It Started in a Coffee Shop

Fast forward; the end of June.

Evan and I had been seeing each other for basically the entire month of June.

I don’t feel the need to narrate every conversation we had and exactly what we did. But a basic rundown is we’d gone to the movies, we’d gone out to eat a couple times (nowhere fancy), we’d been to each other’s apartments plenty of times, watching movies or TV and cuddling. Yet I couldn’t quite define our relationship at this point. Yes, we had been spending a lot of time together, and we’d spent a lot of time making out. But as of yet, we hadn’t had sex and we hadn’t put any kind of label on our relationship. Upon meeting Craig, his close friend, I was introduced as merely “Baelie” not “My girlfriend” or anything like that.

One day, we were in my apartment, as I was thinking of this and painting my toe nails. I was debating whether I should bring it up or maybe if I should just take the initiative to be the one to ask him out.

We were quiet today. Not a bad kind of quiet, just a comfortable quiet where we were focusing on separate things yet still enjoying each other’s company. He was reading a book on the bed and I was in a chair trying my hardest to paint neat white lines over the red polish on my big toe; Independence Day was approaching and I wanted to sport something patriotic.

We’d been sitting in our comfortable silence for a good half hour when he put his book down and asked me if I had ever seen him around before I’d seen him come in the coffee shop.

I thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. I’m pretty much always late to class, so I never really look around at other people.”

“Yeah. I saw you once. During finals week. You looked rushed… but also upset.”

Finals week. I was upset during finals week because Corey tried to reach out to me. Every once in a while, he would call or message me and ask me how I was doing and say that he was sorry and that he still loved me. I would always say that I was ok and that I knew he was sorry but we couldn’t be together, it wouldn’t be the same.

“Yeah,” I said slowly.

“Well. What was it?”

I wasn’t sure if he wanted any ex-boyfriend details, generally I don’t think guys are too interested in that. Plus we hadn’t gotten into any details about anything else too personal yet. So I just said, “I was having trouble with an ex.”

He nodded. “Yeah, not to sound weird, but you looked hurt... I know that feeling.” He shrugged, offered a small smile and looked back down at his book. We were silent again. It was a slightly awkward silence this time, because I felt like he wanted me to elaborate. Eventually, I did.

“Well. He cheated on me.” I told Evan the story of how Corey cheated on me our first night away from each other. “Yeah. I cried, and he slept with someone else.” I said, letting out a small chuckle at how ridiculous it sounded.

It was a ridiculous thing to say out loud, comparing our first nights at school. I wasn’t used to talking about Corey. My old roommate and I didn’t dwell on broken high school relationships and friendships. She was good at keeping us distracted from the stuff that upset us. I didn’t talk to many of my old friends from home about it, either. Mainly because we were all friends, they weren’t just my friends or his friends. I ended up cutting myself off from them, from my home. The whole ordeal was part of the reason I didn’t want to move back home for the summer.

“Wow. First night, that’s some shit.”

Hearing Evan’s words, echoing my own… Just hearing someone else say them out loud, sent a little lump into my throat as tears threatened to leak my eyes. Luckily I was able to blink them away and gain control before any of them fell; the last thing I needed was for Evan to see me crying over an ex. I didn’t want him to think I had any feelings left for Corey. I wasn’t even sure if I did or not.

“I was cheated on, too,” he offered, saddened as well. “She wasn’t even that far away. We were at the same party, actually. I went to look for her, and she was on top of some dude that I was actually kind of friends with.”

He shrugged lightly again, and glanced backed down at his book. “Is this the girl who told everyone it was because you were a sloppy drunk?” I asked.

“Yup. It was weird, she built this process we had. Go out, get drunk, have sex. I mean, we did the other couple stuff, but the partying and everything was like a ritual. So I would get drunk and be more willing to pick fights with people. Even her. And she wanted to tease me sometimes, like literally get on top of me and get me excited, and I would get pissed. She would just slide off and say, ‘Not tonight, darling.’ And then we started fighting just in general, about other stuff. I didn’t want to go out as much, but she argued that she wanted to go out and have fun while she was young. She was an idiot though, doing the same thing every weekend and calling it living for the moment. We had some great times, but she was stuck in the party scene. That night, I didn’t want to go but she guilted me into it. And then BAM. She’s in there, on some other dude’s dick!”

“Wasn’t she at all worried about getting caught?”

“Who knows…” And then he was back into his book.

But I was now more curious to know about his past relationships. We were on the subject, anyway. So, I pressed on a little. “Have you had many serious relationships?”

“Yeah. Or at least, I thought they were serious. Like my first girlfriend in high school, as in a real girlfriend, not the girls you mess with in middle school. Anyway, we were together for like a year, but we decided we would be better friends. I learned a lot from her, though. I dated a couple girls between high school and college, but it never worked. They turned out to be not too serious. I thought Rose might turn into something serious. That’s the girl who cheated. Yeah we partied a lot, but she was something else outside of the parties. Sweet, smart, funny. Ideal things, you know? Anyway, that just turned into shit… So what about you?”

I shook my head, now painting on little blue squares with white dots in the corners of my toes. “Just Corey. We dated for pretty much all of high school, since we were in 10th grade. I learned a lot, too, from him. We were each others firsts for like everything. It’s one of those things where we were just always friends growing up and the grown-ups said we were going to be a couple one day, and when we became a couple, they all said we were going to get married…” Yes. There was once a time in my life when I thought I might marry Corey. I thought we could do the distance thing. Hell, people have lived in separate countries and were still able to keep a solid relationship. But not us.

“The cheating thing was like a wake up call. I mean, it fucking hurt, to go through so much just for him to throw it all away. I wanted to forgive him, but I couldn’t. And I realized we were probably going to be different people one day, anyway…” I still missed him, though, or at least I missed the time we spent together.

I came to the realization that I was rambling. “I’m sorry, I kind of got lost in my thoughts,” I giggled.

“Nah, it’s ok. It was kind of insightful. A lot of people don’t realize that they’re going to be completely different one day. Sometimes it’s slow, or sometimes things about them can change all at once. But everyone changes. Some people rarely get lucky enough to find people that can change with them.”

Now he was the one being insightful, captivating me with his words. He went back to his book, still looking a little down from our conversation. “Now the character in this book is getting cheated on,” he said, a few minutes later. “Man, cheaters are scum.”

I got up and walked to the bed, stepping carefully as to not accidentally mess up my toes somehow. I gingerly sat next to him and placed my arm around him. “At least we have each other,” I offered with a smile.

He smiled back. “Yes. Yes we do.”

I like to think that’s the moment we became “official.” Not asking each other out or asking to put a label on anything; just a simple acknowledgement that we had each other.