B.O.A.T - Brownest of All Time

Chapter 2

Okay, so I need to calm down. Why am I feeling all this heart-beating-faster and butterflies-in-the-stomach for a message from this dude? After all it's just Sameer. I mean it's true that I kind of like him. But he's not like my ultimate crush.

He's just a random 25-year old boy. A plain-faced guy with an ordinary job. Not the most good-looking. Not the richest. Not the most popular. Not the coolest. Like Simple Simon, he is Simple Sameer. He certainly doesn't fall within the fairytale Prince Charming category.

Anyway, do such heroes even exist? I don't know. Definitely no one around me is married to one. Every couple I know has some problem or other. No one has that perfect fairytale life that's described in books or shown in TV. Either the stories lied to me about the perfect life or I'm just surrounded by losers.

Somehow the point is that even though there's nothing strikingly special about Sameer I sort of like him. I don't know what it is. He's pleasant and looks like a guy that will make a good companion. Every time I look at his face — in pictures of course because he works abroad, I get this feeling that I should get to know him.

It's nothing serious by the way. Not in a I-want-to-fall-in-love-and-settle-with-him way but maybe just have heart-to-heart conversations with him. I rarely feel that about brown boys. It's so hard to come across one that you feel like talking to. Most of them are just outright silly and disgusting. But Sameer's different.

He's a good listener. Mostly I'm the one who listens to others' stories. It's like for the first time there's someone who listens to me speak.

I still remember how we started talking in my marketing class. I'm very introverted so I hardly speak to anyone. Even during breaks I sit alone and keep staring at my phone unlike all the extroverted kids that keep chatting endlessly and call it "networking" because apparently that's what marketers are supposed to do. I always spoke only to people who approached me first. Sameer was one of the few who did that.

One day I was there seated alone eating my chickpeas that I packed from home as part of one of my seriously-started-but-always-half-done diets, and I was pretending to work on my assignment when Sameer came, sat in front of me and started talking to me all so randomly. He started commenting about the assignment trauma, saw my chickpeas and asked why I was eating that and acted so shocked to hear I was that serious about dieting.

That semester I saw him a couple of times in class and we shared only smiles. Other than that we have messaged on WhatsApp a few times — only about assignments of course. All those times I didn't feel anything like this at all.

I mean, not even when he tried to comfort me when I was upset over not being able to submit an assignment on time — and he said that he would've written it for me if not for his work load. That was very comforting to hear even though I didn't know whether he himself was smart or dumb. Back then I appreciated him as a good classmate and nothing much.

This whole crush thing started like three weeks back when he moved to the Netherlands to work and started following me on Instagram. Okay, first of all, I know it's weird for a brown boy to choose the Netherlands. I mean why not the Middle East? That's where most of them go, isn't it?

I was very curious, so one day I messaged him asking this and soon after a couple of random chats BOOM! Ilhaam developed a crush on Sameer just like that. I mean despite the fact that he casually mentioned to me he has a girlfriend I still like him.

Maybe an overdose of romantic comedies does that to you or perhaps being pure single does it — like your heart starts racing when you speak to anyone because you haven't had any proper interactions with men other than with the boring ones at work!