We had gone out to dinner, and furiously texted each other back and forth. Everything seemed pitch perfect. We got along, we had fun together––we had similar taste in films, and most importantly, he didn’t seem like a knife-wielding psychopath.

He told me to come out on Friday. I was more than happy to oblige.

I had psyched myself up with the promise of brand new makeup, a pre-game coffee buzz, and the requisite Beyonce tunes. Because this is what girls in like do, right? Tonight was going to be the night when I emerge from my awkward girl cocoon, and become a Siren incarnate.

However, rather than having sailors perish in the face of my fantastical charms, the only crashing that happened was me… crashing and burning.

Something told me that I should probably play up my sensuality –– that looking like the female version of Ducky from Pretty in Pink would do nothing for my lust-object IQ, but hey, it seemed like he liked me for me, and I wasn’t about to totter around in heels for a second Friday night in a row. Rather than selecting a sheer low cut Valentino blouse, or high-waisted leather shorts, I went for skinny jeans, pointed buckle boots, and a crisp white button-up tuxedo shirt. And to top off my ode to the New Romantics? A porkpie hat. 

He’d invited us out for an atypical hangout in Clubland, so in a way I was arming myself against the attacks of smarmy guys, holding out hope that maybe he’d be able to see my flirtatious smolder from underneath my 80s-best-friend get up.

Guess not.

There he was, kissing her in front of me. I often joked to him about my cat lady-Norma Desmond-Mame Dennis-esque future, but always with the undertone that I’d at least get to make out with him first! I mean, is there anything worse with envisioning your perfect Friday night, only to watch it unfold with another girl in your lead role?

Cue the blinding rage that came out as a good solid two minutes of sobbing while my friend scooped up my tears in her hands.

“I know what you’re doing,” she said to me, her eyes wide with a near-sisterly concern, “You’re comparing yourself, stop comparing yourself.”

I choked back a sob and nodded.

Pause for irony. Here I was, standing outside of a club on Adelaide of all places (yes, I am a location snob)––crying my eyes out over a boy who is making out with someone who was (in that moment), probably the most irritatingly banal individual that I had ever had the immediate displeasure of meeting.

Jersey Shore moment? I think so.

“Were you in love?” she asked. I shook my head.

“Then it was just a crush,” she kept repeating to me, every time she sensed that I was going to tear up again, “It was just a crush.”