The afternoon shift at the Magic Cafe meant you best get ready for an intense lunch hour and an even worse dinner time rush, sandwiching chill evenings in between. There were quite a number of tables with customers, all of them working on their homework and for the most part requiring the occasional coffee refill. While the kitchen staff took advantage of the lull to get ready for dinner, the waiters filled their time cleaning every nook and cranny we could access.

That was what Poonam and I were doing as a second focus a few days after the disastrous party. Our primary one was the conversation I'd been trying to escape for the past hour, but no matter where I went to clean, she would follow and continue prodding. By this point we were outside, wiping the window panes. She had already found out from my own dumb mouth that yes, I had a definite crush on the hot AF latino.

"Even though he's shorter than you?" she asked, true to herself in the fact that she couldn't help but point out all the things that made most people uncomfortable.

"Yes," I replied, sighing.

After a side glance she said, "Well, I guess most people are shorter than you anyway."

Thing was, it wasn't like Miguel was a small guy. He was just a couple of inches shorter than me and so fit that I never felt like I could crush him. The way he was framed, long limbs, defined muscles, made me feel almost dainty. And that was without considering that smile he had that made me forget everything that was wrong about me and my life while he beamed it. He was infuriatingly perfect.

Except, he had the flaw most boys had, hot or not. They couldn't help but be blinded by a gorgeous girl.

"Well, you may not want to say it, but what a floozy. Didn't she just break up with her boyfriend?" Poonam scoffed as she wiped.

I'd been trying really hard to not be jealous. I was hurt that I'd been rendered invisible with one friendly introduction, but it wasn't like Becca knew how I felt and still actively sought out his attention. He just gave it to her freely. And she was so nice that she didn't deserve me treating her like shit for petty revenge.

It was just hard to remember this when she'd spent the rest of the weekend talking about how much they'd connected that night or how much they'd texted each other thereafter.

Through gritted teeth I replied, "Yes, but she's a free woman and she can jump into the next relationship whenever she damn well pleases."

"Even if it's with your man?"

I rolled my eyes. "Look, I appreciate what you're trying to do, but there's no point. First of all, he's not my man. He will never even know I like him."

She wrung out the cleaning cloth in the bucket and asked, "Why not?"

"Because we're obviously just friends." I took a deep breath. "Second, he can also get with whomever he wants. I'm fine with that."

Her eyebrows went as far up as they would.

"Are you?"

"Yes," I replied with confidence, spine straight and chin raised. As the silence of her skepticism prolonged I deflated a little. "Okay, no. I'm not. But I'm trying to be."

We continued cleaning for a few minutes after that. Outside of the cafe the campus life bustled with people coming and going to classes, on foot or riding their bikes. The sky was assembling for the typical afternoon squall, made worse by the fact that summer was upon us and the rain didn't do much in the way of freshening up the temperatures.

"It's okay to be jealous," Poonam said, clearly not done with the topic. "You're human and you can't help feeling what you feel. It's like me and my sister Priya."

"What, are you jealous of her?"

She laughed. "The other way around. She went into med school because that was what our parents wanted us to do, but hates every second of it. Meanwhile I'm the family failure who is studying accounting, but I'm as happy as can be because it's what I want to do."

"Is that it?" I asked as I stretched my back. "Do I have to just be happy I helped them find each other?"

"Um, no. That's not what I mean." We carried our buckets and rags back inside to clean the inner side of the windows. "The real reason why you're so frustrated and seeing green is because there was an opportunity in front of you, and someone else took it before you even tried. You didn't work for your own happiness the way I have fought off my parents to become an accountant."

Strange analogy, but there was a lot of truth behind what she was saying. The heat crawling up my neck told me she'd hit the nail on the head, and understanding that made the pit in my stomach widen.

"But Poonam," I said with a whine. "What chance could I possibly have had against a gorgeous girl who makes him laugh, when all I've done around him is be an awkward crybaby?"

She shrugged. "Guess we'll never find out now."

And wasn't that a bitch?

My chin trembled, so I set out to make sure the windows were so clean that they looked like there was nothing there. Just like my hopes and dreams.

Well, it wasn't like I had dreams of one day designing a marvelous gown for my wedding with Miguel or anything crazy like that. I just wanted to find somebody who loved me, appreciated me and wanted to give me orgasms. Why that was proving so difficult might have something to do with the fact that having been born to the parents I had, it meant I was destined to never know that kind of love.

