First Date

"How do you sustain a relationship without the "zsa zsa zsu"?
You know, that butterflies in your stomach thing that happens when you not only love the person, but you gotta have them?
Isn't that what gets you through the years?
Even if it fades, at least you have the memory of the zsa zsa zsu."
~ Carried Bradshaw (Sex and the City)

Bee and I never really had an official first date.

In the early stages, we were always chaperoned, for the simple reason that he's the guy I met on internet and I'm the girl who has always been over-protected by friends and family.

He rang me the next day after we chatted. We decided to meet up for a movie the following day.

"This way, even if we totally can't stand each other, at least we'll have an excuse to not talk." I said.

We had no expectation. It was just a casual date for fun.

He was 27 and I was 23, we knew better than to expect romance after just an interesting conversation in cyberspace. Besides, we were both at a stage of our lives where we would much rather be single, which is exactly the reason what happened next really took us by surprise.

The funny and fun thing about life is, great things often happen when you least expect them to.

I still remember exactly what he wore and how he looked the night we met. A deep maroon shirt and casual white pants.

He walked towards me in Mid Valley Megamall, I smiled, and the rest was history.

Bee says it was love at first sight for him. I never told him that actually on my side, all I could think about was how good looking he is.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not as superficial as that sounded. Really.

As a matter of fact, I had never been attracted to pretty faces after the age of 18. But that night, Bee completely swept me off my feet with his good looks and unpretentious charms.

We watched a really bad movie.

It was a lame supposedly-scary thriller called Dead End. As un-scary as it was, I still had to hide my face behind the popcorn box for the whole time because I am the chicken-est person you can ever meet.

Bee didn't talk much. I thought he was concentrating, which naturally led me to believe that he has really bad taste in movies. I had completely forgotten about how I told him on the phone that I hate people who talk during movies. Ha!

After the movie, Bee asked whether we wanted to have dinner. (Yes, we. Bridget had finished her exams and therefore was there to "supervise" our non-date.)

Dinner was at a Japanese restaurant, where we discovered that we share the same love for sashimi.

As the night went on, the chemistry continued to intensify.

There wasn't any titillating of feet or eyelashes fluttering though. We talked, we ate, and we laughed.

I couldn't recall exactly what we talked about. We were teasing each other with sarcastic remarks, aka giving each other shit. But apparently, it was called flirting in layman's term, (which Bridget later pointed out to me).

Bee sat across the table from me, unaware of how charming he was. My heart skipped a beat whenever our eyes met, and I was almost certain that the sparkles in my eyes gave my secret away.

The weird thing is, I felt extremely comfortable around him, even with the thousands of butterflies flapping their tiny wings in my stomach. No trying-hard-to-be-someone-great-because-I-was-head-over-heels-about-him, no suddenly-became-overly-quiet-because-I-was-afraid-of-saying-something-wrong, no constantly-worrying-whether-my-lipstick-was-intact.

Bee always has this ability to make me feel that it's okay to be just me, even from the very first beginning. Another reason why I love him.

At the end of the night, I was convinced that Bee must have either read First Date Tips religiously, or he was a natural born player, because he played the entire night flawlessly.

He was polite, sweet and laid back. He didn't seem too eager to impress, and you could tell that he was comfortable being who he was. He was the perfect gentleman, down to details like opening doors for the ladies and giving way on the road (come on, people!). He had a great sense of humour, yet he didn't talk too much nor tried to crack jokes unnecessarily. Most importantly, he was so attentive in nature to both Bridget and I. Did he know that I'm disgusted by guys who only focus on girls they are interested in and ignore the friends?

When I got home (alias Bridget's place) that night, I sat in daze for a whole minute.

Then I sighed in disbelief.

You know, that feeling when you heart beats irregularly and whispers, "Oh my God! How can he be so perfect?"

Definitely zsa zsa zsu.

Definitely.