I realize that I haven't put my entire relationship story out there yet and I had intended this post to have a completely different spin. However, that's not how it turned out.
Over the last few weeks, D. and I had decided that we were going to attempt to work out our issues by going to counseling. This was, in my mind, my last ditch effort to try to salvage our relationship. When I asked him if he would be willing to go to counseling with me, he agreed immediately under the condition that I was asking him to go because I truly wanted to work on our relationship. He said that he didn't want to go if I was just trying to find a way to exit our relationship painlessly. Of course, that wasn't my intention. I wanted to work on us. I wanted to find a way so that we could (hopefully) be together in a happy and healthy way.
Tonight was supposed to be our first session together with a therapist. Unfortunately, that just isn't the way it turned out.
I still can't write too much about it because I'm in so much tremendous pain over it but I found out (with my own two eyes) over the weekend that D. wanted his cake and he wanted to eat it too. While he, apparently, wanted to maintain the control over me of knowing that I was still in love with him, he also wanted to have his fun. After catching him in a lie, I also caught him in bed with someone else. The last three days have honestly been the worst days of my life. However, I'm taking the steps that I need to take at this point to try to move on. I'm surrounded by good friends who are really trying to be there for me when I need them and I'm seeing a therapist to try to help me through the pain and trauma of what I'm going through.
Due to what I'm trying to navigate through right now, I may not post as often as I would like here. I've put a temporary suspension on posting over at Living on a Dime or Less but I'm hoping to be able to find the time and energy to post over here on Single Mama Stuff. My therapist is encouraging me to write as much as I can during this time so I'm looking at this blog as an outlet. I just need to get myself to the point where I can manage to eat and sleep on a normal schedule again before I can focus on writing.
While this side of my blog is still very new and very young, I truly appreciate all of the support that you have shown me so far. Please know that I need it more during this time than ever. Thank you for your comments and your words of encouragement!
Until next time. . .
Check It Out!
Showing posts with label relationship story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label relationship story. Show all posts
Monday, March 5, 2012
How many sticks do you really have to pee on?
Welcome back to mine and D's relationship story. If you've missed the first two parts, go check them out here and here.
It was Monday, February 21, 2005 and I was driving back to my office that morning. By this time, I had taken a promotion and followed my boss to a bigger office which was closer to where D. lived but it was still a good hour and half to two hours away (depending on traffic). We were still seeing each other almost every weekend and most of those weekends I would make the drive to see him. He was the one with the busy life. I just had my apartment and my two cats. Outside of work, I knew no one so there was really no reason for him to come to see me in my apartment. Sure, I lived at the beach. There were plenty of things to do where I lived but he always seemed to have things that he needed to get done on the weekends. So, it was me who fought the beach traffic and the military traffic (there were multiple military bases around where I lived at the time) for hours on Friday afternoons just so that I could travel to see him.
Sure thing, honey. No problem.
It also meant that I was the one who would get up early on Monday mornings and drive back. I would get ready at D.'s house and drive straight to work from his house. Two-ish hours in the car on a Monday morning (every Monday morning!) is enough to start anyone's week off on a bad foot. The only positive thing about that was that I didn't have to be at work until 10am on Mondays. That's probably the only reason I put up with it for so long.
Anyways, I was driving to work that morning and I started feeling pretty blah. Not surprising though because we had gone out over the weekend and had partied pretty hard. In fact, that Friday night I had drank far too much and had paid for it dearly on Saturday. I pretty much spent the entire day in bed on Saturday being tired and nauseous. On Sunday, we had driven around and looked at cars for D. since he was wanting to buy a new car and I can remember looking at myself in the side mirror thinking that I wouldn't be surprised if someone mistaked me for a walking corpse. I looked awful. I felt awful. Anyways, when I started getting waves of nausea on Monday morning, I just figured that I was still hungover/sick from Friday night. I went into work like normal and felt pretty crappy all morning. About half-way into the afternoon, it dawned on me that most of my co-workers in the office had been off at one time or another the week before on account of a stomach virus. "That's it!", I thought, "I'm not still sick from this weekend, I'm just getting what they had last week. Duh!" So, I got most of my work done for the day and I went home to rest. The next day, I felt a little bit better but was super tired. I just figured that my body was working really hard to fight off the virus and it was making me tired. So, I went into work and explained to my boss that I was feeling a little better but that I was just a little bit tired. He looked at me and said "Girl, you're not sick. You're pregnant". I think I looked at him and uttered a few four letter words that aren't appropriate for even this liberal blog. It was at this point that he so kindly (and inappropriately, I might add) said "Look, I'm pretty sure you're pregnant because your boobs have gotten huge". If he had been anyone else (other than my boyfriend's best friend), I would have slapped him and filed a sexual harrassment complaint. Instead, I told him that I'm glad he had chosen to take up the task of deciding if I could make the cut at the next Hooters job fair but that I was pretty sure that I was in control of my own menstural cycle and that I was most definitely not pregnant.
Thankyouverymuch.
Then, I rushed to my calendar and secretly tried to figure out when I had last gotten my period. Since I had never been great at tracking these things, I honestly couldn't remember. But I did know one thing. . . .
It had been awhile since I could remember seeing Aunt Flo last. Ummm. . .shit.
Nevertheless, I brushed it off and decided that there was no way that I was pregnant. Afterall, I was on birth control. That stuff had a job to do and I trusted that it was doing what it was supposed to be doing. These things don't fail. At least, these things don't fail on ME.