I was fortunate to have found the friends I had, who did open up their hearts to me and embraced me and all my enormous flaws. And that included Becca now. The poor girl had spent the past days dividing her time between working out, homework, texting Miguel and finding ways to rescue my sketch pad. She left her laptop open on the kitchen table this morning and I'd glimpsed at her Youtube history by accident, and all the links were about how to restore wet paper sheets.

That was why I couldn't just call her names and unload all my unpleasant feelings on her. She seemed like someone good for Miguel.

"You know," I told Poonam after much mulling of my own thoughts. "I only know two couples who got the miracle of true love."

I was talking about four fifths of Casual Friday Funeral, but she didn't need to know those details.

Then I continued, "And if true love is a one in a million miracle, those two couples actually took up the quota of the entire Orlando metro area. I'm just short of my very own miracle."

And in the privacy of my heart, I had harbored the hope that seeing Miguel again in my life so unexpectedly was going to be it.

After he graduated from Trinity, we never kept contact. It was only through Page I found out that he'd moved to Canada for a year to work on his dad's company. He would've graduated college already if it hadn't been for that, and we would never have stumbled upon each other in a class that in his own words over ice cream he was just taking as his final credits for graduation.

It was that, and all the little things. The glances, the casual shoulder bumps... it had all gone to my head, preventing the oxygen from reaching my neurons so they could function properly and tell me that all of that was just a daydream that meant nothing.

So actually, this was all my own dumb fault.

"Well, maybe you should move to a big city like Miami to see if you find your miracle there." As an afterthought she added, "And let me know if that works for you, because I'm also hunting for mine."

That made me smile. "Thanks for encouraging me to give up on this town."

"Hey, what are friends for?"

The front door opened and familiar voices drifted to me. I looked up as seeking the heavens to ask them why, and found that there was a patch of peeling paint on the ceiling that I was going to have to tell Ayrton about.

Poonam smacked my back. "Stop whining, I'll cover you."

I was so relieved by that I could have sagged against the window, but I kept polishing it as she joined Miguel's buddies at their table. They'd chosen to sit close to where we were, even though there were more tables all around. But that didn't have anything to do with me, or so I told myself until Poonam headed to the kitchen with their orders and I heard Bryce's obnoxious voice.

"Damn bastard gets all the hot chicks," he said. "The whole reason I went to that boring party was because of Becca."

Malik groaned. "Still with that, man? She just isn't into in you anymore. You have to move on."

My whole body froze. Which probably made quite a picture, seeing as I had both arms raised up holding cleaning rags against the glass pane.

But did I get that right and Bryce is Becca's ex? What were the odds?

"I told you it was a bad idea to go, but did you listen? No." Malik extended those o's like he was at a recital. "You had to keep stalking your ex on Facebook and showing up where she was."

"Dude," Bryce whined. "We were invited by the ugly girl. It wasn't like I was actively stalking her."

"You're being an asshole right now," Malik said, and although the comment was on point he also didn't deny that I was the ugly girl. "You did see her put a picture with her roommates minutes before Miguel got the invite. Now you're gonna tell me that didn't play a role into you begging Miguel to let us go with him to the party?"

I moved in slow motion, trying to not make noise or attract any attention. The last thing I wanted was for them to notice I'd heard this conversation. Besides, Ayrton's office was empty right now and that was always a good place for a cry. Soundproof.

"Okay, fine. I just wanted to see her again. How was I going to know that she'd get the moony eyes for Miguel?"

Um, hadn't he seen his roommate? Like, really looked at him?

Besides, Miguel wasn't a dick. Suddenly I was glad that Becca had ditched this guy and was moving on to greener pastures. Even if I was green with envy about it.

If these were the circumstances of that romance, I was fine with it. Poonam might not believe me if I told her so, but I just didn't wish toxic partners on anybody, but especially women. Enough was enough, growing up and seeing my parents drowning in vats of venom that they generated for each other. I was happy Becca had saved herself from that and wished her well.

Suddenly my chest didn't feel so tight. My stomach didn't feel like it was crawling its way up my throat anymore and my face didn't hurt anymore from trying to hold back tears. Maybe this whole time the fact that I stumbled upon Miguel again was for the sake of Becca's miracle.

So as I escaped from their vicinity by doing a whole lot of crab walking around the perimeter of the restaurant, I decided that I could live with that. This just simply wasn't for me, and I was going to let it go.

our crybaby girl is strong, don't be fooled.

also we're here for girls supporting other girls. we ain't got time to pit them against each other