Happy Singles Awareness Day!

    I’ve only started thinking about Valentine’s Day that way recently.  I’m actually a bit sad because I haven’t really been single since I was fourteen years old.  That’s eleven years ago.  Yeesh.
    I’m not that upset, but I am a little bummed.  Valentine’s Day has never been super important to me, so I’m not sure why I feel like it is now.  I honestly don’t remember what I did with some of my boyfriends for Valentine’s Day, but a memorable one was the year I was sixteen, my boyfriend got Chinese food and a blanket and we had a sick picnic inside and watched The Notebook.  I know, right?  A boy suggested we watch a romantic comedy, and followed through with it.  It’s nice when boys do things you know they don’t want to do because they know you want to do it.
    Which brings me to The Boy.  I suppose he’s technically a man, because he’s thirty, but it feels weird to say that.  I’m interested in a man?  I’m usually a bit of a cougar.  Out of the five serious boyfriends I’ve had, three of them were younger than me, and the other two were less than seven months older than me.
    So there’s the boy.  I don’t want to say his name, so I’ll call him...Eddie.  That sounds good.  Everyone can see me dating someone named Eddie, right?  Eddie and Eileen.  Here we go.
    So I’ve known Eddie a little over a year.  He’s had a girlfriend for three?  four?  years.  I’m not completely sure.  But the whole time I’ve known him, she’s been there.  I’ve never met her, despite the numerous times she could have been at things we were both at, school events and otherwise.  He hardly ever mentions her, and it was like pulling teeth to get him to tell me her name.  So I know her name, her age, her job, and that she likes to read.  And she doesn’t do anything with him in public, apparently.  I’m pretty sure he knows more about my ex than I know about her.
    Every so often, he’ll text me, usually about school stuff.  Nothing he says is ever crossing any sort of line, and maybe I’m just jealous and untrusting, but if I found out my boyfriend was texting someone this much (it equals out to about one half hourish conversation a week), I’d be annoyed.  I’d think something was up.
    He hates things/people in general the same amount I do.  Almost every damn thing we hate at the same level.  And he likes to read, and he writes.
    He mentioned over the summer that he likes to “have someone on the horizon” before he breaks up with his current girlfriend, and I had given him a note, because I’m super mature, saying he could have someone on the horizon if he wanted to.  He said nothing about it, but continued on like nothing happened, which is better than not talking to me ever again.
    I’m usually not good at this type of thing, but I really don’t think I’m misreading signals here, and everyone I’ve talked to (which is probably the entire audience of this blog), thinks there’s nothing mixed about his signals.
    He read four chapters of my novel to help me figure out what to submit for workshop this past residency.  And this was a workshop he wasn’t in, so it’s not even like he was getting some reading done ahead of time or anything.  He also did it about .5 seconds after I emailed them to him.
    He doesn’t like to touch people, but he willingly hugs me.
    When we have to get up in front of people and do things, it’s understood that we will high five each other when we finish.
    He recommended a book to me on Good Reads.
    When I asked him for his number, he said no you give me yours, and texted me about a minute after I emailed him.
    At a thing we both went to, he only went to presentations I went to, with the exception of the first one, where he was waiting for me when I got out.  He also went on a bad weather day because I went.
    He eats lunch/dinner in the gross school cafeteria because I ask him to.
    When I was nervous about a public thing I had to do, he sat with me because he didn’t want me to be alone.
    He has hung out with me alone a total of four times.  As in, so alone that absolutely no one but the two of us can verify what did or didn’t happen.  And nothing did, of course, but I wouldn’t believe that if I was his girlfriend.
    He’s made concerted efforts to connect to my favorite person at school, even though their volume is a bit high for him.
    He bought me a beer.  Haha this one probably means nothing, but after four years of everything split down the middle exactly and when it wasn’t split down the middle, it benefitted him and not me, not having to pay someone back for a beer is really nice.
    He told me he’ll get me a good deal if I decide to get a new laptop.  Which he’s offered to do for other people, but I’m counting this anyway.  I sent him a picture of this cool one I want, saying I wanted it, and he checked to see if his work had it in stock.  I was honestly just fangirling about it because the screen flips.
    He has offered to eat iffy food for me if we’re at food places together, and he actually did it in one instance.  When I tried to half-hug him (you know, when you put your arm around someone and put your head on their shoulder?) he held his hands up and backed up.  “No, this is seriously too raw for you.”  And later that night he offered to eat the tomato off my burger.  It ended up not having one, but still.
    That same night he let me have a sip of my drink.  He was also going to share a mushroom with me, until we realized there were enough for us not to have to split them.  Which reminds me, he also let me eat a mushroom off his plate at a different time.
    If I text him/tell him in person that I hurt myself, he’s like, “Are you ok???” and only after I say yes does he make a joke about my clumsiness.  Which is a real thing, and an embarrassing yet admittedly humorous thing.
    There have been a number of times when we’ve been sitting together, and our legs or our arms touch, and he doesn’t move.  He just sits there, large portions of our bodies touching.
    And yet when I told him recently how I feel, just to make sure that I was as obvious as I could be, he rejected me.  He said, “You want me to break up with my girlfriend?”  And in a decidedly skeevy move I said, “Not necessarily?”  This is not what I really meant, and certainly not what I want.  But he insisted that it was what I meant, and he said he would not break up with her.  Interesting wording.  He never actually said that he didn’t like me.  At first I was sad about it, but then I decided that all my friends were right, and he did like me, he was just stuck.  So, since I’m sadistic, I decided to make life difficult for him.  I think I did. :)
    My favorite moment with him is one that I already mentioned, sort of.  It’s the hugging thing.  When I went to drop him off (one of the alone times), I hugged him before he got out of the car.  I started to let go of the hug when I thought it was over, but he tightened his grip.  It was a pretty tight grip before that.  Also, another time, when we both got out of the car to hug, he hugged me so hard he made a noise.  I love those long, strong, grunty hugs you get when you’re merely trying to drop someone off at the T.
    So what’s my point with all this?  I’m bummed that I’m single for Valentine’s Day, even though it’s kind of a lame holiday.  I’m also upset that he’s still with his girlfriend.  And I’m upset that these things upset me.  Every time I think I’ve managed to curb my feelings for him, he’ll text me, and my entire body will feel like your foot does when it falls really asleep.  A tingling that is muffled but at the same time very painful.  I want this to be a thing, and I’m a bit aggravated that I seem incapable of having a normal relationship.  Why can’t I like someone who is in a position to act on their feelings for me?  Ugh, whatever.