I usually expect letdowns. It’s my life; I’ve long become accustomed to it, but again and again, I allow my hopes to rise and expectations to form.
Normally I’d call it a rookie mistake. Quite sad for someone who is hardly a rookie.
I am of course talking about a girl I met. Well, I didn’t technically meet her. I’d only seen her. Didn’t know her name or anything else about her, but she had an infectious smile with little dimples that perfectly framed her dainty nose. It was impossible to mistake her for anyone else, and yet, I’d seen her in at least three different places.
First, she was at a clothing store in the mall. A few days later, I saw her pumping gas, and then the day after, she was ahead of me in line at the book store.
Coincidences aside, I had a strange feeling about her. It was like we were drawn to each other. How many times had I passed her before with noticing?
But that smile – how could my eyes not be drawn to it?
I was never one to believe in fate. It’s a silly notion, really. Things cannot be destined. To suggest that my choices are already made before I am even presented with them removes any notion of choice, and to live in a world where choice and chance are illusions just seems depressing. So I chose to believe otherwise.
This girl, though… In a city of 80,000, what are the odds that I’d see her on three occasions in such a short period of time, much less the odds that I’d recognize a complete stranger. Could that really be chance?
But here I stand, thinking of this all in an instant, staring her in the face in my first class in the new semester.
I don’t know if this is fate or luck, but there’s no way I am missing this opportunity to make my own destiny.