Never did I dream of a day I would sit across from you, look into your eyes, see your smiles and share dinner with you in a cozy restaurant picked by you.

Never did I expect you to invite me to dine with you and your close friends.

That early evening, my driver dropped my cousin off at the restaurant before he and I headed to have dinner following a 7-hour drive from my hometown.

While our car made a turn a few meters from the restaurant, I heard a knock on a side window. I turned and saw you, my cousin and another friend of yours standing on the curb.

Out of the blue

Everyone looked fresh and well-dressed.

You stood out with a horizontal striped, blue T-shirt. You looked serene as you always do.

As I never expected to be invited to join you guys, I hadn’t showered after arriving at the hotel. And of course, I hadn’t dressed up either.

I was still dressing down in old, black and white pants with countless letters on them, an old ivory T-shirt with stains on the front covered by an old Golden Gate sweater I have been wearing since 2017.

One thing I noticed my sweater color matched that of your T-shirt.

Nearly five months moving back to my rural hometown after years of living in big cities, I find myself wear casually unfashionable clothes – most of the time, I look more like a village girl.

When I lowered the window and asked if my cousin left something in the car, you walked closer and invited me to join the meal. I thanked you and replied I was dining with the driver and my cousin hadn’t said anything about my being invited by you.

Your friend said you did count me as your guest on reserving the table. You and your friend asked me to let the driver handle his meal across the street because there were a bunch of eateries there.

Because I hadn’t been invited, because I dressed in an ugly fashion, I hesitated to step out of the car after apologizing the driver for changing the plan. At the same time, I found it hard to turn down a chance to dine with you for the first time.

You have been close friends with my cousin since high school.

You have taken care of my mom’s heart problem after the Parkinson’s medication she had taken for nearly a decade nearly killed her early last year. She has recovered well since. I told you and my cousin I couldn’t thank you enough for that.

I always called you “doctor.” I always dressed nicely whenever mom and I visited your hospital. You addressed me as “miss” except a few months ago, you called me by my first name in your text replies, which has perplexed me.

Royal family diner

When we went inside, my eyes were fixed on a well-set table with four wooden chairs in the middle of the skylight-cover room. A few steps away stood a sizeable Zen landscape wall fountain with colorful LED lights.

That was our table. You came to sit down on the chair across from your friend. My cousin gestured me sitting next to you. Despite knowing what she meant, I walked around and sat next to your friend, who I had met last year when I picked up my cousin at a cafe.

My cousin got seated next to you and across from me. No other arrangement was more perfect than that, as I believed. I was afraid I couldn’t have comfort if seated right next to you.

Soon savory dishes picked by you were served on the table. For the first time in my life, I – who has been known in the family for big appetite -pecked at a meal as if I stemmed from a royal family.

I could tell how hard my cousin, who kept putting food into my bowl, was striving to suppress her laughs on seeing how graceful I was when I slowly put tiny pieces of food into my mouth.

A lot of laughs and stories were shared along the way as you caught up on one another. I was a listener most of the time. I refused most of the portions offered by your friend.

When you guys were laughing, you may not have noticed I were also peeking at you.

Since my mom and I first met you at the hospital, the heart of mine has skipped its beat whenever I see your calm smiles, most of them with closed lips.

For the first time, I saw you laughing and how comfortable you looked whenever you smiled or laughed. You didn’t talk as much as your friend and my cousin did during the meal.

You asked me once to hand my bowl to you to put the soup in. You were not cold as you looked in the hospital.

That was the first time you called me by my first name in person. That was also the first time I met you outside the hospital.

When the dinner was about to come to an end at past 9 p.m., you excused yourself from staying to the end after coming to the cashier to pay the bill. You said you had to pick up purchased stuff for your kids in Australia, before your long-awaited trip two days later.  

Soon after you left, my cousin and I said good night to your friend as well. We arrived at our hotel apartment at past 10.

After a long day, all I wanted to do was to hit the hay right away.

After-credit scenes

Though it was late, I told my cousin I should text and say thank you to you for the dinner. I preferred not to delay my thank-you till tomorrow.

“Many thanks for inviting me the yummy dinner today, doctor! Have a wonderful trip in Australia!”
    
I called it a night soon after I hit “send” the message. I thought the beauty of the day would end there.

 Never did I know the universe would offer me unexpected after-credit scenes.

“Help me out, cousin! Your friend entered my dream,” I said right after I climbed on her bed in the morning that followed.

“That was the first time I saw him in my dream.”

She smiled and then repeated her speech of how gentle and kind you are, how dutiful and considerate you are to your parents and your sole brother and that you are cold but kind.

When she asked me what I saw in the dream, I changed the topic. I wanted to keep those movielike scenes for myself only.

After leaving her room, I checked my phone and saw your reply to my thank-you message 9 hours prior, which means you responded soon after my message reached your phone.

You never replied that fast! I never expected to get your reply that late.

I rushed back to her room: “Cousin, no more one or two words in response from your friend!”

“What did he say?”

“Not at all. Thanks for your regards. Have a beautiful trip with your niece!”

“You see, he did notice what we said during the dinner about our coming vacation with your returning daughter.”

I walked out and started preparing for our trip to the airport to pick up her returning daughter, who would land before 10.

Since we met her daughter, we checked in restaurant after restaurant in town and ended up visiting your friend’s home before having dinner with him at my favorite Pizza eatery.

After two nights in the city, yesterday I arrived home nearly 9 p.m. Weary after a drive from noon, I managed to unpack all the bags but the biggest one.

Soon after lying down on my bed, I saw myself get up and write down on my journal with the last entry dated on May 5:

“Thank you for inviting me for dinner and visiting me in my dream!”

“Don’t ignore your dreams, in them your soul is awake and you are your true self.”

― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity          

(*Note: This is the first of my 1,999 posts I aimed to write and publish in the next 1,999 days. There are 1,998 posts to be completed before the deadline of December 20, 2030.)