The next day (Wednesday), I was still feeling kind of crummy but I went to work anyways. Every time I made any sound, movement, or any other illustration that I was even a living breathing human being, my boss made a sound like a baby crying. He was convinced that I was pregnant. I was convinced that he was out of his mind crazy. Before I left work that night, I told him that I was going to take a test that night and I was going to keep the urine drenched stick and drop it on his desk for him to find the next morning just as proof that he didn't know what he was talking about. At that point, I was pretty sure that he didn't know what he was talking about. I guess a little (teeny tiny) part of me was a little curious since I wasn't able to determine exactly when my last period had been. The last time I could vividly remember having my last period had been before Christmas. It was now almost the end of February. I guess I was pretty sure that wasn't necessarily a good sign, but, like I said before, I wasn't always good about tracking the timing of my cycle. Plus, I worked a very high stress job and I knew that sometimes had an effect on whether or not my cycle was predictable or not.
Basically, I wasn't really sweating it.
On my way home that night, I stopped by the grocery store and bought a two pack of pregnancy tests. I figured I'd have a back up just in case Mr. Nosey (my boss) felt that he needed immediate proof that I was not, in fact, pregnant and that he just needed to shut it and get off my non-baby carrying back. So, a few hours later, I decided to go ahead and get it over with. I dutifully did my pee-pees on the stick and waited the requisite 3 or so minutes. At that point, I looked at the pregnancy test and what I saw concerned me. According to the directions, if the test was positive, there would be a "+" sign. If it was negative, there would be a "-" sign. What I was looked like this "l" Yes, I got a straight up and down line. That's it. So, I figured that test was broken and I took the next one out. Downed a few glasses of water (I needed more pee!) and waited until it was time to try again. Next test delivered the same thing. I was perplexed. I looked and looked all over that test but all I saw was one straight up and down line. And it was a DARK pink straight up and down line. So, I called a friend of mine from college. I don't remember exactly what was said, but I do remember her saying that she didn't think that the straight up and down line was a good sign. Instead, she told me to go back to the store and buy a digital test. She said those things are fool proof. I was quite annoyed that I needed to go back to the store and buy more pregnancy tests just to get a confirmation that I wasn't pregnant.
Those damn things are expensive!
But, I did it. At this point, my curiosity was kind of getting the best of me. So, I bought not just one double pack of digital pregnancy tests, I bought three boxes. If you're bad at math (like me), that's six digital pregnancy tests. I'm sure the young cashier guy either thought that I had lost some sort of bet within my sorority or that I was extraordinarily paranoid. The look on his face screamed "WTF?" But, I gave him the stinkeye which basically told him to mind his own business and high tailed it out of there. Not before spending over $50 on digital pregnancy tests, of course.
Got back to my apartment and AGAIN, piddled on a stick. By this point, I had kind of lost enthusiasm for this whole exercise so I deposited the test on my bathroom counter and went back into my living room to finish watching tv. I think it probably stayed on my counter for 20 minutes. When I went back into the bathroom and saw what the test said, I was pissed. ANOTHER damn test was broken. With this type of test, a positive result would say "Pregnant" and a negative result would say "Not Pregnant". Mine was broken. It was missing the "Not". I called my friend back and told her that I had bought another pack of defective tests because this one was missing the "Not". She got very very quiet (I think she was waiting to see if I would finally come to the conclusion on my own--I'm slow--I didn't) and after a minute or two, she quietly said "Sweetie, I don't think the test is broken. I think you're pregnant". Now, it was my time to get quiet. And quiet, I got.
All of a sudden, the full force of what was happening sunk in. Actually, it hit me like an 18-wheeler truck. I didn't start crying, I started freaking out. As in full out sobbing, couldn't catch my breath, shaking uncontrollably f-r-e-a-k out. I probably screamed "OH-MY-GOD" over and over for 10 minutes. Since my friend was 2000 miles away and probably wasn't sure what to say, she begged me to call my mom. So, I did what any sensible girl would do after just finding out that she was unexpectedly pregnant. . .I curled up in the fetal position on my bathroom floor, rocked myself back and forth and begged the test to be wrong.
After I had convinced myself that it was just a false positive (yes, because those things happen ALL the time--clearly denial was not a part of my life at the time), I grabbed the other test in the pack and took that one. This time, I didn't leave it on the counter and walk away. This time, I laid it on the counter, squeezed my eyes shut and said 180 prayers to God before opening my eyes again. When I opened them again, I was met with the same result (DUH!) but this time, my denial card had run out and I started to realize that I might have actually fallen victim to an alien invasion of my uterus. I called my mom. I think the only coherent words that she got out of the conversation were that I was pregnant, that this wasn't supposed to happen, and that I needed to get to D.'s house and tell him. She begged me not to drive two hours to his house. At this point, it was 10:00 at night and by time I got to his house, it would be midnight. She reasoned with me that I was in no condition to drive. That, instead, I should wait until Friday when I was already scheduled to go to see him and give myself some time to let this sink in. That way, she said, I would already had some time to be able to figure out my own thoughts on it (yeah, because two days is plenty of time to process your own internal thoughts about a completely unexpected pregnancy!) and could break the news to him in a less emotionally charged state. Plus, she said she was worried about me being on the roads that late. What can I say? She made sense. So, I told her that I wouldn't go and promised to call her the next day.
