Crappiest, crap day of my entire effing life!

I'd been perching on the closed toilet seat for so long that parts of my body had gone dead. It had started in my feet, worked its way up into my ankles and was slowly numbing my calves. Maybe if I stayed here for long enough, everything would go numb? (Wishful thinking.)

My new—and ludicrously overpriced—pink cardigan was officially ruined from the mixture of mascara-stained tears and snot bubbles I'd been pouring into it for the last hour. But it was all I could use to stifle the undignified sounds of my uncontrollable sobs. This was a public restroom, after all!

I had a headache from hell; possibly from tear-induced dehydration, possibly from the half-empty bottle of wine I'd been sipping on for the last hour. But I knew I had to leave at some point. I couldn't hide in a toilet cubicle forever, as much as I wanted to. People would start to wonder where I was. He would start to wonder.

This had been one of those monumentally bad ideas from the start. No, what was I saying? This wasn't just a "bad idea," this was the worst idea ever conceived of. On a scale of one to "worst idea ever,"this would be right up there with DIY open heart surgery (something I was seriously considering, since the pain of it breaking was almost too much to bear).

Going to my best friend's engagement party.

Sounds perfectly benign.

Making a speech at my best friend's engagement party.

Totally normal.

Toasting my best friend and his beautiful new fiancée.

Absolutely acceptable.

That is until you replace the word "best friend" with "the man I've been hopelessly, devotedly and excruciatingly in love with for the past three years."

I glanced at my watch; ten minutes before I needed to make the speech. Ten minutes until I was due to take up position in front of friends and families and deliver the old "thrilled and couldn't be happier for them" platitudes.

I gulped down another more-than-mouthful of anaesthetizing wine as my phone beeped. I rolled my eyes when I saw whose name was lighting up the screen. It was my friend, Lilly. She'd been on my case for the last week, insisting that this was my last chance to tell him how I felt, even if he didn't feel the same way. I needed to get it off my chest, she said. It would be cathartic, she said. I would finally get closure, she said. I wished to God she would shut the hell up. But then she'd said that other thing too, the one that kept that ember of hope burning: What if he does feel the same way, too?

But I'd been here so many times before too. Hopes up, only for them to later be dashed, and downright shattered in the flaming pits of friend-zoned hell. I glanced at my phone; another one of those dreaded phrases was splashed across it.

LILLY: You have to tell him how you feel before it's too late. What if you're meant to be together and he just doesn't know it yet?

Meant to be? Yeah, that's what I'd thought too. All that hanging out together. Pizza and beer evenings. Staying up all night chatting on the phone. We'd even gone to a friend's wedding together, for heaven's sake. Surely that was date-y? My friends had all agreed...it was date-y!

I'd certainly interpreted those as very clear signs. We were meant to be together! It was only a matter of time before he confessed his true feelings to me. But as time passed...and passed...and passed, nothing happened. And then she came along. And everything changed.

I needed to snap out of this. I needed to get a grip. I needed to go outside and pretend that everything was totally fine. More than fine. I needed to pretend that I couldn't be more thrilled for my BFF. I'd written a speech drenched in a smorgasbord of hideous, romanticclichés that I'd plucked directly from the Internet. As it turns out,cheesy one-liners are just a Google search away. But now, I wasn't sure how I was going to manage to say them out loud.

Why had I agreed to this in the first place? But this was only the appetizer; the real main course was yet to come...

And let me tell you, it is a turducken of tragedy. One horrific idea rolled into another equally dreadful one and then stuffed into the mother of shitty ideas. Grilled, basted, tenderized and deboned!

Agreeing to help him pick out his wedding suit.

Agreeing to emcee his wedding.

Agreeing to help him choose his romantic honeymoon destination—where they'd have lots of romantic honeymoon sex.

Clearly, I was a sadomasochist hell-bent on torturing myself. But I had to do this. I had no other option.

So I stood up...

Pins and needles in feet. Kneecaps crunching. Dead legs. Stomach lurching. General revolting creeping feeling.

I took my first step, but as I did... Whoosh! It hit me all at once. The alcohol raced through my body, spiking the blood in my veins and making me buzz. I took another step and the buzz gave way to a much more unpleasant feeling.

Suddenly, I felt woozy. Very woozy. And this wasn't the kind of establishment for wooziness. The engagement party was being held at her parent's restaurant on their award-winning wine farm in the beautiful Cape Wine lands; no expenses spared. Very fancy. It was the kind of super-upper-crusty party that people with surnames beginning with Vander and ending in Child went to. Many of the guests had been flown up from Jo'burg to be here, including me.

I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, holding onto the sink for added support. I looked hideous. What was my mother's favorite saying again? "I look like the wreck of the Hesperus." I'd never known what a Hesperus was, but for some reason, the word seemed to describe perfectly how I looked and felt right now.

"Hesss Perrr Russs." I hissed it out loudly as I leaned towards the mirror and then almost laugh-cried out loud.

I splashed some water on my face to counteract the wooze, it worked a little and then I grabbed some paper towels and attempted to wipe my tears away. I blew my nose quickly when I realized it was making a disgusting "squeeeeeee, squeeeeeee, squeeeeeee" sound on every out breath.

I reapplied my foundation, popped on a bit of mascara and smooshed on some lip-plumping lip-gloss. I'd bought the lip-gloss forhim. I'd stupidly thought that if my lips were more Jolie, and less me, that he might take notice. I'd been wrong. And now I was 250 rand poorer.

The lobby outside was abuzz with a crowd of overdressed people. She and her crowd were of the super-skinny, pearl-wearing, overdressed ilk. Which meant that I always felt somewhat inferior in their presence, and a great deal larger than I knew I really was. She and her crowd were the kind of people that gave normal women body dysmorphia and made us all feel like large, beached marine animals.

