Picking up where the last blog left off … here is the latest installment on my love life (such as it is). I wrote the “PG” version of this story in my other, self-censored blog but I’m going to give a recap here because you, dear readers, need all the back story in order to be able to fully understand the situation.
This story involves my high school sweetheart, C. He and I first met at summer camp when we were about 13 or 14. We were friends, and I found out at the very end of the summer that he had a crush on me. He and I stayed in touch for a while and then lost contact. During the fall/winter of my senior year of high school, his junior year, we ran into each other again at a play at his school and there was a spark. We exchanged numbers, went out for coffee, and the rest is history. We dated all the way until August, when I went off to college. He was entering his senior year of high school, I was starting school in Southern California, and it just made sense for us to split up. Logically, anyway. I wanted nothing more in the world than for us to stay together. There were a lot of tears on my part, both before I left and in the first few months I was at college.
But, time goes on, wounds heal, and we stayed friends but that was all. C. ended up coming down to attend the same group of colleges that I was at to play football, so we got to know each others’ friends a bit, but we dated other people and in his sophomore year he met K. They dated, lived together, got engaged and eventually married a year-and-a-half ago. I attended the wedding, and it was gorgeous, and they seemed, as they always had, incredibly happy and in love. In fact, that was at the same time that my relationship with my then-fiance was beginning to unravel. I looked at C. and K. and knew in my heart of hearts that I didn’t feel that way about my fiance and that I couldn’t go through with the wedding…though I didn’t call it off for another couple of months.
The one strange thing about C. and K.’s relationship is that they have done the long distance thing for the past 3 1/2 years. C. has been in grad school in Oregon and K. apparently had a fantastic job that she couldn’t leave in California. So they flew back and forth to see each other. I thought it seemed like an impossible relationship, but they appeared to be making it work.
Then, on my way to the airport last week, when I was flying up to see my parents for Christmas, I called C. to see if he and K. were going to be up there for the holidays so that we could meet up. He sounded strange on the phone, and then I asked what he was going to be doing after he graduated from grad school in the spring – was he moving to California? He said slowly, “Well….it looks like I’ll be staying up here actually.” “What about K.?” I asked in surprise. “Exactly,” he replied. Oh boy. I decided to wait for in-person to get the scoop, and I just told him that I was really sorry to hear that.
On Saturday night, C. and I met up at a cute bar near his downtown apartment. There, I got the whole story. Apparently over Thanksgiving, she told him that she never wanted to get engaged and she never wanted to get married. He and K. had separated and hadn’t talked since. He was wearing his wedding ring on his right hand and looked, as you might imagine, dejected. My heart sank. C. was such an important person in my life, and I could only imagine how badly this must be hurting him, and there was nothing I could do or say. But he talked, and I listened, and I felt good that I could be there for him.
I wished more than anything else that I could just snap my fingers or say a magic word and make it all better…bring K. back to her senses, make her mend their relationship. It made, and makes, no sense to me that she could possibly have never wanted to marry him. She seemed so happy — is anyone that good of an actress? And after so many years of long distance, now they were thisclose to being able to finally live together. i just couldn’t wrap my mind around it.
Still, at the same time that I was feeling so bad for him and wishing that things could be different for him, my old feelings for him were beginning to resurface. Now, please believe me when I say that I have not been carrying a torch for C. for the past 10 years. But something began to stir in my heart that I haven’t felt since…well, who knows when. We moved on to a second bar, then a third bar (which was a converted coffee house that, incidentally, had been the location of our first date.) We were sitting side by side at the bar, and somehow we began to hold hands. He just sat and touched my hands and gazed at me and told me how soft my hands were. I felt both incredibly comfortable and sort of nervous, but he didn’t flinch at all, he just sat and looked at me.
After that, we decided to just head back to his nearby apartment and hang out there. Call me naive, but even at this point I still wasn’t convinced that anything was going to happen. We sat on the couch, he put some music on his iPod, he looked at me, I looked at him, we inched ever closer on the couch, and then we were kissing. And it was as though no time had passed, and it felt just as good as it did 10 years ago when we used to spend hours kissing. Eventually he took me by the hand and led me upstairs and…the rest is history. Mind you, we had never slept together in high school — not even close — so this was totally uncharted territory. But it was great. He was so sweet with me and cooed over how good I looked and it was just so…good.
I fell asleep with my head on his shoulder and his arms around me, and kept waking up throughout the night. When I finally woks up and it was morning and I could see him stirring awake, I was overwhelmed by the feeling of Oh, shit. What if he thinks this was all a huge mistake and it’s really awkward? But instead he put his arms around me and pulled me in close, smiled at me and started kissing me again. Whew!
Our snuggly morning was interrupted by a call on my cell phone from my mother, exclaiming, “Where the hell have you been? We thought you’d been killed and were lying in the gutter somewhere!” So C and I got up and he drove me home. (I told Mom & Dad that I slept on C.’s couch. How old am I, again?)
I was a huge mix of emotions. This was so wonderful but so confusing. C. and I ended up hanging out on Christmas Eve night and Christmas night also, but at his parents’ house then my parents’ house, so nothing more happened aside from a few sweet kisses goodnight. And we never talked about what happened, beyond a vague discussion like “No matter what happens, I’m so lucky to have you as a friend…” etc. Since I came back to L.A., he and I have talked almost every day – either on the phone or online, but nothing resembling a DTR.
Oh – I forgot to mention that on the first night, at the bar I had been telling him that my friend M. is getting married in July or Aug in England, and that I am going there then probably to Paris, and I told him he should come with me because he will have just taken the bar. On Christmas he brought it up again and told me places he’d like us to go, and now we have begun planning!
But….what does all this mean? For now, for my heart and my sanity, I feel like I need to assume that what happened between us was a fun night between friends, period. C. is obviously in an incredibly hard place and will be experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions over the next several months. Even aside from that, we live in different cities. Everything that happened between us over Christmas felt so organic, but it can’t actually be that way.
Then again, I know myself and, once someone works their way into my head and my heart, it is incredibly difficult to get him out. And congratulations, C., you have worked your way right in. Especially since we are still talking all the time and planning this trip together.
So even though I know, I really do, that I need to be careful and tread lightly and not expect anything…much easier said than done. I keep thinking that each relationship I have teaches me something and helps me grow up and that I won’t keep making the same mistakes. But then, every time, something happens that throws me for a loop.
2008….another year older and, it seems, none the wiser…
Filed under: breakups, friends, holidays, life, love, men, relationships, sex | 5 Comments »