Then, I called my boss, told him that I wouldn't be in the office on Thursday or Friday. I didn't even tell him why. I just told him that I was going to be out. I still remember clearly what he said: "I'm sorry, sweetie. Believe me, it will be okay in the end. You'll see." Then, I packed a bag and headed to see D.
I know I had told my Mom that I wouldn't go, but I had to. There was no way that I was going to make it two whole days knowing what I knew and not tell him. Plus, I needed to know what his reaction was going to be. If he was going to laugh in my face and tell me to get lost, I figured it was better to know earlier rather than later.
I cried the entire two hours to his house. By time I arrived, my face resembled a sunburnt marshmallow. With smeared mascara and tear stains. Oh yeah, and I was clutching a plastic trashbag for dear life because I was all of a sudden convinced that I was going to throw up at any minute. When I pulled up to his house, I didn't have a plan. In fact, it wasn't until I pulled into the driveway that I considered whether he was even awake. Afterall, it was after midnight. Rather than ring the doorbell and wake him up, I just let myself into the house (I had a key). He and a friend of his were in the kitchen drinking beer. When he heard his front door open, he immediately came out into the hallway and his face registered straight shock. I'm not sure whether it was the shock of seeing me standing in his house when I lived two hours away, the fact that it was after midnight on a Wednesday (now Thursday) and I was standing in his house, or the fact that my face looked like I'd gotten into a fight with a beehive (red, swollen, & misshapen). As soon as I saw him, I immediately broke down again.
And then, I ran.
It was Monday, February 21, 2005 and I was driving back to my office that morning. By this time, I had taken a promotion and followed my boss to a bigger office which was closer to where D. lived but it was still a good hour and half to two hours away (depending on traffic). We were still seeing each other almost every weekend and most of those weekends I would make the drive to see him. He was the one with the busy life. I just had my apartment and my two cats. Outside of work, I knew no one so there was really no reason for him to come to see me in my apartment. Sure, I lived at the beach. There were plenty of things to do where I lived but he always seemed to have things that he needed to get done on the weekends. So, it was me who fought the beach traffic and the military traffic (there were multiple military bases around where I lived at the time) for hours on Friday afternoons just so that I could travel to see him.
Sure thing, honey. No problem.
It also meant that I was the one who would get up early on Monday mornings and drive back. I would get ready at D.'s house and drive straight to work from his house. Two-ish hours in the car on a Monday morning (every Monday morning!) is enough to start anyone's week off on a bad foot. The only positive thing about that was that I didn't have to be at work until 10am on Mondays. That's probably the only reason I put up with it for so long.
Anyways, I was driving to work that morning and I started feeling pretty blah. Not surprising though because we had gone out over the weekend and had partied pretty hard. In fact, that Friday night I had drank far too much and had paid for it dearly on Saturday. I pretty much spent the entire day in bed on Saturday being tired and nauseous. On Sunday, we had driven around and looked at cars for D. since he was wanting to buy a new car and I can remember looking at myself in the side mirror thinking that I wouldn't be surprised if someone mistaked me for a walking corpse. I looked awful. I felt awful. Anyways, when I started getting waves of nausea on Monday morning, I just figured that I was still hungover/sick from Friday night. I went into work like normal and felt pretty crappy all morning. About half-way into the afternoon, it dawned on me that most of my co-workers in the office had been off at one time or another the week before on account of a stomach virus. "That's it!", I thought, "I'm not still sick from this weekend, I'm just getting what they had last week. Duh!" So, I got most of my work done for the day and I went home to rest. The next day, I felt a little bit better but was super tired. I just figured that my body was working really hard to fight off the virus and it was making me tired. So, I went into work and explained to my boss that I was feeling a little better but that I was just a little bit tired. He looked at me and said "Girl, you're not sick. You're pregnant". I think I looked at him and uttered a few four letter words that aren't appropriate for even this liberal blog. It was at this point that he so kindly (and inappropriately, I might add) said "Look, I'm pretty sure you're pregnant because your boobs have gotten huge". If he had been anyone else (other than my boyfriend's best friend), I would have slapped him and filed a sexual harrassment complaint. Instead, I told him that I'm glad he had chosen to take up the task of deciding if I could make the cut at the next Hooters job fair but that I was pretty sure that I was in control of my own menstural cycle and that I was most definitely not pregnant.
Thankyouverymuch.
Then, I rushed to my calendar and secretly tried to figure out when I had last gotten my period. Since I had never been great at tracking these things, I honestly couldn't remember. But I did know one thing. . . .
It had been awhile since I could remember seeing Aunt Flo last. Ummm. . .shit.
Nevertheless, I brushed it off and decided that there was no way that I was pregnant. Afterall, I was on birth control. That stuff had a job to do and I trusted that it was doing what it was supposed to be doing. These things don't fail. At least, these things don't fail on ME.
The next day (Wednesday), I was still feeling kind of crummy but I went to work anyways. Every time I made any sound, movement, or any other illustration that I was even a living breathing human being, my boss made a sound like a baby crying. He was convinced that I was pregnant. I was convinced that he was out of his mind crazy. Before I left work that night, I told him that I was going to take a test that night and I was going to keep the urine drenched stick and drop it on his desk for him to find the next morning just as proof that he didn't know what he was talking about. At that point, I was pretty sure that he didn't know what he was talking about. I guess a little (teeny tiny) part of me was a little curious since I wasn't able to determine exactly when my last period had been. The last time I could vividly remember having my last period had been before Christmas. It was now almost the end of February. I guess I was pretty sure that wasn't necessarily a good sign, but, like I said before, I wasn't always good about tracking the timing of my cycle. Plus, I worked a very high stress job and I knew that sometimes had an effect on whether or not my cycle was predictable or not.