At least eighty people were bustling about in the massive lobby, excessive for an engagement party if you ask me.

I smiled at everyone as I walked past, trying to do my best impersonation of a happy, non-tipsy person. Soon we were all ushered into the restaurant and instructed to take our seats. I was sitting across from my so-called BFF, Matt. He smiled at me and I melted into my chair. I always melted when he smiled. I always got butterflies when he called and I got downright dizzy when we spent time together. I glanced to his left, and there she was...

Samantha. Doctor Samantha, I might add. Pediatric oncologistSamantha, to be specific! She saved sick children's lives for a living, for heaven's bloody sake! How the hell could a mere mortal such as myself compete with that?

Samantha caught me looking at her and I quickly shot her a smiley thumbs-up. I've always wondered if she knows how I really feel about him? Aren't women supposed to have a sixth sense about these kinds of things? Unless she did have her suspicions but felt thatunthreatened by me. I wasn't sure which was worse, and I suddenly imagined her and Matt's late night conversations about me...

"You know she's in love with you, right?" she says, lying in bed, silk sheets tussled, body glistening with beads of sweat from post-coital workout.

"I know," he says, equally sweaty and naked from mind-blowing sexcapades. "Don't worry, though," he turns and kisses her softly, "she's no competition for you."

"I know, baby. I know," she says, and I want to imaginary-punch her.

I tried to shake the image from my head and looked down at the handwritten speech in my hands. But my fingers were shaking uncontrollably and the wooziness was hitting me in steady waves that seemed to be building in momentum.

A large pair of invisible hands suddenly reached out and wrapped themselves around my throat. Squeezing. Throttling. I swallowed, but it got stuck. The tightening feeling was growing by the second as Samantha's father was nearing the end of his speech.

"And now we'll hear from Matt's best friend, Val," he said.

I froze. A deathly pause followed as people turned and looked for me.

"Val!" He said it a bit louder this time. "Val?"

What the hell was I going to do?

DIARY ENTRY: 14 Feb (Three Years Ago)

Dear Diary,

Something amazing just happened. Genuinely amazing. No, it was not the insights I gained while writing my latest article about why "Dairy is the New Gluten." It was the amazing thing that happened in the lift, precisely 7 minutes ago. As you can see, I'm writing this soon afterwards, while the amazing thing is still fresh in my mind, because I don't want to forget any of it.

I'd just come back from my "romantic" Valentine's date with Stormy-Rain, in which she'd spoken all evening about how Valentine'sDay was yet another example of the evil consumerist-capitalist agenda. (I still have no idea what she means, and the irony is that she actually does have a boyfriend!) Needless to say, I wasn't exactly in the most "hearts and chocolates" kind of mood when I got home at precisely 2:30 a.m.... that is, until I got into the lift and saw him!

Gorgeous. Pitch-black hair. Maldivian blue eyes that make you want to peel your clothes off and go swimming in, naked. Dark, sexy stubble dotted across seriously sculptured jaw—not in a Ridge Forrester way, though. Tall, broad shoulders, seriously sexy ass and smelling like heaven. In a word, H. O. T.

So, naturally, I tried to exude that cool nonchalance that is always preferable in these kinds of situations. I made momentary eye contact, gave wildly noncommittal nod of acknowledgement, placed hand on hip, and looked in opposite direction. And, it worked! Because HE started a conversation with ME. I reiterate, this is important, he opened his mouth first...

He asked, "Are you coming back from a Valentine's date?"

I replied, "No." (Still exuding cool, aloof nonchalance, although terribly uncool inside.)

And then he said, and I quote, "I find that hard to believe. Someone that looks like you, dateless on Valentine's Day?" And then he locked eyes with me and smiled.

Bam! I melted. Swooned. Felt explosions around us and butterflies inside. Mainly because he was just soooo good-looking. If he'd had a big, shiny bald patch and those gross white sticky patches in the corners of his mouth... it would have just been creepy!

For the purpose of this entry, it's probably also worth noting that by this stage, 2:30 a.m., I was pretty well lubricated. I had hit the cocktails, hard. I could tell he was tipsy too—he had that slightly dreamy, dopey look of someone who was buzzing.

And then, fueled with uncharacteristic courage, mainly due to vodka, I asked, in my most flirty voice, "And you? Where's your Valentine's date?"

He replied, "I don't have one."

He took a step forward. Another step. Another. Until he was right next to me. And that's when the truly amazing thing happened.

We looked at each other and then I swear I heard him say—with his mind—that he wanted to kiss me. So, I said it back, using the powers of telepathy that I didn't even know I had. "Kiss me! Kiss me! Kiss me!"

And he did. It was hungry and desperate and loud and messy and full of arms and legs and backs being flung against walls. A m a z i n g. Best kiss of my entire life. Sparks, fireworks, lightning bolts and atomic fucking bombs went off. And then the lift doors opened and it stopped.

I thought that was going to be the end of it. I thought this was going to become like those crazy movie moments where you land up kissing a stranger under some equally strange circumstances and then part ways—but it wasn't.

He asked, "Do you live here?"

I replied that I did, "number seventeen" (just so he knew exactly where).

And then, lo and behold (I'm taking this as a sign, btw), he said, apartment 18—he'd just moved in! He walked me to the door and then kissed me again. Soft, slow, sexy and delicious. Then he stopped, ran his thumb over my lips and said, "Good night, neighbor. See you soon." I repeat, "See you soon."

Now, do you see why I needed to write this down immediately! Hottest guy I've ever seen before kissed me passionately in lift (and at door) and it was electric. Earth moved. Mountains shook. Skies opened to choirs of little white-haired angels. I can still taste him. My lips are tingling, and I want more. Perhaps I'll stage a walk-past by his apartment tomorrow...

More tomorrow...