Love: Hope and Fear (part II)

Oh, a voice said in his brain, sounding almost relieved. Oh well. I guess that settles it then, she has a boyfriend. He stared dumbly at the screen. Problem solved, the voice continued on, you can’t have her, time to go play some videogames now. You’ve still not finished that one Fred lent you, and he wants it back by next week.

Despite the good advice, he continued to stare at the text. It stared rudely back at him, and then he realised that no matter how good he was at staring matches he would lose against a computer screen. He also realised that Anne was still waiting for him to reply to her text. Hurriedly, he typed:

congratulations
isn’t liam that guy you introduced me to at that really weird bar

Then, realising that might be taken as an insult (he was still deciding if he wanted it to be), he hurriedly added:

the 2nd year right?

More text appeared.

nathan, be nice
:P

She saw through his 'default' sarcasm. He breathed a sigh of relief as she continued typing.

yeah,
he took care of me that night i got drunk.
you remember
the week before Christmas at the union?

He remembered that night. Anne, Liam, himself and about three others had gone out, and she had gotten fantastically drunk. He wanted to bring her back to her room, but she uncharacteristically demanded that Liam do it instead, and that Nathan and the others should enjoy the rest of the night. Nathan helped her into Liam’s car with a look that said he would bash his head in if he did anything to her. She called up the next day to apologise, and told him that yes, Liam had cleaned her up and put her in bed without incident. She had also destroyed Liam’s table lamp in her drunken stupor, and Nathan found the image quite entertaining.

He racked his brain to remember more about Liam. Second year, same course as himself and Anne, which part of England did he come from? Didn’t matter really. He seemed all right, though Nathan had somehow disliked him the first time they met. That, he acknowledged, was jealousy. Later he did his best to treat Liam as one of the group.

He sighed. He trusted Anne’s judgement, though it left him confused at times like these. He typed:

yeah, only because you wouldn’t let me!
:(

sorrie, i was a bit drunk at the time

He laughed.

lol, that’s the understatement of the year
:P

oho,
you’ve been licked plenty more than i have

have not
we both know i'm crazier sober than when i'm drunk

besides, i wasn’t ready.

He tried for a moment to decipher the cryptic reply. What did she mean?

eh?
for what?

Her reply seemed to be taking a while, she was typing, then stopped for a moment before typing again. After some moments of this he realised that she was finding it difficult to put her thoughts into words. The text finally came through.

we had something, didn’t we…

To be continued.