Basically, I wasn't really sweating it.
On my way home that night, I stopped by the grocery store and bought a two pack of pregnancy tests. I figured I'd have a back up just in case Mr. Nosey (my boss) felt that he needed immediate proof that I was not, in fact, pregnant and that he just needed to shut it and get off my non-baby carrying back. So, a few hours later, I decided to go ahead and get it over with. I dutifully did my pee-pees on the stick and waited the requisite 3 or so minutes. At that point, I looked at the pregnancy test and what I saw concerned me. According to the directions, if the test was positive, there would be a "+" sign. If it was negative, there would be a "-" sign. What I was looked like this "l" Yes, I got a straight up and down line. That's it. So, I figured that test was broken and I took the next one out. Downed a few glasses of water (I needed more pee!) and waited until it was time to try again. Next test delivered the same thing. I was perplexed. I looked and looked all over that test but all I saw was one straight up and down line. And it was a DARK pink straight up and down line. So, I called a friend of mine from college. I don't remember exactly what was said, but I do remember her saying that she didn't think that the straight up and down line was a good sign. Instead, she told me to go back to the store and buy a digital test. She said those things are fool proof. I was quite annoyed that I needed to go back to the store and buy more pregnancy tests just to get a confirmation that I wasn't pregnant.
Those damn things are expensive!
But, I did it. At this point, my curiosity was kind of getting the best of me. So, I bought not just one double pack of digital pregnancy tests, I bought three boxes. If you're bad at math (like me), that's six digital pregnancy tests. I'm sure the young cashier guy either thought that I had lost some sort of bet within my sorority or that I was extraordinarily paranoid. The look on his face screamed "WTF?" But, I gave him the stinkeye which basically told him to mind his own business and high tailed it out of there. Not before spending over $50 on digital pregnancy tests, of course.
Got back to my apartment and AGAIN, piddled on a stick. By this point, I had kind of lost enthusiasm for this whole exercise so I deposited the test on my bathroom counter and went back into my living room to finish watching tv. I think it probably stayed on my counter for 20 minutes. When I went back into the bathroom and saw what the test said, I was pissed. ANOTHER damn test was broken. With this type of test, a positive result would say "Pregnant" and a negative result would say "Not Pregnant". Mine was broken. It was missing the "Not". I called my friend back and told her that I had bought another pack of defective tests because this one was missing the "Not". She got very very quiet (I think she was waiting to see if I would finally come to the conclusion on my own--I'm slow--I didn't) and after a minute or two, she quietly said "Sweetie, I don't think the test is broken. I think you're pregnant". Now, it was my time to get quiet. And quiet, I got.
All of a sudden, the full force of what was happening sunk in. Actually, it hit me like an 18-wheeler truck. I didn't start crying, I started freaking out. As in full out sobbing, couldn't catch my breath, shaking uncontrollably f-r-e-a-k out. I probably screamed "OH-MY-GOD" over and over for 10 minutes. Since my friend was 2000 miles away and probably wasn't sure what to say, she begged me to call my mom. So, I did what any sensible girl would do after just finding out that she was unexpectedly pregnant. . .I curled up in the fetal position on my bathroom floor, rocked myself back and forth and begged the test to be wrong.
After I had convinced myself that it was just a false positive (yes, because those things happen ALL the time--clearly denial was not a part of my life at the time), I grabbed the other test in the pack and took that one. This time, I didn't leave it on the counter and walk away. This time, I laid it on the counter, squeezed my eyes shut and said 180 prayers to God before opening my eyes again. When I opened them again, I was met with the same result (DUH!) but this time, my denial card had run out and I started to realize that I might have actually fallen victim to an alien invasion of my uterus. I called my mom. I think the only coherent words that she got out of the conversation were that I was pregnant, that this wasn't supposed to happen, and that I needed to get to D.'s house and tell him. She begged me not to drive two hours to his house. At this point, it was 10:00 at night and by time I got to his house, it would be midnight. She reasoned with me that I was in no condition to drive. That, instead, I should wait until Friday when I was already scheduled to go to see him and give myself some time to let this sink in. That way, she said, I would already had some time to be able to figure out my own thoughts on it (yeah, because two days is plenty of time to process your own internal thoughts about a completely unexpected pregnancy!) and could break the news to him in a less emotionally charged state. Plus, she said she was worried about me being on the roads that late. What can I say? She made sense. So, I told her that I wouldn't go and promised to call her the next day.
Then, I called my boss, told him that I wouldn't be in the office on Thursday or Friday. I didn't even tell him why. I just told him that I was going to be out. I still remember clearly what he said: "I'm sorry, sweetie. Believe me, it will be okay in the end. You'll see." Then, I packed a bag and headed to see D.
I know I had told my Mom that I wouldn't go, but I had to. There was no way that I was going to make it two whole days knowing what I knew and not tell him. Plus, I needed to know what his reaction was going to be. If he was going to laugh in my face and tell me to get lost, I figured it was better to know earlier rather than later.
