I Thought It Was A Friendly Museum Trip, But My Crush Confessed His Feelings And Gave Me My First Real Kiss

My phone buzzed against the cover of the book I was supposed to be reading, the vibration a sharp, intrusive sound in the quiet of my bedroom. I glanced at the screen, and my entire nervous system went on high alert.

Zachery: Hey, weird question. The history museum just opened that new exhibit on antique cartography. Remember we were talking about it? I was thinking of going Saturday. You wanna come?

I dropped the phone on my comforter as if it had burned me. My heart, which had been beating at a perfectly reasonable resting rate, was now attempting to punch its way out of my rib cage.

Read. 1:14 PM.

He could see I’d read it. He knew. And now the clock was ticking.

I read the message again. And a third time. And a fourth, dissecting every single word. Weird question. Why was it weird? Was he already backtracking? Remember we were talking about it? Of course I remembered. It was two weeks ago in the campus library, a throwaway comment I’d made about a map in a history textbook that had spiraled into a forty-five-minute conversation we were both late to our next classes for. It was the first time I felt like he saw me as more than just the quiet girl who sat near him in Sociology. You wanna come?

There it was. The question. A simple, six-word query that had my brain short-circuiting. This was it. The thing that happens to other people. The thing my best friend, Maya, details for me over the phone with breathless excitement or crushing disappointment. A boy was asking me to go somewhere. With him. Alone.

Is this a date?

The thought was so foreign, so utterly absurd, that I almost laughed. This wasn't a date. This was Zachery being Zachery. He was friendly. He was nice to everyone. He’d probably texted the same thing to five other people. We were just friends. We had a shared, nerdy interest in old maps. That’s all this was. An outing. An excursion between platonic acquaintances.

But my stomach didn’t feel platonic. It was doing a frantic, fluttering dance that made me feel slightly sick. I had a crush on Zachery. A massive, debilitating, keep-me-up-at-night crush that I was certain was a one-way street. He was funny and smart and had this way of crinkling the corners of his eyes when he smiled that made my breath catch.

And I had never, not once in my twenty-one years, been on a date. Not a real one. Not a fake one. Not even a pity one. The very concept felt like a language I didn’t speak, and Zachery had just asked me to deliver a speech. My thumbs hovered over the keyboard, useless and trembling. What was the protocol here? What did a normal girl say? A cool girl? A girl who wasn't currently spiraling into a panic attack over a simple text message?

I couldn’t do this alone. My fingers, still shaking, fumbled to find Maya’s contact. She answered on the second ring, her voice bubbly. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Emergency,” I breathed out, my voice tight.

“What happened? Are you okay? Is it your landlord again? I swear to God, I will key his car.”

“No. Worse. Zachery texted me.”

There was a beat of silence on the other end. “Okay… and this is an emergency because…?”

“He asked me to go to the museum with him. The cartography exhibit. On Saturday.”

Another pause, this one longer, heavier. I could practically hear the gears turning in her head. When she finally spoke, her voice was dangerously calm. “Ayaan. He asked you on a date.”

“No,” I said, maybe a little too quickly. “No, it’s not a date. It’s just… a hangout. We’re friends. We both like maps. It’s a friend thing.” I was trying to convince myself as much as her.

“A friend thing that he specifically texted you, and only you, about? A friend thing that has you calling me like your apartment is on fire?” Maya wasn’t buying it. “You have to say yes.”

“I can’t. What would I even say? I’ve been staring at the message for ten minutes. He can see that I read it, Maya. He thinks I’m a freak.”

“He thinks you’re thinking, which you are. Just be cool. Be casual.”

“I am the opposite of cool and casual! I am a human panic attack in a cardigan!”

“Okay, deep breaths,” she said, her voice softening. “Just type this: ‘Hey! That sounds fun, I’d love to. What time works for you?’”

I repeated the words under my breath like a mantra. They sounded normal. They sounded like something a person who goes on dates would say. My thumbs moved slowly, deliberately, typing out the message exactly as she’d dictated. I hesitated over the exclamation point, my finger hovering over the send button. It felt too eager. Too much.

