I had just finished another day of work, and man was I tired.  As a human resources manager, I had to spend a lot of time dealing with people. That would've been great if I was an extrovert, but unfortunately, I'm what they classify as an introvert. People tired me out. But despite that, I still enjoyed my job. It was definitely better than working in the nearby grocery store like I had been doing for the previous 2 years.

  I rushed over to my small Toyota and quickly got in. Tonight was going to be special. I was hanging out with my friend, Lars, and he said he had something special planned.  I had no idea what he wanted to do, but I was really looking forward to it. So much so, I was actually willing to dress up a bit. I preferred wearing baggy clothes, but every now and then, I would dress nicer. Normally I wore a lot of long sleeve shirts with a cartoon design and joggers or jeans.  Of course for work I had to wear something a bit different, but I usually got away with the same style.  However, this was one of those occasions I was willing to put on a little summer dress and a jean jacket.  After getting home and changing into a more formal wear, I headed back out to meet up with Lars.

  We met up at a fancy restaurant in downtown Toronto. Lars was dressed up nice as well, which made the whole thing feel special. We were both pretty bloody lazy with our styles, so this was a rare occasion where we both dressed nice for once. He walked me over to the table he had reserved and we ordered our food.  

  We chatted a bunch while we were waiting for our food. I noticed myself drowning in his ocean blue eyes. They were just so pretty. Lars had an odd, but beautiful assortment of features. The most noticeable being his hair. It was naturally platinum blonde. Seeing as he came from a family of mostly red reds from what I was told, that was odd. It was very well kept too. It was always nicely shaved on the sides, and the tuff on top was wavey and brushed to the side a bit. The hair mixed with the blue eyes, nice face, and awesome personality just made him unbelievably attractive to me.

  After a while of chatting, our meals finally arrived. I was happy to be able to dig in. I was bloody hungry.  I got some fried fish and chips, and Lars got some sort of fancy chicken soup.  Obviously a bit too fancy for my taste. 

  "Wow!" Lars said with a smile. "This looks good!"

  "Tastes good too." I grinned with a mouth full of chips. I couldn’t help but snicker at the thought of my best friend chewing me out for being so improper.  Yea, okay, so I wasn’t the most proper person out there like her. "So, you said you had something special planned? Mind telling?"

  "You really wanna know?" He replied with a smirk. "Really and truly?"

  "C'mon. Don't be a wuss. Tell me."

  "Alright, alright." Lars giggled. He went a bit quiet before speaking up again. "Well...I was wondering… uh, well, if you wanted to be together."

  "We're together right now aren't we?"

  He rolled his eyes. "No, no. I meant a relationship."

  "Oh." I said surprised. "You want to be in a relationship? With me? Of all people? Do you know how much of a pain in the bum I can be?"

  "Yes, you." Lars laughed. "And I'm willing to live with that. I'm a pretty big pain in the ass myself."

  I couldn't believe this was happening. The guy of my dreams was asking if we wanted to be together!! All my life I thought I was going to be single, and now this was really happening!

  "Well?" Lars asked hopefully.

  "Of course!" I smiled as I choked down some more chips. “Duh!”

  "It's official then!" Lars said with a huge smile on his face. "We're together!!"

  It almost seemed too casual. I didn't expect my first relationship to start so casually. But, I didn't care. I was happy. 

  We continued on with our meal, joking our way through all of it. I accidentally made Lars laugh hard enough he had chicken broth come through his nose, which only made us laugh more. The people who were sitting around didn’t look too impressed.  I suppose it was high end restaurant so they didn’t want to watch two rowdy young adults laughing so hard soup was coming through their nostrils. Once we finished dinner, we got an ice cream dessert to split.

  "Mm!" I said after taking a bite. "This is really bloody good!! Wish Diane could try this! She would love it!"

  Diane was my best friend of many years. We've been friends since we started school way back when we were five. I had just moved to Toronto from the UK with my parents and she was my neighbor.  She somehow managed to convince me to stop being antisocial and we’ve been besties ever since. She absolutely loved ice cream.  In fact, every Saturday we used to hang out and get ice cream when we were younger.  It was tradition to us.  We still did it every now and then, but with the both of us working now, it was a bit hard to find time to do that.

  "Maybe we should bring her here one day!" Lars said. "I mean, you talk a lot about her. We've gotta meet up one of these days. She sounds like an amazing person."

  "Well, you're gonna have to meet soon anyways."

  "Hm?" Lars asked, confused. "Why's that?"

  "She's gotta make sure you're good enough to be my boyfriend." I giggled. "I had to make sure her husband was good enough for her. Obviously she's gonna wanna do the same."

  Lars snickered. "Man, you guys are close."

  "Damn right." I laughed. "Nothing's splitting us up. Neither of us will let it happen."

  I got home later that night, and was overjoyed. Immediately, I grabbed the phone and called Diane's number. She was going to be so excited to hear what just happened! 

  "Hello?" Diane picked up after the second ring.

  "Hey!" I giddily replied.

  "Hey! What's up? You sound excited about something!"

  "You'd never believe this, but guess who's got a boyfriend!" 

  "What? No way!" Diane cried happily. "Who? Have I met them before?"

  "Ya know that guy I've been hanging out with? Lars? It's him."

  "Ooo! You've gotta let me meet him! I gotta check to see if he's boyfriend material for you."

  I laughed. "I knew you'd say that. Maybe sometime soon we'll schedule something."

  "For sure!" Diane said. "Which reminds me. Are you still on for hanging out this weekend?"

  "Hell yea." I replied. It was one of the lucky weekends we both had time to hangout. We were planning to hangout all weekend. "I'd never miss it."

  Lately we were pretty lucky and we were both free on weekends.  Diane’s hours could be a bit wonky sometimes.  She was an archeologist and since it was excavation season, she usually had to work into weekends to help with getting the digs done.  She absolutely loved that part of her job, so she didn’t mind spending her weekend working at all.  She claimed it was better than being in office writing reports on the sites.  I was thankful I didn’t have to work weekends though.  There would only be the occasional time I had to go in because someone botched something, but it wasn’t usually for long.  If I had to give up my weekends likeDiane did, I would’ve quit long ago.

  Like I mentioned, I would never miss a weekend with Diane.  I loved spending time with her. We were planning on going shopping and possibly having a movie marathon. Diane wasn’t in the mood to be too active unfortunately.  I knew why.  Sometimes her anorexia liked to poke her ugly little head out and bug her.  This was probably one of those times and she didn’t want to be too active and feed into it.  She had a habit of easily falling back into old habits.  Thankfully, Diane knew better and was always careful with how much exercise she got or how she was eating.  It really sucked she had to deal with that, but I was proud of how well she was dealing with it. Especially compared to a couple years ago when she was quite deep into her eating disorder.