I cried the entire two hours to his house. By time I arrived, my face resembled a sunburnt marshmallow. With smeared mascara and tear stains. Oh yeah, and I was clutching a plastic trashbag for dear life because I was all of a sudden convinced that I was going to throw up at any minute. When I pulled up to his house, I didn't have a plan. In fact, it wasn't until I pulled into the driveway that I considered whether he was even awake. Afterall, it was after midnight. Rather than ring the doorbell and wake him up, I just let myself into the house (I had a key). He and a friend of his were in the kitchen drinking beer. When he heard his front door open, he immediately came out into the hallway and his face registered straight shock. I'm not sure whether it was the shock of seeing me standing in his house when I lived two hours away, the fact that it was after midnight on a Wednesday (now Thursday) and I was standing in his house, or the fact that my face looked like I'd gotten into a fight with a beehive (red, swollen, & misshapen). As soon as I saw him, I immediately broke down again.
And then, I ran.
Monday, February 27, 2012
How we met. . .
Over the next handful of posts, I will start from the beginning and bring you up to speed on everything (well, everything that is important, I suppose) you need to know about mine and D's relationship and how we got to where we are now: me being a single mom and not entirely sure where my relationship with my "Baby Daddy" stands.
I had been working at my company for about 4 months and I had just recently gotten a new manager in my office. My boss had transferred to my office from an area of Virginia about 3 hours away and knew no one in the area. He was a few years older than me and had a great sense of humor. Almost instantly, we clicked. But not in the way that you might be thinking. No, my boss was happily married. However, his wife was still in their old town trying to get their house sold and tie up loose ends before she and their young daughter made the move to the new town. Because my boss and I were both alone in our town (I worked constantly and really didn't know anyone in town since I had moved from out of the area), we kind of hung out with each other. Never anything inappropriate. . .just running out to grab lunch occasionally and we often found ourselves working late at our office since we were in sales and were always busting it to meet (and exceed!) monthly goals. Anyways, this gave my boss and I ample opportunity to get to know each other. After I had been working with him for a month or so, he said that he thought I should meet one of his best friends. This guy had actually worked with him in his prior office and my boss thought that he and I would get along. The guy was D. I kind of blew it off because I had gotten out of a serious relationship earlier that year (about 6 months earlier) and was still trying to nurse my wounds from that breakup. However, occasionally when my boss and I would be working in the office after hours, my boss would call D. and put him on speaker phone and we'd all three just sit around and shoot the bull on the phone for a little while. I could tell that he was funny and like my boss, he had an outgoing personality. After that, D would occasionally call the office during the day and ask to speak to my boss but he would always spend a minute or two chatting me up and making me laugh. I found out later (from him) that these phone calls were not actually to talk to my boss, it was a sneaky (or not so!) attempt to get me on the phone. Since we had caller id on our phones, D would sometimes call the office and my boss would pick it up knowing it was D. D. would tell my boss to hang up so that he could call back because he wanted me to answer the phone. Sneaky, sneaky!
One Friday at work, my boss approached me and told me that D. was coming down to hang out with him that night but that there was a problem. Since my boss was staying at a friend of a friend's house (who he didn't know very well), he didn't feel right asking if he could have a friend stay over. Plus, he said that there was no room for D. to stay at the house. He asked if I'd consider letting D. stay on my couch that night. To be honest, I was really uncomfortable with it. I mean, I had never met this guy before and I am NOT in the business of letting random dudes sleep over on my couch. I was very hesitant but my boss insisted that D. was a nice guy and that there was nothing to worry about. I agreed on one condition: only if my best friend (or pretty much my only friend living in Virginia) was available to come and stay in my apartment with me that night. If I was going to have a random dude spending the night, I was at least going to have my friend there for back up in case this guy had any funny business on his brain. Luckily, when I called my best friend, she was totally understanding and said she'd be there later that night to rescue me from the random stranger. Later that afternoon, I was working at my desk and this totally goofy looking guy comes walking through the front door of our office. He had a blue super man shirt on and a matching blue superman visor on his head. Except, the visor was turned around backwards and upside down. He immediately started striding toward the back of my office toward my bosses desk. "Who is this dude who clearly doesn't own a mirror?" is what I was asking myself. Little did I know, crazy dressed dude was my bosses best friend. Yeah, it was D. Once I realized this, I was immediately regretful that I had ever allowed myself to get sucked into this whole phone threesome that my boss, myself, and this guy who couldn't dress himself had gotten accustomed to. This dude screamed "Frat boy" to me. Therefore, when my boss formally introduced him, I smiled politely from my desk and kept working. "Avoid eye contact and you'll be fine" was pretty much what I was reminding myself at the time. After my boss and D. had spent about an hour talking and joking around with each other, my boss announced that D. would be heading over to my apartment with me so that he could shower and I could get ready to go out with them that night. Excuse me? Nobody had ever said anything to me about having to be anyone's tour guide that night. In fact, all I had done was (stupidly) agree to let some random stranger crash on my couch that night. In my head, I was reminding myself never to agree to this type of thing again. My boss quickly pointed out the fact that he knew no one in town and how was he supposed to take his best friend out and show him a good time if neither one of them knew anyone in town? I just as quickly reminded him that I had just moved to town a few months prior and knew no one either and that I had called in my best friend who was driving 45 minutes to come and stay with me so that I could offer HIS friend a place to stay that night. To which, my (very clever, I'll admit) boss replied "Great, four people makes a small party. We'll all go out together!". Cunning, indeed. So, off I went begrudingly to my apartment with this guy who I knew nothing more about than his name to not only invite him into my tiny one bedroom apartment but to allow him to use my shower. A shower, which I should tell you, was directly connected to my bedroom. Fabulous. So, while he showered, I stayed in my living room and tried like hell to avoid the urge to flee from my apartment and never return. I don't know if any of you ladies have ever had a guy taking a shower in your apartment that you just clearly weren't interested in, but trust me on this one: it's not all that great of an experience.
