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| This will be us someday. |
Then Saturday happened.
I suppose it was technically Thursday night. I was texting *Eddie*, and he lent me the first two volumes of a graphic novel, which I finished, so I asked when we were gonna hang out so I could give them back and get more. He immediately said he was off on Saturday, and we should hang out and get food.
Hell yes.
Cue anxiety.
Friday afternoon I asked him where he wanted to go, and he never answered, so my mind immediately went to the worst place. I always do that. I need to work on that. Not everyone hates me and no longer wants to speak to me if it takes them a while to answer a text. Sometimes I can be ridiculous.
I’m in the middle of dying my hair Saturday morning, assuming that if we do hang out it’ll be for dinner, when he texts me. We decide to meet in Harvard Square around 2 and do our thing. Freaking 2?? But then I realize he’s probably spending Saturday night with his girlfriend, because every single fucking thing he does implies that he’s the nicest, most stand-up, gentlemanly guy ever, which of course only makes me want him more.
I finish my hair and have Amanda help me pick out a shirt. :) I wear the one she suggests, a black tank with adorable pyramid studs all over the top part, with jeans (because he joked with me that yoga pants meant I “gave up” - I argue the exact opposite, that yoga pants turn humble bums into billboards, but whatever), and I wear my awesome lightweight jacket onto which I’ve affixed large pyramid studs and sewn the graphics from several awesome shirts that for one reason or another could no longer be worn (but the graphics were still in good shape). I put part of my hair up, and think it’s funny that it’s a fucking beacon of ginger-ness because it’s brand new. It’s ridiculously bright. And I wore a necklace, which I never do, because not only did it match my earrings but it drew the eye to my cleavage. The eye didn’t really need help, but I decided to help anyway.
I gave myself ample time, but I was late anyway. Once I got on the train, I texted him to apologize and tell him I was about ten minutes out. He didn’t seem bothered. I had trouble with my purse on the train, because it had his books in it and a book of mine to lend to him. >_<
When I get there, he gives me another long, strong hug which causes him to grunt. I love those hugs, but I don’t get them. My own parents don’t hug me that hard. Which is fine, I’m not usually big on touching. Anyway.
He knows a place he wants to take me. It turns out to be busy, so we go somewhere else, which is, “like the place we were going to go, except more pretentious.” I’m relieved that the place we didn’t go occupies a lower level of pretension, but the food is good. He orders a beer and I just stick with water because I don’t know a lot about alcohol and I don’t want to look silly. Also, the reason I don’t know a lot about alcohol is because I don’t drink it much, so it’s not like I felt I was missing anything.
We each pay for our own food, and then walk around for a bit. It starts to rain, and we duck into a Mexican restaurant for drinks. I can do this. There’s only one seat at the bar, and he lets me take it. Then someone gets up and he can sit, too. I tell him I don’t know what to get, and he says just get what I get. Why the fuck did I admit weakness? But he doesn’t care. He seems prepared for what I’ll do, which written down now seems creepy, but I promise I felt all warm and fuzzy and enveloped in cute - and this was before the drinks. The bartender comes and he orders two margaritas. Oh, okay, I guess I can avoid looking silly altogether. It’s hot, so I take off my coat, even though what I’m wearing shows the still horrific bruises on my arm from getting my blood drawn a week ago (I have impossible veins. I suspect they are merely decorative). He knew I had them, I sent him a picture of them when they were at their most gruesome. He makes a face when I show him my arm, and says he’s sorry it happened. Aside from the pain, I actually like bruises. They’re like snowflakes, and when they’re purple they’re oddly pretty. I’m not insane, I swear.
The margaritas come, and I tell him I’ve never had one before. I actually haven’t. I’m a sorry excuse for a middle-class white girl, I know. He says, “Well, drink up!” And takes a huge slurp of his. He’s so fucking silly. I take a sip of mine and say, “Holy alcohol Batman!” He gives me a disapproving shake of his head. We keep drinking and get chips and salsa. I do not eat salsa. I’m allergic to it.
