Anni – An Unwilling New Start | Part 3

I lay in bed on Monday night and mulled over my encounter with Sebastian.  While he had assisted me as I walked, he had seemed nervous. I had been too, because after all we didn’t know each other at all - and on top of that, I also found him intriguing. The physical closeness between us at that moment did not necessarily make things better either. Although we had both been slightly sweaty from playing volleyball in the warm weather, he still had the pleasant smell of freshly-laundered clothing. I had hoped in that moment that I somehow smelled okay too.
"Does it hurt a lot?", He had asked shortly before we reached the door to the gym. "I think it's better," I had replied, wondering why he had then made a kind of disappointed sounding "Hmm". Inside, he had lead me into the room our teacher had described, where there was even a cot. Sebastian had cautiously helped me to sit down on it. "You had better lie down and elevate your leg. I’ll look for the cool-packs."
I must have seemed so helpless and insecure, and now the fact that Sebastian was taking care of me made me feel completely unnerved. In Stuttgart, I had only been in love twice before, and apart from a few minor crushes so far I had only had two boyfriends. So I was anything but experienced in these matters. And was this even one of "those" situations? Or was Sebastian just a nice, helpful guy who happened to be there when I hurt myself? After searching for a few moments, he returned to me on the couch, holding the cool-packs and a towel. "Can I, um, is it okay if you take your shoe off? We should see if your ankle is swollen." Of course I would have been able to take off my shoe myself, but I had just nodded instead, and so Sebastian had untied my shoes, loosened the laces, and slowly and gently eased the sneaker off my foot.
"Why did I have to wear these ancient socks today of all days?" I had thought to myself regretfully. The socks had been white at some point, but were now a greyish colour and almost completely worn-through at the heel. As if that wasn’t bad enough, my feet had sweated slightly inside my sneakers, making me turn red with embarrassment. Sebastian had looked at me uncertainly for a moment, but then also peeled my sock off my foot. Luckily my feet had not been neglected in any way. Although I didn’t usually wear nail polish on my toenails, I always cut and filed them carefully.
As I had been worrying about how my feet looked, Sebastian had rolled up the towel and gently touched my leg on the shin to indicate I should lift it. He then pushed the towel underneath my foot. "Your ankle is slightly swollen, can you see that? Can you still move your foot?” He had carefully grasped my foot with one hand and my calf with the other. As he moved his hand lightly across the foot, there was a strong pulsing pain in my ankle and my teeth clenched. "Ow!"
Sebastian carefully put my foot back on the rolled-up towel and then put two cool-packs on either side of my foot. Now that he had taken care of everything he seemed a bit at a loss as to what he should do next. "Maybe you should go to the doctor, I can drive you!" I had already noticed during my first week here that he was one of the few people at school who actually had a driver's license and a car.  Although I was tempted, I turned-down a visit to the doctor, having no idea where I could go – as our family were still new here we didn’t have our own GP in Barsinghausen yet. Instead, I asked Sebastian to drive me home in his grey Polo, as by now P.E., and therefore the lessons for the day, had ended anyway.
As we drove we had been more relaxed than before in the gym - Sebastian had told me a few things about Barsinghausen and showed me his favorite bar as we drove by. After we arrived home he had wanted to help support me in walking to the front door, but my Mum who was out in the garden of course, got there first. So he had just carried my backpack and sports bag behind us to the door and then said goodbye. "You had better go to the doctor later!", he had said once more and then left.
After about two or three hours, in which I enjoyed being looked after by my Mum, the swelling had gone down and by Friday evening I was already able to put weight on my foot. So far so good.
On Monday, back at school, I had cheerfully told Sebastian in the break that I could walk normally again. But his reaction seemed somehow disinterested and distant, which had completely confused me.
That night, I discussed the whole situation with Stephanie on the phone.  "It was so stupid, he just left me standing there afterwards! Even before I went up to him during the break he had already looked at me strangely from a distance ..." I complained. "Who knows, maybe he was disappointed that you're not limping and don’t need him anymore!" Stephanie chuckled. "You're stupid!" I answered. "I probably just imagined that there was something between us in the first place."  "No, seriously!" Stephanie sounded really earnest again. "Have you never heard about those guys who find it attractive when women are helpless? Or, you said he took off your shoe and the sweaty sock, maybe he's into that...?" "That’s ridiculous" I retorted. But Stephanie's imagination had always been bigger than mine, as was her obsession with crazy ideas. So after a one-hour session of searching Google together for "unusual preferences" Stephanie had persuaded me to start an experiment ...