I heard the water of the shower turn off and I started to get really nervous. Not in that butterflies-in-your-belly way, more in the crap-now-I-have-to-face-this-guy way. About 10 minutes after the water turned off, the door to my bathroom opened and out walked a complete stranger. As in, not the guy who walked in. No, the fashionably challenged, immature, little frat boy who walked into my bathroom to take a shower had been replaced by a man dressed in a polo shirt in the most perfect shade of blue that hugged a muscled chest and arms that I swear weren't even there 20 minutes before and a pair of jeans that clung to all the right places. It was at that time that I noticed the most gorgeous green eyes that I had ever seen. Who. was. this. guy??? I swear, it took all the focus I had to make sure I wasn't staring, drooling, or brushing the floor with my jaw. I think I even mumbled something about hoping he had enough hot water. Bonehead. I then fled to my bedroom so that I didn't have to be in his presence and risk saying anything else that was completely stupid and void of any charm whatsoever. I tried to gather my focus and senses to pick out an outfit to go out in that night and all of a sudden realized that nothing in my closet was right. Great, nothing to wear. I managed to pull out a pair of jeans and a stretchy fitting red top that, in my opinion (and come to find out later, D's opinion too) accentuated everything that it would need to be accentuated in order to capture and keep the attention of a certain good looking stranger who was currently hanging out in my living room.
By a sheer stroke of good luck, my best friend arrived at my apartment pretty much at the same time that I was done getting ready. This, thankfully, saved me from having to make small talk with the guy in my apartment who I still wasn't really interested in (remember: I was still gun-shy from a previous breakup) but was all of a sudden finding somewhat physically attractive. Damn it! So, my friend of course turned on all the charm and was making friends with D. from the very get-go (kind of ironic since they soon became somewhat at odds with one another) and they relieved me from any obligation of finding topics to talk about. Boss man also showed up shortly after so we were all able to head off to dinner. We decided to try a restaurant downtown which none of us had ever been to before.
Throughout dinner, we had a great time. The four of us got along very easily and conversation was flowing. I'm normally a very outgoing person but the three of them (best friend, boss, and D.) put me to shame in that department since they are all uber outgoing personalities so there was never a dull moment at dinner that night. In fact, after about three hours of sitting at the restaurant and chatting it up, some burly looking dude approached our table and busted up the fun. Burly looking guy in black looked at me and my friend and asked to see our I.D.'s. Apparently, the restaurant that we had chosen turned into a night club after 9pm and this dude in black was wanting to validate that my friend and I belonged. Unfortunately for us, we didn't. I was only 20 at the time and my friend was only 18. So, we were curtly told that we were going to need to exit the establishment quite quickly. I knew that D and my boss were both 25 so this was quite embarassing for me. Fun night busted because the girls are underage. So, as we walked back to the car, I started trying to figure out a plan for how D. could get back to my apartment that night. I naturally assumed that the guys were going to want to go out to a bar or something. Afterall, it was only 9pm on a Friday night. So, I explained that I would take the guys back to my apartment (where their cars were) and that I could give D. my address so that he could find his way back to my place later. Both of the guys looked at me like I had sprouted an extra head. My boss quickly suggested that maybe we should all hang out at my apartment. He tried to hem and haw about how going out would be a hassle and then they'd have to drive back to my place and then my boss would have to drive himself home and blah, blah, blah. So, everyone agreed that we'd hang out at my place.
Once we were back at my apartment, my friend pulled me into the bathroom and told me that she thought she had a crush on D. and wanted to "go after him". Umm. . .did I mention that I wasn't all that into him? Yeah, that changed right then and there. I don't know if it was the threat of competition or if I had just been repressing my true feelings but I pretty much said "Like Hell You Are!" in my head while nodding at her and smiling a thin tight smile. Next thing she knew, I had challenged her to a game in which she and I competed to see who could take the most shots. Hers were rum. Mine were water. Yeah, she lost that game pretty much as soon as the rum kicked in and she got drunk and passed out. Now is the time where you're probably thinking that I'm a God awful person who has no regard for others, right? Yeah, I'll admit it, it was a totally low thing to do. But, as my best friend, I inately knew that he just wasn't the right match for her and I was saving her from making a big mistake. Who am I kidding? It was an awful thing to do and I was acting like a childish little bitch. There, I said it. If you must know, I have confessed my misdeeds to my friend and she's still to this day one of my best friends, if not my BEST best friend. Plus, she totally agrees that he wasn't a good match for her and that I was saving her from making a big mistake. Of course, she didn't fully come to see this until about the time that we both started realizing that he can be a total asshole at times. More on that to come later.
Anyways, after my girl had passed out (hey, I made sure she was comfy, safe, and in my bed) that just left my boss, D. and I to hang out. I honestly can't remember what we did but I think we played cards for a few hours. About the time that midnight or 1 a.m. rolled around, my boss decided to head home which left D. and I alone to hang out. We decided that since my friend was passed out in my bed and my apartment was pretty small, we should hang out on my balcony so that we could talk without fear of waking up my friend. So, it was out on my balcony that we spent the remaining hours of that night talking, laughing, and then in the middle of a random conversation, it happened. He kissed me. And it was great.
