Girl and City

If you have any sense of foreshadowing, you’ll know are only two types of posts that could follow a three-night sleepover with HB:

1. Juicy, emotionally confusing, and morally questionable
2. Sensible, uptight, and boring

You’ll be happy to hear that my post is of the first variety. While it ranks high in the entertaining category, it ranks low in the my-proudest-moments category. So don’t judge, k?

I arrived at HB’s to find him vacuuming. Apparently, he cared about making impressions, although this was not the first time I’d stayed at his apartment. Neither of us had planned anything for the first night, so we had dinner with his brother at a Korean/Japanese restaurant nearby. Then, we engaged in our favourite activity: wandering around The City. We walked through urban parks and impromptu art displays, we sat down on benches and stone garden walls, we held hands and linked arms. We were completely in-tune with each other, and conversation flowed endlessly. He never mentioned his relationship status and I never asked.

Around 11 pm, I said I wanted to head back¹, but he was hesitant. We ended up going to a dessert place with a huge menu and some quality patio space.

We shared the desserts, which were refreshingly sweet and cold in the warm night wind. There were four Japanese girls chatting away animatedly at the table next to us. I couldn’t help but stare.
“Why do you keep looking at them?” HB asked, giving me a funny look.
“I love the sound of Japanese. Plus, they look so animated.” I wondered if HB liked the sound of Japanese.
“Are you still dating that Japanese girl?” I asked, as nonchalantly as possible.
“Yes,” he said, without hesitation.
I continued to stare at the table beside us. There was a girl with sleek, straight black hair to her waist and a simple fringe, gesturing quickly with her hands as Japanese words spilled easily from her lips. She was very pretty. Is she the sort of girl HB would be interested in? I looked over at him to see if he was as mesmerized by her as I was, but he was looking at me.
“Let’s get the bill,” I suggested.
“Ok,” he said, not taking his eyes off me.

When we got back to his apartment, I started to get ready for bed, but he still hadn’t told me where I would be sleeping. I assumed the couch, so I asked for a blanket.
“Um, this is my only blanket,” he said, gesturing to the one on his bed.
“Oh.” Well, this is awkward. “Then, what am I going to sleep with on the couch?”
He hesitated. “I actually hadn’t thought of that.”
Seriously? I looked over at the bed, with its two pillows sitting neatly side by side. Bullshit. I guess he planned for me to share the bed.
I should have just slept on the couch without a blanket that first night, because then the whole weekend would have been very different. But I didn’t. I slept in his bed.

Of course, all we did was sleep. I stayed on my side of the bed and he stayed on his. At 2 am, we were awoken by the sound of his air conditioner exploding (it did this every five minutes after that), and he got up to get some water. Something must have been in that water because when he came back, he was suddenly lying much closer. He put his hand on my hip (above the blanket) and pulled me closer. Without a word, I let him spoon me. Then I turned around to face him, and he stroked my hair. I fell asleep in the crook of his arm with our limbs loosely tangled together.

Whenever my friends told me about some scandalous thing that happened in the dead of the night, I always wondered how they let it get that far. They were sensible girls, and most of the time, it wasn’t something they necessarily would have wanted, they just didn’t say ‘No.’ I always wondered how it could be so difficult for them to say ‘No.’ Whenever my friends told me they had had sex with someone and “it just happened,” I always wondered how something like that happens without any discussion. But now I know. Sometimes, in the dead of the night, the silence can be so comfortable that you’d do anything not to break it. Sometimes, in the dead of the night, things that you know are wrong can seem so right. Sometimes, it feels like whatever goes on between 2am and sun rise is part of a dream, not reality.

The next day, we met our friend PL for brunch at a little French place that had received rave reviews. I had been excited to check it out, but I was disappointed. The food was mediocre, the portions small, and the place less charming than the pictures.

PL yammered for two hours without coming up for breath, and by the time our bills came, I was bored out of my mind. To my dismay, she insisted on hanging out with us for the rest of the day. We followed her to an urban park she’d found, which had a few interesting water structures.




She spent the entire time yammering into HB’s ear while utterly ignoring me. At first, I thought it was simply because she had a lot to say, but after being ignored or cut off for the fifth time, I determined she was purposely being rude to me².

HB was still hungry after our brunch, so we went to another breakfast joint for a second breakfast. I was starting to get annoyed with PL, for she was being unbearably rude and obnoxious. She shot me the most offensive look when I said I didn’t like egg yoke, only egg white. When I didn’t feel like ordering a second breakfast, she promptly said, in her loud voice, “I hate people who go to restaurants and don’t order anything!”

