Entrapment

I'm not one that ever really takes notice when a girl likes me. This is, in part, because it happens so rarely that I'm never quite prepared for it. Also, I'm never sure how to deal with it when the issue does arise. Actually, and more to the point, it's almost always the women that I have almost no interest in that are interested in me, which is a shame for everyone involved. I've been told that I might have set my standards a little too high, which could very possibly be true, but, then again, do I really want to be the kind of guy that just settles for anyone?

In my high school, PE was a fairly well-managed course. For every year of physical education, we had to choose three different activities to participate in, and then complete both a physical fitness unit and a sexual health unit. Every two months there would be sign-up sheets at the gyms, and we would all sign up for what we wanted. This meant that, if you had a fairly light course load, you could sign up for all of the units and be done with PE in two months. For some reason I chose to prolong it throughout the year, taking only one unit at a time, and even then I didn't really try very hard. So lazy...

The first unit that I signed up for was badminton, not because I was crazy in love with it, but because all of my friends had signed up for it and I didn't want to be alone. Jill was my partner in this class...at first, and then she grew incredibly frustrated with my lack of skill. Fortunately for her, the pair playing next to us was having similar difficulties, and before I knew what was happening, I was paired with Sophie, the equally incapable of the pair, while Jill scampered off with the skilled one.

While Jill and the other girl developed an intense rivalry during practices, they went on to become the team that no one wanted to play against, and would go on to finish the unit undefeated. Sophie and I were...quite the opposite.

While we were meant to be practicing, we would hit the birdie back and forth a few times, dropping it more times than we would hit it, and usually failing to serve it at all, we would instead just sort of stand around and complain. Since I didn't have very much to say to Sophie, I would usually just end up making jokes and feeling awkward until it was time to go leave.

I dealt with PE class like most people deal with Las Vegas: what happens there stays there, and I had no interest in interacting with anyone from PE outside of PE. That is to say, I made no effort to contact Sophie outside of class. Of course, when I passed her in the halls I would smile and say hello, but there was rarely anything more than that.

Even though we were paired with one another for the remainder of our two months in class, we didn't really become close friends. Once the class was over, I had no intention of pursuing our friendship any further, and I thought that that was what she wanted as well.

Outside of a few run-ins with one another later on, I didn't think much on Sophie and kind of...forgot that she existed. I know that that sounds harsh, but I was very preoccupied with other things. Like myself.

So one day, I was in our school's infamous computer lab, and Liz and I were typing notes to one another in homework format. That is to say, everything on the page was just gossipy banter that we couldn't speak out loud (but were dumb enough to commit to hard-copy when it printed off), so we would just have the first sentence, or first few words, underlined and centered at the top of the page like a title, and then number some things as questions, with other things as follow-up answers, all in an effort to throw off the suspicions of the computer lab's teacher.

You might think that that wouldn't work, but the teacher would usually just glance at the screen, see that we were typing up lab reports, and move on, then pounce on the kid that writing a short story or essay and try to read it to give advice. Liz and I were brilliant.

Anyway, Liz and I were in the computer lab, typing up something scandalous to one another while whispering about something completely unrelated, when a pair of girls wandered into the lab and crouched down beside me. One of them I recognized as Sophie's original partner in badminton, and the other girl was completely new to me. They both smiled at me for a second, while Liz gave me a curious look, and then the girl I didn't know started making pleasantries, calling me by name even though we had never met.

"So, do you have a girlfriend?" asked the nameless girl, and I was so taken aback by the question that I just sort of spluttered for a minute before saying "...uh...no...?" "Great!" she continued, "because Sophie really likes you!"

It honestly took me a second to remember who Sophie was.

"She's liked you since badminton class," the other friend mentioned. "And she was wondering if you wanted to date her." Then they just stared at me. I'm glad that Sophie hadn't been there in that moment, because it likely would have gone badly, but I told them that I would have to think about it.

After they were gone Liz started spit-balling excuses for me, which included telling them that I was dating her even though I had just told them I didn't have a girlfriend. In the end I just decided to avoid it as long as I possibly could.

Ten years later and I still haven't given Sophie my answer. I'm better at avoiding confrontation than I thought.