“So, are you going to tell her?” Mark asked. He was, and still is, a persistent person.

Good question, I thought as I stared blankly into space. Am I going to march up to Martina Elizabeth and tell her that I love her? I pondered the question carefully as though it was part of some unscheduled final exam. Instead of answers, however, all I could come up with was a series of dilemmas.

I noticed that Mark was still staring at me with a quizzical look on his face. “What?” I yelped.

“You haven’t answered my question, man,”

I looked down, inhaled deeply, looked up and exhaled very slowly. “I, uh, don’t know.” I turned my gaze to my lunch tray, the other tables, and the clock on the wall. Anything to avoid my best friend’s inquisitive gaze.

“I’ll take that as a resounding ‘no,’” Mark said.

“I didn’t say that.”

“No,” Mark said, “but it’s what you meant to say.”

“I – I can’t tell her. Not now.”

“Why the fuck not?” Mark asked, his voice rising in pitch and volume. A group of student journalists from The Serpent’s Tale – Alan Goode, Francisco Vargas, Juan Calderon and Roger Lawrence – looked at us with bemused expressions from one of the neighboring tables. Mark noticed, cleared his throat and lowered his voice to a half-whisper. “Why don’t you tell her, you dumbass?”

“I can’t,” I repeated, shaking my head emphatically.

“What are you so afraid of?”

Another good question. “Nothing…everything,” I replied.

“What, pray tell, do you mean?” Mark asked. “Are you more afraid that she doesn’t like you, or that she does?”