After our second breakfast, we went back to HB’s place and they watched TV in the living room while I studied the LSAT teacher training materials in HB’s room. PL came in randomly, and started flipping through my teacher’s binder, making me lose my place in my notes. Then she sat down on the bed and asked, “So, where did you sleep last night? On the couch?”
“No…” I said slowly, not turning around to face her.
“Then where?” she asked, in that obnoxiously loud voice.
“On the bed…” I said, even more hesitantly.
Silence.
“So what’s HB’s girlfriend’s name?”
“I don’t know…”
Silence.
“He just refers to her as friends,” she says, as if to console me.
I said nothing.
She finally left the room.
I let out an audible sigh and continued working, but my mind was elsewhere.
WAF just happened to message me, so I told her what had happened.

me: i just want this weekend to be over, i think i made a huge mistake coming here
PL has been a bitch to me all morning and now i know why
she totally disapproves and thinks i’m a slut
WAF: …or maybe she’s concerned for you as a friend?
HE’S making the choice to cheat.
me: yeah but i’m going along with it
i guess her judgemental-ness kind of makes me see what i’m doing in her eyes and i don’t like it
WAF: oh so it was okay for her to break up a marriage?³
she’s just enjoying that you are feeling like shit

As soon as PL left, I sat down with HB for a serious discussion. I told him what PL had insinuated, and he confirmed my suspicions. Apparently, PL had called him a few days before the brunch and asked whether he and I were in some sort of ’secret relationship.’

Our serious discussion was extremely awkward. We had never acknowledged our ’special relationship,’ much less tried to define it. I was so embarrassed I could barely look at him. We still danced around the facts, never mentioning the previous night or holding hands or any of the things we did that indicated we were not ‘just friends.’

“I think I should sleep on the couch tonight,” I finally said.
He nodded.
“Ok, good discussion!” I spun around in the computer chair and continued working. I didn’t know how to bring up what we really needed to discuss: are you cheating on your girlfriend with me?

That night, I slept on the couch, without a blanket. As I was falling asleep, HB woke me up.
“I think we should have our second serious discussion.”
I groggily rubbed my eyes open and turned around to face him. “Ok. I’m listening.”
“Oh, actually, I hadn’t prepared anything to say. I just thought… we should talk about it. Can we do this in my room?”
I rolled my eyes, but followed him to his room.

We sat on opposite sides of his bed, looking straight ahead. By nature, I am the talkative one, but this time, I kept my mouth shut. I wanted to hear what he had to say, I didn’t want him to just piggyback off my sentiments with half-hearted agreements like “me too.” That would be too easy. I needed him to say what he wanted.

“I’m so confused,” was the best he could muster. “What do you want to do?” He asked me.
I knew he was fishing for something, but whatever it was, I didn’t want to give it to him. “I think this is more your decision than mine. I’m not the one in a serious relationship.”
He looked downright anguished. “I think we’ve always been somewhere between friends and more-than-friends,” he finally said. “I did like you, back in high school, but I felt too guilty⁴.”
I didn’t ask him what made him feel less guilty this time. “I wish we’d settled this three years ago,” was all I said.

Our second serious discussion was even more awkward than the first one. There were a lot of silences. Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer. I needed my beauty sleep.
“I think we only have two choices. Either we’re just friends or nothing at all.”
“What’s ‘nothing at all’? Are we not allowed to see each other anymore?”
“We’ll still see each other at high school reunions I’m sure, but we just don’t see each other as often.”
“I don’t want that…”
I let him think it over.
“Do you think we could be ‘just friends’?” He finally asked.
“I think so. If we wanted it to work, it could work.”
After an even longer silence, I finally asked, “So, are we cool? Have we decided we’re just friends?”
“I guess so…” He was very hesitant. “Why are you so indifferent about this?” He seemed offended that I didn’t care more. I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to tell him I liked him, to tell him to cheat, to fight for ‘us’ – whatever we were. But I could never do that. I could barely fight for my relationship with MFL when I was in a real relationship, why would I fight for this murky, undefined ‘us’? Personally, I just wanted to finish this discussion and go to bed.

He finally agreed to do the sensible thing and I escaped to the couch. The couch was too short and too hot, but ironically, it was the best sleep I had all weekend.

The next morning, we stuck to our “just friends” pact and didn’t hold hands once. We had a huge breakfast, strolled through a street festival, and then he accompanied me in my last-minute frenzy to buy a business casual outfit (I’d forgotten to bring one, and I needed it for the training session).

