What have I gotten myself into?

A damn date?!

Gosh! How am I going to get through this?

She is such a persistent and stubborn woman. She threatened, manipulated and finally convinced me to have a normal chatting date with her friend's grandson. I really like how she has become my own grandma but it was quite hectic to keep up with her active brain too.

Huh, let's see how this Sebastian is and what kind of person he is to have grandma that impressed.

I searched the whole wardrobe and finally found the dress I'm looking for. I quickly showered and tried to squeeze myself into that overly short, extremely exposing, obviously hot red dress.

Argh, seems like I've put on a lot of weight than I expected.

After finally battling with the dress, I applied light makeup and applied red tint on my lips heavily. Looking into the mirror, I look just like how I want myself to look like. An escort.!

I'm not trying to scare him away or disgust him to even look at me with my appearance. I'm just trying to make few things clear for my date that I carry a lot of baggages. I want to showoff the way I dressed up in the past. I've learnt to embrace myself, my past, present and future so I'm not awkward or hurt to accept myself anymore. I learned to embrace and like all my baggages.

Grandma said that Sebastian knows everything about me and wanted to meet me and I'm so glad that he wanted to but I just want to see if he is genuine or not. It's not because I want to date him, I want to know people and have friends. Make genuine friends.

I heard a lot about Sebastian from grandma since morning and he sounded like a really good person. I just want to see if he's genuine or not and make a friend out of him. This is not a blind date, it's a friends meet-up.

I quietly sneaked out of the house before grandma can see me in this dress and reprimand me for my weird actions. The café where we are meeting is not that far so I chose to walk there. It's just a couple of minutes walk and I already wore a long coat over my dress to keep myself away from trouble. Grandma has eyes all over the village so don't want her to know about my little senseless feat.

The café was small and cozy with light blue wallpapers and warm brown highlights. I looked over the whole café and found no young man waiting. Thinking that he's not here yet, I went to the window seat at the end and sat there looking at the pleasantly empty and calm roads. Look around I saw something that I wasn't expecting to see... and I just ignored it as I was doing from the past two years.

"Sienna Thomas?" I heard soft and a mannish voice. I turned and looked to see a very friendly looking young man about twenty seven or twenty eight years old standing in front of the table with a bright smile.

I immediately stood up and smiled politely at him taking the flowers he offered me. He looked really refreshing and friendly and I'm sure he would pass the test.

I slowly took off my long coat and hanged it around my chair. While he sat on the chair opposite to me, I silently sat on my chair expectantly.

"This is for you. You look so beautiful." He said looking at me with sparkly amusing eyes. I took the envelope he gave me and opened to see the pictures of me waiting for him.

Good Lord! He sure is a Photographer. He knows how to show even an ugly pumpkin, beautiful. What made me pleased was when he said beautiful, I didn't see any lust, love or any other wrong twitches in his eyes. He was looking at me purely amused and friendly.

I was so pleased to be looked friendly by a man. I like it.

"Thank you so much." I smiled a little.

He ordered some pastries and cream pies with juice for us when a waiter approached us.

"Even though you already know about me, I need to introduce myself to you. Hi, I'm Sebastian, a photographer who loves to picture naked animals. My grandma Nina is a friend of your Granny Rose. I love nature and mountains. My all time goal is to live in jungle and breathe in fresh air. I hate shrimps. I have traveled to many countries got the opportunity to take many gorgeous photographs. I heard a lot about you and I'm so inspired and enthusiastic to meet you. Nice to finally meet you, Sienna."

I smiled widely at nodded my head. "Now my turn to introduce. I'm sienna Thomas. I am strong, beautiful today's generation girl, like Grandma says of course. I love dogs and junk foods. I like sunshine and spending time with my nephews. Nice to meet you too, Mr. –"

"You can just call me Sebastian or Besty if you shall." I nodded my head and took a sip of my juice that the waiter just got us. I was twisting my fingers around my wrist nervously when he cleared the throat and looked at me with a warm smile.

"Let me tell you something clearly, Sienna. I'm not looking for a relationship right now. I want to be your friend first and be comfortable around with each other before you think we can move forward. Our oldies may name it a blind date but to me it's a friends meet-up. I don't want to feel pressured about this and over think about this arrangement. I really really, am so impressed and inspired by you when I heard about you. I don't want you to be burdened by me. It is just a fan meeting where I'm the fan here and you the aspired one." He said and chuckled at the last sentence. I was so warmed at what he said and almost brought tears in my eyes.

"Thank you. I – I'm so happy I could find a friend, a genuine one who knows about me and wasn't disgusted about my bad part but impressed at my fight. I'm so happy to meet you Sebastian. I'm sorry too because I can never see you as my future but you are a very nice friend I'm looking forward to continue our friendship in future too. I'm glad you understand me though you don't exactly know about me." I said gratefully.

