It always happens the same way. You’re washing dishes or driving down the interstate or doing some aggressively mundane thing like organizing a sock drawer, and suddenly, it hits you like a brick to the face: They were into you. Not just friendly into you, but actually, definitely flirting with you. It’s as if the neurons in your brain had been trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube for years and finally twisted into the solution.
At first, it’s funny in a masochistic way. You laugh, because who doesn’t love realizing they failed at basic human interaction? But then it creeps into darker territory. You replay the scene with forensic precision: the way they leaned in a little closer than necessary, how their voice dipped just slightly when they said your name, the absurdly specific compliment about your hands (who even notices hands?). It wasn’t just small talk; it was coded communication.
The missed opportunity becomes grotesque, almost mythic. It’s not just that you didn’t seize the moment—it’s that you didn’t even recognize the moment existed. You were like an oblivious extra in your own romantic comedy, completely unaware that the spotlight was momentarily yours. And why? Because you were too distracted by overthinking something stupid, like whether your band T-shirt made you seem authentic or if ordering a Diet Coke made you look soft.
This realization, of course, makes everything worse. Because now you have to ask yourself: Would it have even mattered? Maybe they were flirting because they were bored. Maybe they flirt with everyone. Or maybe—and this is the ego-shattering part—they moved on five minutes later because they realized you were too oblivious to catch it. The universe, so full of potential, closed like a stubborn jar of pickles because you were too dense to twist the lid.
And then, inevitably, you start imagining what could have been. The alternate timeline where you cracked the code in real time instead of years later. In that version, you didn’t awkwardly laugh and change the subject; you said something witty and disarming. Maybe you ended up kissing in a diner parking lot or had a torrid, short-lived affair that still makes your friends jealous when you talk about it. But no, you stayed in your own lane, completely clueless, and now you’re here, rehashing it like an idiot.
It’s not regret, exactly. Regret implies you could have done something different if given the chance. This isn’t that. This is the slow-burning embarrassment of not even realizing you were in the game until long after the stadium lights were shut off. It’s less like missing the train and more like not even realizing the train existed in the first place.
So, what do you do with this information? You carry it around like an unopened letter. It doesn’t weigh much, but you’ll never throw it away. It’s a reminder that life is happening all the time, even when you’re too busy worrying about whether you seem cool. And if there’s one thing you’ve learned from this, it’s that flirting is like UFOs—most people won’t believe it exists until they’ve seen it themselves.
