crush

It was a haggard sleepless night at the printing press. I was cramming to finish my two week overdue article to have it published in the last issue of volume 62. To add to the animosity, my phone kept on beeping for new messages. No, the messages were not recycled messages of mushy infatuation or reaffirming friendship but rather a legal threat of libel by a disgruntled disqualified SC candidate.

And there she sat, at the corner of the room. I knew she was having her share of pressure holding those drafts that she had to edit. I never recognized her really. Maybe that’s because she had her hair curled the way Norah Jones wears hers.

Twas not the first time that I saw her; I have met her months before in the same room and doing the same thing, producing a darn good school paper. But the maiden meeting ended up with me half drunk and her fast asleep. No name, no number, nada.

Fast forward to that fateful night of fighting for my freedom from the jail’s cold bars and struggling for words to finally finish an entire volume of our school paper. The printing press was so jam-packed that night. There were more than ten of us in there, I think there were three from PUP and theirs was the biggest contingent.

And then it happened, I was about to enter the workplace area to have another peep of her, and as I was a meter away from the door, she appeared from the inside. For a moment I stood still. The moment was that brief but the struggles inside me were too much. As if my anghel dela guardia was screaming hard on my ears “say hi! Say hi!” Hay naku, I was about to open my mouth when she suddenly passed by me, and I was chickened out for the nth time. But she gave me a damn good smile!

I never got the chance to talk to her. Not even for a minute of hi’s and hello’s. I can save my face and say that I was busy trying to make tax provisions more understandable to our readers, but in reality, I chickened out. And besides, she too was busy! She was holed up in the same corner for almost the entire night, editing her peers’ articles.

I finished my article before dawn broke and our accuser was fast asleep that he stopped texting us – maybe his mom finally gave him his bottle of milk hehe. One by one, the occupants of the printing press for that night started going home to their comfortable bunkers and beds. I too started to prepare heading home, I was eager to have my date with Alice in her wonderland in the comforts of my room. She went home ahead of me. I secretly stared at her as she rode her friend’s car and sped off. Did I get her number?

No…

But her name is daisy. And it was just the beginning