When we were all talked and laughed out, we headed back inside my apartment to try to catch some sleep before the sun came up. Due to the fact that my friend was passed out in my bed, my couch was pretty tiny, and D. wanted me to stay with him, we ended up having a campout on the floor of my living room. D. was a perfect gentleman and kept his hands to himself except for at some point during the night where we ended up cuddling up to one another. The next morning, before D or I woke up, my best friend left to head home and that's where she found us: cuddled up on the floor of my apartment using the same pillow and snuggled up to one another.
I had been working at my company for about 4 months and I had just recently gotten a new manager in my office. My boss had transferred to my office from an area of Virginia about 3 hours away and knew no one in the area. He was a few years older than me and had a great sense of humor. Almost instantly, we clicked. But not in the way that you might be thinking. No, my boss was happily married. However, his wife was still in their old town trying to get their house sold and tie up loose ends before she and their young daughter made the move to the new town. Because my boss and I were both alone in our town (I worked constantly and really didn't know anyone in town since I had moved from out of the area), we kind of hung out with each other. Never anything inappropriate. . .just running out to grab lunch occasionally and we often found ourselves working late at our office since we were in sales and were always busting it to meet (and exceed!) monthly goals. Anyways, this gave my boss and I ample opportunity to get to know each other. After I had been working with him for a month or so, he said that he thought I should meet one of his best friends. This guy had actually worked with him in his prior office and my boss thought that he and I would get along. The guy was D. I kind of blew it off because I had gotten out of a serious relationship earlier that year (about 6 months earlier) and was still trying to nurse my wounds from that breakup. However, occasionally when my boss and I would be working in the office after hours, my boss would call D. and put him on speaker phone and we'd all three just sit around and shoot the bull on the phone for a little while. I could tell that he was funny and like my boss, he had an outgoing personality. After that, D would occasionally call the office during the day and ask to speak to my boss but he would always spend a minute or two chatting me up and making me laugh. I found out later (from him) that these phone calls were not actually to talk to my boss, it was a sneaky (or not so!) attempt to get me on the phone. Since we had caller id on our phones, D would sometimes call the office and my boss would pick it up knowing it was D. D. would tell my boss to hang up so that he could call back because he wanted me to answer the phone. Sneaky, sneaky!
One Friday at work, my boss approached me and told me that D. was coming down to hang out with him that night but that there was a problem. Since my boss was staying at a friend of a friend's house (who he didn't know very well), he didn't feel right asking if he could have a friend stay over. Plus, he said that there was no room for D. to stay at the house. He asked if I'd consider letting D. stay on my couch that night. To be honest, I was really uncomfortable with it. I mean, I had never met this guy before and I am NOT in the business of letting random dudes sleep over on my couch. I was very hesitant but my boss insisted that D. was a nice guy and that there was nothing to worry about. I agreed on one condition: only if my best friend (or pretty much my only friend living in Virginia) was available to come and stay in my apartment with me that night. If I was going to have a random dude spending the night, I was at least going to have my friend there for back up in case this guy had any funny business on his brain. Luckily, when I called my best friend, she was totally understanding and said she'd be there later that night to rescue me from the random stranger. Later that afternoon, I was working at my desk and this totally goofy looking guy comes walking through the front door of our office. He had a blue super man shirt on and a matching blue superman visor on his head. Except, the visor was turned around backwards and upside down. He immediately started striding toward the back of my office toward my bosses desk. "Who is this dude who clearly doesn't own a mirror?" is what I was asking myself. Little did I know, crazy dressed dude was my bosses best friend. Yeah, it was D. Once I realized this, I was immediately regretful that I had ever allowed myself to get sucked into this whole phone threesome that my boss, myself, and this guy who couldn't dress himself had gotten accustomed to. This dude screamed "Frat boy" to me. Therefore, when my boss formally introduced him, I smiled politely from my desk and kept working. "Avoid eye contact and you'll be fine" was pretty much what I was reminding myself at the time. After my boss and D. had spent about an hour talking and joking around with each other, my boss announced that D. would be heading over to my apartment with me so that he could shower and I could get ready to go out with them that night. Excuse me? Nobody had ever said anything to me about having to be anyone's tour guide that night. In fact, all I had done was (stupidly) agree to let some random stranger crash on my couch that night. In my head, I was reminding myself never to agree to this type of thing again. My boss quickly pointed out the fact that he knew no one in town and how was he supposed to take his best friend out and show him a good time if neither one of them knew anyone in town? I just as quickly reminded him that I had just moved to town a few months prior and knew no one either and that I had called in my best friend who was driving 45 minutes to come and stay with me so that I could offer HIS friend a place to stay that night. To which, my (very clever, I'll admit) boss replied "Great, four people makes a small party. We'll all go out together!". Cunning, indeed. So, off I went begrudingly to my apartment with this guy who I knew nothing more about than his name to not only invite him into my tiny one bedroom apartment but to allow him to use my shower. A shower, which I should tell you, was directly connected to my bedroom. Fabulous. So, while he showered, I stayed in my living room and tried like hell to avoid the urge to flee from my apartment and never return. I don't know if any of you ladies have ever had a guy taking a shower in your apartment that you just clearly weren't interested in, but trust me on this one: it's not all that great of an experience.
