of being ready to do so she blurted out, "Alan, when are you going to stop avoiding me?"

He blinked at her in confusion. "Huh? What do you mean?"

She glared at him. "You know what I'm talking about. Ever since ... that day ... you've been avoiding me like the plague."

They both knew what she meant by "that day" - the day he'd clumsily tried to ask her out and she'd turned him down. It was too sensitive a subject for him to discuss or even mention directly.

He protested, "I have not. I see you every day and say 'Hi.' I just said 'Hi' to you earlier, in fact."

She struck a more apologetic pose. "I know, but all you do is say 'Hi, how's it going?', and you're pretty much obliged to do that because we share some of the same classes and even sit next to each other a lot. What I mean is, there's no real meaningful communication anymore. Look, I know what I said upset you. I was taken by surprise, and I kinda handled the whole thing badly. I figured I'd give you some time, but it's been seventeen days since then and you still hardly say more than two words to me at a time!"

"It has?"

"See?"

He laughed at how he had just proved her point. Christine was so serious and intense most of the time that she wasn't much of a joker. Even this was more a matter of her expressing her exasperation than of her attempting to be funny.

Realizing that playing dumb was both impossible and counterproductive, he opened up. "You know what? You're right. I guess I have been avoiding you. It's just that, well, I'm not good at this whole thing!" He flapped his arms about helplessly.

They both understood "this whole thing" referred to asking a girl out and dating.

She said, "Hey, I'm not the best at it either. I'm totally frustrated too, because you're not just 'some guy.' I really like you. We had a good friendship going. I don't want to ruin that!" She stomped her foot in frustration, which inadvertently set her big rack jiggling.

He couldn't help but stare in silent appreciation. Dang! How I manage to talk to Christine and not just drool like an idiot is beyond me. She's so friggin' sexy! And stacked!

Sometimes he wondered how much of his friendship with her was based on the fact that she had such big breasts. Spending so much time with Susan and Suzanne somehow left him drawn to large racks like a bee to honey. On the other hand, his long experience with the two mothers enabled him to act relatively normally around someone as extraordinary beautiful as Christine. Few other boys even dared to try to talk to her.

He said, "I'm frustrated too. I hope you know I really like you too - as a friend, I mean. It's just that, I like you so much, it's hard not to like you that other way too. Especially when you look as amazing as you do. You're just so ... beautiful!" He said that word like he was in awe.

Christine turned aside and blushed in a really cute way.

He continued, "I'll try better to crush these inappropriate feelings of mine and get things back to the way they were before. I'm sorry that I've been in denial, avoiding you like that. That's not smart."

She briefly held up a hand with a stop gesture. "Now, hold on. Don't crush those feelings entirely. I never said I didn't want to, you know, go on a date or something." She looked away bashfully, but then made eye contact again. "I said I wasn't ready. You can't just come out of the blue with a request like that! You need to woo a girl properly first!"

"So, can I woo you?" he asked nervously. It was almost like asking her out again, and that was extremely scary for him, but he had such strong feelings for her that he forced himself to do it.

She made an exasperated noise. "Well, I didn't say that either. Let's just... Can we just get our friendship back on track first? I kind of... Well, I've kind of missed having you to talk to."

He smiled widely. "Sure! I was just about to head to lunch. You wanna join me and hang out? Just the two of us?"

"YES!" She smiled with relief. In truth, Christine had a great number of acquaintances, but virtually no real friends. Other girls were envious of her looks, not to mention her smarts and all of her great talents and skills. Boys were too intimidated, at least after they'd once come on to her and had their heads handed back on a platter. Her "Ice Queen" persona put everyone off. She didn't suffer fools gladly, to say the least. But somehow Alan always saw through all that and treated her like just "one of the guys" (not counting his frequent gawking at her fantastic body). He was the only classmate she felt she could let her hair down with, and also one of the few she could respect on an intellectual level.

He wanted to hug her, but she'd always been skittish about that kind of thing. So he just started walking away, and she walked with him.

He said, "Hey, you know, this cute blonde came up to me yesterday after school and asked me what time it was. I told her it was three o'clock. She frowned unhappily, so I asked her what the problem was. She told me, 'I've been asking that question all day long, and each time I get a different answer!'"

Christine rolled her eyes, but she was secretly amused. Alan had a long-standing tradition of telling her dumb-blonde jokes, because she was blonde and yet she was most definitely not stupid. In fact, she was almost certainly the smartest student in the entire high school. But she rarely had good comebacks to his dumb-blonde jokes since humor wasn't her strong suit, and that amused him.

The two of them had a good time reconnecting at lunch, which let them put a lot of the awkwardness behind them.

Nevertheless, the encounter left Alan frustrated. Afterwards he thought, Talk about mixed signals! It's like she turned me down, and still doesn't want to date, but she wants to keep me hanging. Maybe she'll change her mind at some unknowable future date if I "woo her" properly, whatever that means, but then she says she doesn't want me to woo her! Women! Grrr. Thank God I have all these other sexy things in my life going on. If all I did was obsess over her, before long I'd turn into a basket case.