A new light

Just came back from brunch with a college buddy of mine who recently moved to Boston to start graduate school. We were decently close in college, but mostly because we were both part of a fairly tight-knit honors engineering class of ~30 kids. Our circle of closest friends had significant overlaps, but he and I were more acquaintances in comparison and lost touch for the most part after college.

Through some other small-world situations last January, we found out we would both be in Bangkok around the same dates and made it a point to get together for dinner one night. He told me then that he would be starting business school in Boston come fall 2010.

Fast forward a few months to last November. We got fancy brunch together on a random Saturday, and to be honest, it was a ton of fun. Conversation just flowed, and we laughed a lot together, and I thought to myself, "I wonder if he is single."

He was. Because we segued into talking about relationships, and he told a funny first-date story from just the weekend before. I dropped my own recent first-date story, and we laughed some more. He insisted on paying for brunch, convincing me with "well, you can get it next time."

Next time was today. I was a bit worried about how our conversation would go today. A lot of the easy breezy conversation from last time stemmed from our stories reminiscing college, but there's only so much we can reminisce about college. With that automatic common conversation topic gone, would we still have laughing flowing banter?

We did. And he's still single. And I'm still single. Our server came by several times to see if we were ready with the check, and even after we paid (I got the bill this time), we stayed for another 15 minutes just drinking water and laughing.

He showed no inclinations to leave, despite several attempts on my part hinting it. I didn't particularly want to leave either, but I started feeling bad about occupying table space with a growing line of people out the door waiting to be seated. Perhaps he was too but was just stalling for time? Every time I reached for something to indicate I was ready to go (wallet to pay, hat & gloves, saying no to more water/coffee), he wouldn't mimic my action, and we would instead start along a new conversation topic.

When we finally did get up to leave, I said that we should do this again because I love brunch.

He said, "Oh yes absolutely. I could eat brunch everyday. Let's do this again soon."