A disappointing end to a perfect 'meet-cute'

Whatever happened to the man who hit on me in a coffee shop?

“Hey, can I take you for a catch up drink?”

The last in a series of seemingly randomly-timed texts from the man I met in a coffee shop back in August—my very own ‘meet cute’ so-to-speak.

Another of my favourite meet-cutes: Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in Notting Hill.

The last time we saw each other in person was in the Summer. After spending the night together, we didn’t firm plans to see each other again. I was off home for a couple of weeks, and so was he, and so I put him to the back of my mind, apart from the occasional giggle about him with my housemate about his insistence on cleaning the milk frother of our coffee machine before he left my house in the morning.

Back then we had met up strictly on the basis that this should be a casual affair. Something to do with him wanting to focus on work.

I can do casual. At least I thought I could… Yet it occurred to me, as I was hit with the occasional, ‘what are you doing tonight?’ text, sent at 9pm, however, that if this was casual, I was definitely not into it.

Perhaps it’s better that he didn’t dress up his desires for anything more than sex, no suggestion of emotional investment or dinner dates. Yet without these things, the idea of casual relations with this man lost any sense of appeal. It felt almost too crude. He wanted the sort of relationship that required no pre-planning, just the odd text when it suited him, when he was bored. No thank you.

I did reply to the ‘catch up request’. If he can take me on something that even remotely resembles a date, I thought, then maybe I could muster some level of interest once again. I let him know I wasn’t free that week, but that I’d be around in January. As expected, this clearly required far too much advance planning and so I haven’t heard from him since.

A story with such a great ‘meet-cute’ seems like it should have a happy, or at least dramatic ending. We love to think there’s some sort of cosmic significance to these things. But in real-life sometimes it doesn’t, it just fizzles out with a whimper. In the end he turned out to be as much as a disappointment as the year 10 mock papers I was marking when we met.