Third wheel

I've got to be brutally honest here, we've had some fun times, but hanging out with Cologne so much lately has really reminded me why I don't normally do that. So, I was pretty stoked to finally be having a night out that didn't include him. See, I got to talking with the girl we met at the udon shop, and we agreed to meet up, and since for various reasons people who want to see me again usually want Cologne to come as well (either to be polite, or they want to recreate the magic, or they think the two of us come as a fucking set), I suggested inviting him as well. To which her reaction was basically, “Yeah...about that.”

But Cologne, oh Cologne! He still wanted to go out that night, and unfortunately, I'd already mentioned to him that Udon and I were thinking of hanging out. So I spent literally one entire day of having him nag me about “our” plans, and being really flaky about not knowing what was going on or even if I wanted to go out at all tonight because I am just so tired, and blah blah blah would you just leave now please. Eventually he did, I rushed to get ready, and met up with Udon. Success!

So we started skipping happily down the street together and what the fuck it's Cologne. Walking straight toward us.

You've gotta...are you fucking......really?

I really have to stress the truly catastrophic luck required for that coincidence. If we'd walked by a minute earlier, if he'd walked by a minute later, if for any reason he hadn't been walking down that side of that exact street at that exact moment, we'd have been golden. What the actual fuck.

So he latches onto us as we head for the train station, trying to shake him off, and we're standing in front of the elevator waiting to go down and I say, well, we're going to Oosaka, what are you going to do. Are you going to go to the udon shop again? Maybe spend some time at Ing? Trying to communicate, with my eyes and my tone of voice, that he should really, really maybe think about doing those things. And he assures me that no, it's no problem, he'd be happy to go to Oosaka tonight! And he turns away for a moment and Udon shoots me a look like she maybe wants to stab someone in the kidney, and I try to apologize with my face.

Obviously it would have been a lot better if Cologne hadn't been there, but the night wasn't a total loss. She took us to an awesome Italian restaurant, like with actual Italian Italian food, and then to another Hub location. And as things went on, Udon and I started drifting closer and closer together, until we were practically sitting in each other's laps, and Cologne is watching all this and still trying to flirt with her, because Jesus fucking Christ, he is the motherfucking picture of KY if ever there was one. At one point she was comparing the colours of our eyes (mine blue and intriguing, his brown and boring) and Mr Don Juan Wannabe thought it would be a great idea to use that as an excuse to get his face as close to hers as possible. She jerked her head away in alarm and smacked him, startled, which I'm sure he took to be a positive, flirtatious response. She didn't seem to mind my face being too close, though. Just saying.

She kind of started rubbing my leg underneath the table while we talked, and at karaoke she turned the lights off and we sort of half-cuddled together, but couldn't really do anything more interesting because Cologne wouldn't give us any space. So, in summary, holy fuck, Cologne. Learn to read. It definitely would have been a better night without him, but Udon and I might meet again before my visit to Canada, so we'll see what happens. I'm assuming nothing, but we'll see what happens.

On the way home, I tried to stop Cologne from getting into the women-only carriage, which is signified by abundant signage and being bright fucking neon pink. A devout contrarian, he refused to believe me. When we arrived, he confirmed that he had indeed been the only man aboard (giving me his trademark creepy grin as he said this), and that he had gotten some dirty looks...but still claimed that I was wrong.