“Send it,” Maya commanded, as if she could read my mind. “Right now. Don’t think. Just do it.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed send. A wave of nausea rolled over me. “Okay. It’s done. I did it.”

“Good. Now put the phone down and walk away. I’ll call you back in five.”

But I couldn’t. I sat there, staring at the screen, at the little blue bubble with my impossibly brave words sitting underneath his. The three little dots appeared almost immediately. He was typing. My blood ran cold. This was it. The rejection. ‘Actually, never mind, I asked someone else.’ or ‘Cool, I’ll let you know if a group of us go.’

My phone buzzed.

Zachery: Awesome! I was hoping you’d say yes. How about 1 PM? :)

I stared at the message. At the smiley face. A simple colon and a right parenthesis. And it undid me completely. He was hoping I’d say yes. He was happy. The smiley face felt like a secret confession, a tiny window into an emotion I never, ever thought he’d feel about me. The terror was still there, a cold knot in the pit of my stomach. But now, a different feeling was bubbling up alongside it, something warm and bright and utterly terrifying in its intensity. Excitement.

The next forty-eight hours passed in a blur of managed panic. I texted Maya a screenshot of his reply, and she sent back a string of champagne bottle emojis that felt wildly premature. I managed to get through my classes, my part-time shift at the library, and a family dinner, all while a part of my brain was running a constant, looping countdown to Saturday at 1 PM.

Friday night, my bedroom looked like a department store dressing room after a tornado. Every piece of clothing I owned was strewn across my bed, my chair, the floor. Each one represented a different version of Ayaan I could try to be, and each one felt like a lie.

I held up a floral dress. Too much. The internal monologue was vicious and immediate. This isn't a date, remember? You'll show up in this and he'll be in a hoodie and you'll look like a desperate idiot. I threw it onto the growing pile on my bed.

Next, a black V-neck sweater and a dark-wash skirt. I actually put this one on, staring at my reflection in the full-length mirror. Too serious. Too... interview-like. What if he asks what my five-year plan is? What if I look so stiff he doesn't know how to talk to me? The clothes felt like a costume, and I was already forgetting my lines. Off it came.

I imagined the conversation.
Him: "This is a fascinating Mercator projection from the 16th century."
Me: "Yes. The lines. They are... very straight."
My brain supplied a record-scratch sound effect. I groaned, burying my face in my hands. What if I had nothing to say? What if the forty-five-minute conversation in the library was a fluke, a one-time alignment of the stars, and tomorrow would just be five hours of agonizing silence? I pictured us standing in front of a giant map, a chasm of empty air between us, the silence so loud it would echo off the high museum ceilings.

He would be polite about it, of course. Zachery was kind. He'd walk me home, say "Well, this was nice," and I'd never hear from him again. The smiley face would become a ghost, haunting our future text exchanges, which would dwindle back down to class logistics and then, eventually, to nothing at all.

Defeated, I sank onto the edge of my bed, the mountain of discarded clothes threatening to swallow me whole. I was wearing a threadbare university t-shirt and my oldest, softest pajama pants. I caught my reflection again. This was me. A girl who lived in comfortable clothes and got excited about old maps. Trying to be the girl in the floral dress or the serious skirt felt like a surefire way to fail, because I wouldn't even be able to relax enough to be myself.

The decision, when it came, was less a choice and more a surrender. I walked to my closet and pulled out my favorite sweater—a simple, soft, olive-green knit—and a pair of well-worn jeans that fit just right. It wasn't flashy. It wasn't trying to send a message. It was just me. It was the best I could do.

I finally crawled into bed, the room still a mess around me. My brain, however, refused to shut down. It replayed his text, the smiley face glowing behind my eyelids. It rehearsed a hundred different ways to say hello. It dreamed up a thousand silences. I drifted into a restless, shallow sleep, caught somewhere between the coastlines of antique maps and the terrifying, uncharted territory of a Saturday afternoon.