This is the first meeting. I worked out with a friend often. On this particular day, he had mentioned bringing a friend I did not know which I forgot about until I arrived. Here’s what happened…

“Hello,” I said without actually looking at our new addition. But then I did. When I finally processed what I was seeing, I really liked what I saw.

Matt had spiky black hair and dark brown eyes. His eyes flashed at me and his mouth moved but did not seem to make a noise before he returned his attention to his own weights as if they were at risk of leaving his lap. He had a definite jaw line and a medium athletic build. His smile. It captured a piece of me I had no idea existed and I was INTO IT. This was not only a handsome smile, but it was communicating something I had not seen before to a piece of me that had never been spoken to. It made me curious. I must have appeared to be stunned for a brief moment because as I sat back and made eye contact with my friend, he was already mouthing the words “No, Cheyanne”.

I simply mouthed back the words, “What?”

I had a bit of a reputation for not being the best at relationships. They were boring and a lot of work navigating behaviors that I could do without. This current friend group had never seen me be interested in someone or serious about someone.

On this day however, I had forgotten about all of that…

Over the course of our workout, I turned into the girl I was not a fan of. I was strategically posing to get the attention of our new addition. Charlie’s Angels was highly popular at the time and our mutual friend often was my wingman by telling me to ‘flip my hair’ when someone was looking in my direction which was a move I was about to use without his prompting. As I sat on my incline bench, I kept my head down as I grabbed my weights. Pulling them up first, I flipped my hair before the weights rested at the top of my thighs displaying a perfect cascade of my highlighted hair down around my shoulders. A move I was sure would pique the interest of my new friend. Alas, it did not. It did, however, grab the attention of our mutual friend who was transmitting a new silent message to me. Much less discreet and much more serious than the first.

“Stop it,” my friend mouthed, ever so slightly rolling his eyes and shaking his head.

         I returned his eye roll and motioned to communicate Matt’s obvious disinterest. This interested me even more.

I did not realize it, but curiosity was not a state of being that existed in my mundane world of contentment. My curiosity was sparked and I felt different. Matt was different. I did not know how I knew, but I did. I was marked forever by his eyes and smile that day. They weren’t a mask and yet there was so much more behind them than he knew. There was more behind those eyes and smile than his friends knew or even wanted to know. But I knew, and he held my curiosity as I drove home from the gym that day amid constant reminders from our mutual friend that I should forget about the boy I could imagine forever with.