#4

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

She asked me to come over once. My entire world stopped for half a second before I managed to get out my response - "Yes." She told me there would be a few other people there, but that didn't bother me at all. She wanted to see me. She wanted to see me. This was obviously meaningful.

I spent the last few hours of my shift staring at the clock and thinking about how I was going to act when I got to her house. Would I play it off like it was nothing, act detached and nonchalant, play with her emotions a bit at first? Would I flirt with her, making my intentions known, while still keeping some emotional distance? Would I wait until it was just the two of us on the front porch, smoking cigarettes, and then start to open up to her a little?

Finally my shift came to an end and I started driving to her house, nervous and excited, my mind going a million miles a minute, thinking of all the great things that were going to happen when I got there and how I would think about those things fondly when we were madly in love with one another down the road. I pulled up in front of her house and got out of my car. I rang the doorbell with my heart pounding in my chest, but when she opened the door all I could do was start smiling.

"Come in," she said. "It's a little quiet, but it should be all right."

"That's fine," I thought. "Maybe that means everyone else will go home early."

She opened the door to the living room, and my heart sank. Inside, sitting on couches, were three other men I'd never seen before. Instantly I felt there was something more going on; and as the night progressed and we watched television and talked about mundane things - music, computer games, community college, black and white films, philosophy, religion, theodicies, the existence of dark matter, the global oil crisis, arcane and esoteric Occult magic, the obsolescence of the traditional family structure, the sexual proclivities of Bob Crane, the Rwandan genocide, the increase in cigarette prices - I couldn't help but feel that I was being observed, that I was being tested in some way. I felt like the future of whatever relationship I might have with her was being decided that night, as though we were starting down a Calvinistic path, and when I stepped out of her front door and got into my car to go home, something between us would be irrevocably changed, something that could not be undone.

To this day, I feel as though if I had acted differently that night, she might have left the third man there by the wayside and chosen me instead - that if only I would have made my emotions clearer, we would be asleep together in my bed right now instead of me sitting awake, writing this. As absurd and grandiose as I know this type of thinking is, I cannot shake the feeling that something was decided that night; and because of what was decided, I will never get a chance to be with her.

Of course, there's no way she put that much thought into it... right?