I partly expected him to be perverted or dismayed by me but I think I like him as a good friend now just in half an hour. I know it is too fast to judge him but all these years, I did come to know about something that, there is nothing called soon or later. You can know about few people as soon as you meet them. It doesn't mean you are impulsive in judging them but it means that you see some kind of true and authenticity in them. Few people are quite transparent about themselves and you can notice it immediately.

I understood what Sebastian was looking at. He's not looking for a girlfriend in me but a friend just like me. When he said that he's not interested in me bluntly, I liked it. I liked it so much that I immediately made friends with him and exchanged our numbers.

We spent next two hours laughing and chatting with each other. I found out that Sebastian actually has a very great sense of humor and make puns with anything and everything. Few were miserable but they sure were funny. It has been days that I laughed this much and enjoyed myself.

"Alright what did a banana said to the person who's going to eat her?" He said tapping his fingers on the table excitedly.

Banana talks?

Uh, what can a banana tell to its owner?

"Umm, thank you for having me?" I said with a raised eyebrow to which he shook his head and smiled mischievously.

"The banana says, 'Do you find me appealing?'" He said chuckling and I busted into laughter hearing his answer.

Lord that was so funny.

"I'm happy I made you laugh again. Alright Sienna, I need to go now. If I make you laugh once more, I think your Romeo would kill me thousand times in his dreams. Go, have a talk with him now." He said and walked out of the café telling me that he would text me later. I nodded and looked back at Leonardo who was sitting at one of the corner tables. Yes, I told Sebastian about Leonardo while we were talking about our lives and when I told him about Leonardo, Sebastian surprised me telling me that He deserves me and I deserve him.

Sending Sebastian off, I walked inside the café again to the other side of the room where Leonardo is seated.

I knew from long back that Leonardo was sitting there away from us looking at us. He did not look at us with anger or frustration but he was just blankly looking at us. I saw a tinge of defeat in his eyes when I was laughing with Sebastian but I brushed it off.

I brushed it off because I didn't want to be bothered by this little twinge that plunged my heart when I saw that defeated look.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, sitting on the chair opposite to him.

Leonardo just looked at me blankly "I don't know"

"Huh?"

"I don't know why I came here" He replied making me speechless. I just looked at him not knowing what to say.

What does he mean he doesn't know?

"Leonardo – " I sighed

"I came to know about your date and followed you here. I don't know why I did that. Please don't misunderstand me I didn't come to spoil your good time. I was just - I don't know" Leonardo looked torn.

"I want you to move on, Leonardo." I finally said looking at him intently.

"I can't" He replied

"You should. Look Leonardo, I forgave you for whatever happened because you deserve it and I want to move forward. I forgave you for you and me. Now that I'm taking baby steps towards my new life, I don't want you stuck here in the past. That way I cannot go further any longer. When I said I forgive you, I meant every word. I realized that life is too short to hold lifetime grudges and dwell into something that keep hurting us."

"Can you ever, even for just once, think about giving a chance to me?" He asked with an expectant look which broke my heart.

I did hated him until few weeks ago but I felt his pain too when he looked at me all those months he was following me.

"Maybe. I don't know."

"So, if I work hard enough, can I ever get a chance?"

"I believe in destiny, Leonardo. I always believed in it. If getting into an escort house, meeting you, liking you, meeting grandma are all a part of destiny, then I may accept you as who you are in future when destiny will be the key player. If it wills and one day gets us together, then neither my past nor your past would matter to me because we both fought and learned from it abundantly. But I want time to decide it. Right now, you are overshadowed by guilt and I am just getting comfortable around the new changes life gave me. What you and I need is time because only time can tells if we will be just 'you and I' or will ever become 'us'. Go back to New York and live your life. I'll live mine too. I don't want us to meet by any planning. If time has something in store then we may meet in complete coincidence. That day, I will accept you without any ounce of doubt."

I know I may sound a little harsh to reject him like that but what I said was true too. We need time away from each other to sort out many things in our lives. I don't want a guilt-stricken Leonardo to get a chance because then it would be unfair for him.

Not only that but I too need time to sort my thoughts. I want to try many new things so I left it to destiny and time to plot their play. Even though we were not talking to each other, we still saw each other in the past two years. I want us to go different path and see if being apart can bring us to one path.

I want to experiment life now. I want it to play with its own rules and show me what I deserve and whom I deserve.

"Sienna" Leonardo called me from back and turned a little glancing at him.

"I know what you meant. I will be waiting for you. Even if I had to wait decades, then I will be waiting for you because I know one day, destiny will throw us at each other. And till that day, I will not let myself succumb to my desires and will not meet you or stalk you. Two years ago I had you through an auction but this time I will have your heart. From today onward, You and I are mere strangers until fate brings us to each other. Goodbye." With that Leonardo gave me a soft smile and walked away from the cafe without turning back.