After my training session, we celebrated by going out for martinis at a cute little whole-in-the-wall joint in the heart of the martini bar district of The City.

As martinis with metrosexual names arrived one after another, he seemed to forget our pact and started reaching for my hand on the table. By the fifth martini, he was drunk. I was only tipsy, so I had to take care of him all the way home.
He was more aggressive as a drunk. This was a side of him I’d never seen. He was normally very passive and even shy; he never made the first move and always seemed to care about placating others. But as a drunk, he was completely uninhibited. While we waited for the streetcar, he pulled my body against his and locked his arms around the small of my back. I felt embarrassed – there was another girl waiting for the streetcar and I knew she knew we were drunk. I tried to get away but he wouldn’t let me go.

When we got home, I put him to bed, and as I turned to leave, he tried to pull me into bed with him. I reminded him of our serious discussion, our decision to be ‘just friends.’
“I don’t think we can do that,” he said, this time with no hesitation. “It is clear we like each other. I don’t want to be just friends.”
His straight-forwardness took me by surprised, but I had some liquid courage myself. “Do you know what you’re saying? Cheating is a slippery slope. Are you sure you want that?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t believe he really understood, and I told him so. “I don’t want you to regret this in the morning.”
“I’m not going to.”
I tried a different tactic. “I would not recommend this if you think you have a future with your girlfriend. If you’re serous about her, don’t do this.”
“I don’t know whether we have a future or not. But I know I can’t just be friends with you, and I certainly don’t want to lose you.”
In the end, I agreed to be more-than-friends⁵. Though I had been fine with the sensible decision we came to earlier, this sounded far more exciting.

We shared our first kiss. I was happy to find he was an excellent kisser. As he caressed my bottom lip, and then my top, I felt tiny little explosions all along my spine. This was a kiss three years in the making.

However, the euphoria from the kiss and the excitement of a ’secret relationship’ did not last long. As soon as we decided to go down the slippery slope, his whole demeanor changed. The power dynamic shifted. Suddenly, I was the one in control and he was this clingy, needy, pathetic little boy. I was quickly starting to regret my decision.
He kept asking me questions to reassure him that I liked him when, in fact, I wasn’t sure that I did. He even alluded to love at one point, but I cut him off because I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to know how he felt about me (”Aren’t you the least bit curious?” I wasn’t). He asked me a million questions about my love life (”How many guys have you dated since high school? How many serious relationships?”). When I didn’t want to tell him, he got a little angry. He told me he felt like he could tell me anything, but when I told him I didn’t want to know, he got suspicious (”Are you letting me off the hook so that you can refuse to tell me something later?”). I had never seen this side of him. All the emotions he’d held back for the last three years came spilling out. Not only did the power dynamic completely shift, but it was completely unattractive. He was smitten and curious to know everything about me, and I was disinterested and just wished to be left alone. Was this what I had waited three years for? I felt like I had been tricked, tricked into agreeing into something that had been kept hidden from me all this time.

He became so unbearable that I kicked him out of bed. There he was, more vulnerable than I’d ever seen him, and I was so cold to him, more emotionally detached than I’d ever been around him. He thought I was mad at him, so he spent the rest of the night on the couch while I slept in his bed. Although he didn’t bother me the rest of the night, something scared me awake at 6 am (he had left at 5 am). I heard the TV on in the living room, but I didn’t go out to check on him.

In the morning, we went for breakfast⁶ and HB was back to normal. The controlling, clingy, insecure boy of the previous night had almost completely disappeared.

Then I went to a meeting with some clients for a consulting project, and by the time I was done, it was about time for me to go back to University Town.

HB wants me to go see him again in two weeks, but I’m considering calling off this whole thing. After his emotional gates opened, I realized that he likes me more than I like him, and I don’t think I can handle that.

Besides, I’m a fabulous girl. Why should I play a supporting role in his life when I can be the leading lady in someone else’s?

1. I still had a lot to prepare for my LSAT teacher training session on Sunday, and we had to get up to meet our friend for brunch the next morning. [↩]
2. On Twitter, I refer to her as Obnoxious Girl. [↩]
3. The short story of PL’s background is that she started dating our economics teacher in the final year of high school, and by the time she graduated, he had divorced his wife, changed his style to look 10 years younger, and was officially dating her. [↩]
4. He had been dating another girl at that time, too. [↩]
5. Is there a better term for this? I’m not his mistress, since he’s not married. We’re not lovers, because we’re not having sex. What other terms can be there be for this sort of infidelity? [↩]
6. Number of breakfasts I’ve had this weekend: 4.5 [↩]