I heard the water of the shower turn off and I started to get really nervous. Not in that butterflies-in-your-belly way, more in the crap-now-I-have-to-face-this-guy way. About 10 minutes after the water turned off, the door to my bathroom opened and out walked a complete stranger. As in, not the guy who walked in. No, the fashionably challenged, immature, little frat boy who walked into my bathroom to take a shower had been replaced by a man dressed in a polo shirt in the most perfect shade of blue that hugged a muscled chest and arms that I swear weren't even there 20 minutes before and a pair of jeans that clung to all the right places. It was at that time that I noticed the most gorgeous green eyes that I had ever seen. Who. was. this. guy??? I swear, it took all the focus I had to make sure I wasn't staring, drooling, or brushing the floor with my jaw. I think I even mumbled something about hoping he had enough hot water. Bonehead. I then fled to my bedroom so that I didn't have to be in his presence and risk saying anything else that was completely stupid and void of any charm whatsoever. I tried to gather my focus and senses to pick out an outfit to go out in that night and all of a sudden realized that nothing in my closet was right. Great, nothing to wear. I managed to pull out a pair of jeans and a stretchy fitting red top that, in my opinion (and come to find out later, D's opinion too) accentuated everything that it would need to be accentuated in order to capture and keep the attention of a certain good looking stranger who was currently hanging out in my living room.
By a sheer stroke of good luck, my best friend arrived at my apartment pretty much at the same time that I was done getting ready. This, thankfully, saved me from having to make small talk with the guy in my apartment who I still wasn't really interested in (remember: I was still gun-shy from a previous breakup) but was all of a sudden finding somewhat physically attractive. Damn it! So, my friend of course turned on all the charm and was making friends with D. from the very get-go (kind of ironic since they soon became somewhat at odds with one another) and they relieved me from any obligation of finding topics to talk about. Boss man also showed up shortly after so we were all able to head off to dinner. We decided to try a restaurant downtown which none of us had ever been to before.
Throughout dinner, we had a great time. The four of us got along very easily and conversation was flowing. I'm normally a very outgoing person but the three of them (best friend, boss, and D.) put me to shame in that department since they are all uber outgoing personalities so there was never a dull moment at dinner that night. In fact, after about three hours of sitting at the restaurant and chatting it up, some burly looking dude approached our table and busted up the fun. Burly looking guy in black looked at me and my friend and asked to see our I.D.'s. Apparently, the restaurant that we had chosen turned into a night club after 9pm and this dude in black was wanting to validate that my friend and I belonged. Unfortunately for us, we didn't. I was only 20 at the time and my friend was only 18. So, we were curtly told that we were going to need to exit the establishment quite quickly. I knew that D and my boss were both 25 so this was quite embarassing for me. Fun night busted because the girls are underage. So, as we walked back to the car, I started trying to figure out a plan for how D. could get back to my apartment that night. I naturally assumed that the guys were going to want to go out to a bar or something. Afterall, it was only 9pm on a Friday night. So, I explained that I would take the guys back to my apartment (where their cars were) and that I could give D. my address so that he could find his way back to my place later. Both of the guys looked at me like I had sprouted an extra head. My boss quickly suggested that maybe we should all hang out at my apartment. He tried to hem and haw about how going out would be a hassle and then they'd have to drive back to my place and then my boss would have to drive himself home and blah, blah, blah. So, everyone agreed that we'd hang out at my place.
Once we were back at my apartment, my friend pulled me into the bathroom and told me that she thought she had a crush on D. and wanted to "go after him". Umm. . .did I mention that I wasn't all that into him? Yeah, that changed right then and there. I don't know if it was the threat of competition or if I had just been repressing my true feelings but I pretty much said "Like Hell You Are!" in my head while nodding at her and smiling a thin tight smile. Next thing she knew, I had challenged her to a game in which she and I competed to see who could take the most shots. Hers were rum. Mine were water. Yeah, she lost that game pretty much as soon as the rum kicked in and she got drunk and passed out. Now is the time where you're probably thinking that I'm a God awful person who has no regard for others, right? Yeah, I'll admit it, it was a totally low thing to do. But, as my best friend, I inately knew that he just wasn't the right match for her and I was saving her from making a big mistake. Who am I kidding? It was an awful thing to do and I was acting like a childish little bitch. There, I said it. If you must know, I have confessed my misdeeds to my friend and she's still to this day one of my best friends, if not my BEST best friend. Plus, she totally agrees that he wasn't a good match for her and that I was saving her from making a big mistake. Of course, she didn't fully come to see this until about the time that we both started realizing that he can be a total asshole at times. More on that to come later.
Anyways, after my girl had passed out (hey, I made sure she was comfy, safe, and in my bed) that just left my boss, D. and I to hang out. I honestly can't remember what we did but I think we played cards for a few hours. About the time that midnight or 1 a.m. rolled around, my boss decided to head home which left D. and I alone to hang out. We decided that since my friend was passed out in my bed and my apartment was pretty small, we should hang out on my balcony so that we could talk without fear of waking up my friend. So, it was out on my balcony that we spent the remaining hours of that night talking, laughing, and then in the middle of a random conversation, it happened. He kissed me. And it was great.
When we were all talked and laughed out, we headed back inside my apartment to try to catch some sleep before the sun came up. Due to the fact that my friend was passed out in my bed, my couch was pretty tiny, and D. wanted me to stay with him, we ended up having a campout on the floor of my living room. D. was a perfect gentleman and kept his hands to himself except for at some point during the night where we ended up cuddling up to one another. The next morning, before D or I woke up, my best friend left to head home and that's where she found us: cuddled up on the floor of my apartment using the same pillow and snuggled up to one another.
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