hooking up
– but are you “going out”?
here’s this guy John I’ve been seeing.
At least I think that’s what we’re doing,
since we definitely, well, see each other. And not just in class – but also in
each other’s beds. He’ll call me or I’ll call him and he’ll invite me over to
watch a movie and I’ll head over to his place but somehow, nine times out of
ten, I never quite find out how the movie ends. We continue with out alleged
“movie watching” even though as time goes by we’re seeing less and less of each
movie and more and more of each other.
That’s fine by me, except I have no
idea what we’re doing. I don’t even know if there is a “we.” This could just be
two people in a mess. I’m not sure either of us is ready to have “the talk,”
because if we discuss it, we’ll go from two people in a mess to deciding if
what we’re having is a relationship. Then I’ll have to admit my feeling, and
that’s okay when everything is cake and butterflies, but what if he doesn’t
feel the same way? Then I won’t be able to pretend. Either we’re something more
to each other or we’re not, but finding out may mean that we’re less than I
want to be.
We started out as friends…
He was the coffee guy and I was that
girl who came into the shop once in a while. Then one night we were hanging out
after he got off work and I couldn’t stand the tension anymore. He spun me
around on out way out the door and I couldn’t help it. I just kissed him. It
was one of those kisses that’s so great it almost hurts. And it’s cool. Even
though I don’t have a clue what’s going on (Are we dating? What?), I’m still
happy. He’s not officially my boyfriend, but there’s definitely something to be
said for a guy who can give me butterflies… and he’s amazing to fool around
with.
It’s not as if we jumped into having
sex; it kind of happened on its own. It seemed like the right night and the
right time. I still go out and maybe give someone my number, but when other
guys call, I tend to be having dinner with the parents or something. Whether or
not I admit it, I’m not dating anyone else because I don’t want to – and I hope
that John doesn’t want to either. He kisses me goodnight in front of his
buddies, and calls when he says he will, and generally acts like we’re
something more than friends, so I figure it’s okay to assume we are. I mean, I
like John. A lot. And stuff is going well.
At least it seems like it, until I’m in
the coffee shop and I bump into a mutual friend and ofer her a ride home. We’re
talking about John and she turns to me
and says something like, “I heard he’s dating this awesome girl named Katie.
She’s older. Isn’t that cool?” Yeah, it’s great. Did I mention I am not older
and my name is definitely not Katie?
I call John and this time I have no qualms about saying we have to talk. In
fact, I am so ready to talk now that if
he doesn’t have a damn good explanation about how we ended up as two people in
a mess, I may do more than talk. I may yell and scream and cry and do my best
to make him feel awful. Except I can’t really do that. There were no rules, so
how could he break them?
“We have to talk,” I say. I can
practically hear him cringe over the phone as he suggests I stop by so we can
hash it out in person.
“Hi,” he says when I get there, and I
stand and look stupid while he serves a few people coffee. When the customers
are finally gone, he looks at me and asks if we can go outside so he won’t get
fired while I claw his eyes out. Hey, at least he knows why I’m there. We walk
out the front and he’s standing there looking at me with those big brown eyes,
and all of a sudden I’m not pissed off at him anymore. I’m pissed off at myself
for waiting so long to say this stuff.
“Look,” I say, “I know we never talked
about this, but I really like you.”
“I know, and I didn’t mean for you to
find out about her this way,” he says. “I didn’t know how to tell you last
night when you came over. I’ve known her a long time and she asked me out four
days ago and I never thought she would ever even consider going out with me.”
He says he’s really sorry, and it’s not
that he lied to me, it’s just that he didn’t know what else to do. Great.
They’re already going out? Going out?? They just completely bypassed seeing
each other. What the hell?
I’m totally feeling like Adam Sandler
in The Wedding Singer at this point, and it seriously crosses my mind to
scream, “Once again, things that could have been brought to my attention yesterday!”
But I’m not the girlfriend and I don’t feel that I can yell. So I sit there and
tell him I like him a lot and I’m disappointed he turned out to be such a jerk.
He agrees with me in a way that makes it hard to hate him.
…and we ended up as something else.
Part of me wonders if it would have
made a difference if I had said something earlier, like before she did. And I
know it would have. It might not have changed the fact that he went out with
her, but at least then I wouldn’t have felt like such a tool. At least then I
would make sense for it to hurt as much as it does that he’s going out with her
instead of me.
Then here’s the best part: He looks right at me, brushes my cheek with his hand, and says, “I hope we can still be friends.” Yeah. Right. And I don’t want to yell, so I turn and walk away so he can’t see me getting upset, and all I can say is, “I gotta go. I guess I’ll see ya.”
(written by anna schleelein taken from seventeen
magazine, november 2003 issue)
