Monday rolled around and Ethan was excited to tackle his social problem, he sat at his desk eagerly waiting for Carmen to arrive. Carmen arrived just before 9 am, reminding herself once again to treat Ethan like he treats her socially. She was prepared to walk past him without saying ‘hi’ or ‘good morning’, but she noticed that he looked different today.

“Hi Carmen, how was your weekend?” Ethan suddenly asked.

“It was quiet. Are you okay? Why do you look different?” Carmen asked alarmed at Ethan’s greeting.

“It’s nothing I just realized I wasn’t socializing with you. I’m used to distancing myself from researchers because they didn’t like me back in school. But you seem to be okay with me, so I’ll try to be more open with you.”

“Okay. And did you come to this realization yourself?”

“No, I asked my friends why you changed, and they said it was my fault for not responding to you properly.”

“I’m glad you have friends outside of work,” Carmen said coldly. She realized that she sounded rude now and should probably rethink her attitude towards Ethan.

“Yeah, before today I was only able to socialize outside of work out of fear and stress.”

“Okay. Well let me put my bag down and I’ll come back and sit down.”

Carmen was surprised that Ethan noticed she was acting differently. He didn’t act differently when she started acting coldly towards him. Maybe he wasn’t completely hopeless after all.

“So, Carmen, are you open to dating?”

“Why? Whose asking.”

“One of my friends. They were interested in you after I talked to them about you.”

“I am open to dating. But I’d like to avoid blind dates.”

“You could meet him this weekend if you want to and see for yourself. Then it wouldn’t be a blind date.”

“No thanks. I already have someone I like. Could we focus on our work now?”

“Sure, let’s do that.”                                                                                              

If Carmen liked Ethan, Ethan couldn’t tell. Ethan thought that was fine anyway. He had to grow to learn to socialize at work and he needed Carmen to soften back up and get things the way they were before moving forward with other relationships. Carmen on the other hand was mentally freaking out about whether she was able to hide the fact that she liked Ethan. After seeing how he didn’t react to her admitting that she liked someone, she realized she was better at hiding it than she thought and attributed it to her long streak of acting coldly. She also began to wonder about Ethan’s line of questions. If anything of all the things to talk about after not being open about personal things, why would someone like Ethan bring up dating as their first social conversation? Carmen knew something was up. She wasn’t sure if Ethan knew she liked him or not, but she wanted to mess with him a bit if she had the chance.

Towards the end of the week, Ethan found his friends at work and learned to spend time socializing with them at lunch or during breaks. He found that he could get more of his work done if he wasn’t constantly surrounded by it, which surprised him. Another thing he learned was that Carmen was always surrounded by guys. He vaguely remembered that she didn’t like female theorists, but he knew some of those guys were researchers. Ethan began finding himself thinking, ‘why does she always have so many guys around her’ and ‘aren’t there any female researchers she could get along with’. His friends found it annoying that Ethan would stop listening in conversations to watch Carmen. Eventually, they suggested he find out who she liked by inviting her over to the weekend get-together.