At The Toss Of A Coin

“But what if-“

“No, no, no, no, no, NO! I did not leave TJ in his bed looking all delicious and edible for you to freak out and bail! You ARE going, so help me God, even if I have to tape you to the bench in the park!” Rose gave me a hard look and I could do nothing more than to stare back at her, trying to breathe.

I was making more of a thing of this than necessary, I was fully aware of that, but I just couldn’t help it. Somehow my nervousness and also the bit of excitement I felt at getting to meet my secret admirer, had multiplied my fear of what would change when I did meet him. For a moment I even entertained the thought that it might not even be a he, but a she!

“What if it’s not a guy?!”

Rose stared at me motionlessly for a second, then she burst into loud and lasting laughter. “Are you... serious? Oh... my... God! Of course it’s a guy!” she giggled, sitting down on my bed. “It’s not a girl.”

“How do you know?”

“I’d like to think girls would be more up front, especially if one were making advances on you like this. Nope, a guy, now stop freaking out and get dressed!” she demanded. I let out a huff and disappeared into the bathroom to put on the clothes she had picked out.

It was quite the challenge to keep my hands still enough to apply the little bit of makeup I usually wore. Once I was focused on the task it was easy though, it gave me something to focus on and that kept me from freaking out. In the end I had gone above what I usually wore (mascara, maybe a little bit of eye shadow in neutral colors and lip balm) by adding in a line of liquid black eyeliner and some lip gloss. I wasn’t going to do anything with my hair, since I was going to wear a beanie to fight the bitter cold outside. Maybe it didn’t matter, just like the outfit might not matter because he might not even get to see it because it might be someone that-

“Did you fall into the sink or what? You don’t have that much time left, Kate!” Rose yelled through the door.

“You’re lucky I wasn’t doing my eyeliner anymore, I would have definitely screwed up at your outrageous yelling!” I complained, leaving the safety of the bathroom.

“You look awesome!” Rose beamed. “I love the eyeliner.” I let out a pitiful noise and she sighed. “Kate, listen to me. It’s not going to be bad. You go there, meet the guy and that’s it. If it’s someone you know and you could or do like, great! If you don’t see any of that, tell him so and thank him for the sweet things he’s done for you. A secret admirer always runs risk of his admired not liking him and he knows that.”

“But what if-“

“If he’s one of your close friends, it’ll take some time for him to get over it, but it’ll be fine. Take a leap of faith and just see what’s out there, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed weakly and put on my outside shield (snow boots, ski jacket, beanie, scarf and gloves). Rose smiled and followed me outside. As soon as we got there I had to laugh a little, she had obviously ‘borrowed’ TJ’s truck, which I knew he probably wasn’t going to be so happy about.

“That way he can’t leave,” she grinned devilishly and got into the manly bigass truck.

.
”I swear to God, if you break anything, I will kill you!” I threatened as I let a few of the hockey guys into my apartment. Somehow they had invited themselves to dinner when I’d said I was going to cook, so the meal plan now was for a group of 8 instead of three or four. Actually I cooked for more than 10, because the guys have huge appetites. Yay me.

“Come on, we’re not that bad,” TJ grinned and let himself fall onto the couch in the small living room that Allison and I shared. Fortunately she had vacated the premises, she was on a date with a cute guy and I’m telling you, if there had been anything less of a reason for her to be occupied, she would have fought me to death to be able to come. The guy that had finally asked her on a date she had been crushing on for months though, so she had done that. Didn’t hurt she’d agreed to the date before she ever found out about the horde of hockey guys coming to our apartment.

I just gave TJ a sharp look and went into the kitchen to check on things. Originally I’d wanted to make something else, but with so many people I had just asked my Mom for a second casserole dish and made ‘Nudelauflauf’. There were fancier versions of it out there, but this time it just consisted of some noodles with some veggies and pieces of chicken tossed together and topped with a little bit of sauce and a lot of cheese, thrown into the oven for a while. Voila. It wasn’t quite done, so I went back into the living room to keep an eye on things there as well, just in time to see Chris with one of my yellow envelopes in his hands, another in TJ’s.

“Give me that,” I demanded, easily ripping the envelope from Chris’ hands, but TJ smirked at me and held it out of my reach.

“You want it, Mrs Clause, you gotta fight for it,” he smirked. I glared at him and tried to reach for it again. The other guys were laughing at the little game, but to me it wasn’t a game. I was undecided what opinion I had of the secret admirer, if I should be scared cause he was basically stalking me or if I should be flattered because he was giving me thoughtful presents. That didn’t mean I wanted anyone sticking their nose into my business though.

Needless to say TJ succeeded in fending me off and went through the envelope, which just had to be one that did have a letter. It wasn’t overly romantic or embarrassing, but it didn’t take them long to figure out it involved a secret admirer. Stupid me blurted that it had been going on for a while now and immediately they began to discuss the matter in the way only guys can.

“I think it’s sweet,” Rose butted in, when they started to argue that maybe it was a creepy stalker and they should hunt them down before the guy could hurt their precious little Mrs Clause (man, did that make me feel awesome... not).

“You would,” TJ threw back and just like that they were like cat and dog again, bitching at each other. I shot Chris a helpless look, but he just shrugged and tried to ignore them.

“It is kind of nice,” I agreed with my best friend.

“It’s old-fashioned as fuck, no one does shit like that anymore,” TJ snorted. I gave him a dark look.

“Well your attempts at courting women by fucking and chucking don’t seem to be very successful either, so why don’t you just shut your mouth and keep it closed? No one asked for your opinion anyway, Mr One Night Stand,” I snapped at him and for a few seconds it was completely quiet in the room, then everyone burst out into laughter. Everyone but TJ and Rose only had a weak smile on her face.

“Jeeze, no need to get all bitchy about it,” TJ grumbled, but did keep his opinions to himself for the rest of the night.

Later Rose and I had tried to find any kind of indicator if one of those guys was Mr Secret Admirer, but no one had given themselves away. None of them had committed to saying it was kind of sweet or cool or thoughtful, but no one had said anything as strong as TJ about it either. Most of them were a little worried the guy would turn into a stalker and turn up right this night to try to kill me. Nothing of the sort happened, but I was sure they would not be happy to hear I was finally meeting the guy. They had made up so much shit about the secret admirer since that night in January, you couldn’t fit it into a book.

Rose and I parked by the park and got out. It looked like she would personally walk me to the bench the secret admirer had said to meet at, to make sure that I was there. She linked arms with me and didn’t say a thing until we got there.

“He cleared the snow off my car,” I told her quietly, holding what probably was the last of the envelopes in my hands. It simply said Looking forward to meeting you!. Rose smiled and gave me a hug.

“Now be a good girl and wait here for him, okay? No running off,” she said firmly. “Good luck and call me afterwards, okay? I wanna know!” She gave me a wide grin and left.

Oh my God. Here I was, minutes away from meeting the guy that had given me so many great presents the last months and I honestly felt like throwing up. No one else seemed to be there, I could see a few people walking on the paths, but none of them seemed alone or to be coming towards me. Eventually I heard the telltale sound of crunching snow. For a moment I thought of a horror movie, this would fit, and I didn’t dare turn around.

“I knew you’d be here early,” was the first thing he said and he sounded like he was smiling.

I knew that voice, I knew it well. Slowly I turned around on my heels and looked at him, my heart somewhere near my boots. This was not what I had expected.