We talk about a ton of different things, and at one point he gives me his phone to find something I insisted he had. He had it, kind of. He also tells me about how he got so drunk at a recent work party that he got sick. I remember him telling me about this work party hours before it happened. Apparently, he threw up copiously upon arriving home. He also decides to share with me that his girlfriend tried to break up with him via text because he went home with someone else. I must have involuntarily tensed or made a face or something, because he quickly says, “No, no, I got a ride home from someone else.” Oh, ok. I mean, it’s bad enough that I know you must have sex with her, I really didn’t want the image of you vomitly thrusting on top of someone else. I guess what really happened was she was too drunk to drive, so someone else drove her car and brought her home. She also puked profusely. He asked her what she thought would happen. Did she want him to stand above her and try to puke around her into the toilet? No, she said. I say text-break-ups are lame, and whisper “and kind of immature.” He most definitely checks on my cleavage and then agrees with me.
I want to ask why he told me this story. I’ve been in a situation before where I was fairly certain someone I was friends with liked me (turned out I was right), and I had plenty of bad stories to share about my shitty boyfriend at the time. I didn’t share a single one with him. I thought it would lead him on, make him think he maybe had a chance since I was confiding to him the faults of my relationship. I also had a good many friends who weren’t interested in me that I also didn’t tell those stories to. Eventually I did, but at the time it didn’t seem necessary. So why was it necessary to him? I suspect it means more than just the casual, “look what silly things happen when me and people I know drink” story. *Eddie* knows I like him. If he didn’t before, he absolutely knows now. It seems important that I got told this story. That I basically called his girlfriend immature and he agreed.
After two margaritas each, we decide it’s not raining anymore and we’re going to go back outside. I decide we better not be done hanging out, because I’m a bit tipsy. I keep this to myself, figuring I’ll just hang out at the station and get something from Dunkin Donuts if I have to. He puts his card down and I ask how much money he wants. He makes a face (if I may pass judgement, a tipsy face) and says, “Psh, stop.” I say no, how much money does he want? He exclaims, “You’re poor! Don’t worry about it.” I say yes, I am, but I didn’t ask him to hang out with the intent of making him pay for my stuff.
“Listen,” he says, “I work sixty hours a week. I have money to burn, but not a lot of time to burn it. Please let me do this.” I whisper okay and thank you. We leave and I feel cute and nice but also bad because my ex never did anything like that for me, at any stage of our relationship. Fucker.
We walk around some more and end up at an indie comic shop. I’m still tipsy and so I’m really silly, and hopefully not annoying to him, though he’s laughing at every silly thing I say and do. We look and look and talk about comics and cosplay and stuff and he picks a graphic novel out of a box and says, “You need to read this. I’m buying it for you.” I try playfully to tell him not to, because at this point I feel downright guilty for what to me feels like stealing his money. He doesn’t get my hints or doesn’t care, and buys me the comic. We walk around a bit more, and he decides he should go home and do a little work before he goes to bed. He has work at 6 in the morning and so is going to bed early. I assumed he was hanging out with his girlfriend, and that’s why we had lunch and not dinner. I knew he had work early, but it didn’t click with me. He only saw me that day. We trade books and he gives me another signature *Eddie* hug.
While I wait for the train I tell him I had a lot of fun, thank you. He says no problem, hanging out is what friends do. While hanging out, we decided we would indeed (at some as yet undetermined time) watch both Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. I tell him I will make him watch Rocky Horror also, since he’s never seen the whole thing. (What? It really doesn’t get better than Tim Curry in a corset, Meat Loaf on a motorcycle and then the dinner table, and the Time Warp.) He says ok, we’ll do the double feature, and Rocky Horror will be on deck.
When I go on an errand with my mom later that night, I tell her that this encounter in no way made me less confused. Everything he does suggests that he likes me, and he’s doing everything he can without crossing the line. This all makes me like him even more. It also makes me wonder about his girlfriend. If I found out my boyfriend (I’m imagining past ones) bought drinks and a comic book for some girl I’d never met, and was swapping books with her to boot, I’d be rip shit. I’m so baffled by this situation. My mom thinks he’s trying to figure out how to dump his girlfriend, and while he definitely did not say he liked me, he also didn’t say he didn’t.
I’m definitely not going to say anything, because it would only push him away. Waiting is killing me, and when this finally does happen I’m going to explode. Until then, I’m just going to have to savor these little open-to-interpretation moments.
