You Were It, But Then I Left

As I sit here, I am looking at jobs in the place I left you. I fight a constant urge to want to talk to you. I am pretty positive that any and all other interaction with other men is just filling a void of wanting to talk to you. I’ve deleted most traces of you. But that one New Years Eve voicemail still lingers in my mailbox, and the Christmas gift you made still resides on my desk. I swear that dumb rule, it takes half the amount of time you spent with someone to get over them, it’s a lie.

I spent, in a generous world, 2 months with you. At the beginning I think we both kind of saw it as a joke. I mean we did meet via tinder. And truth be told I was and idiot upon deciding to meet you. Made every stupid, dumb, could possibly get you raped and murdered choice when taking that ever so strange plunge and meeting you for the first time.

The texting seemed all to good to be true, so we both had a bit of liquid courage one night, and made plans to meet. But as I now have been informed, you shouldn’t meet a guy you met on tinder, at his place, at 11pm, alone. But this girl did. Oh yeah, and lets not forget, I accidently left my phone in my car (whoops). But you seemed sweet, your best friend from childhood and his wife were asleep in your bedroom and I took a risk.

I wore a skintight black dress, heels and brought us stouts. We sat on your balcony and talked for hours about our selves with Lake Union and the Seattle skyline under the stars before us. I knew I was genuinely interested when I listened to you speak about your parents; there was something to it that felt like home. Something about you felt like home, even in that first reckless moment. We stayed up late, made out on your couch, and I snuck out at 5am when you passed out.

I can’t honestly say I knew what we would turn into then, but I knew I did want to see you again. We proceeded to spend plenty of evenings together. Evenings filled with snuggling and watching Planet Earth, me forcing you to work on your guitar skills in front of me, and enjoying bottles of wine together. I am guessing you still don’t own any wine glasses. We enjoyed each other, I told you on our first date I was moving to Miami.

I think we both thought it would be fine, neither of us were really planning on getting attached. And it went on like that for a while. I couldn’t figure out why I liked you so much though, why it felt so easy. For once in my life I was uncensored and you seemed to love every bit of it. I can still picture you before me giving me that look with your head slightly tilted and a grin on your face. That look which now makes my eyes water when I think about it because I long to see that look, looking at me, pulling me in for a hug and a kiss.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, I fell in love with you. I feel in love sitting on your couch, snuggling into you as you fell asleep on me, even after you promised me you wouldn’t. I feel in love with you every time you came down to let me into your place at the “hospital door.” I fell in love with you every time you kind of freaked out thinking I was ignoring you, but I was just at work late. I fell in love with you when you took me home for Christmas knowing I was leaving to move across the country in less than a week. I fell in love with you the morning we had to say goodbye and I turned around to see your eyes tearing up just as much as mine. I fell in love with you.

But then I left. For the first time I left when maybe I should have stayed. I left because every boy I clung to before, wrecked me, and was wrong for me. But I chased them anyway. In my dream world I thought maybe the whole you coming to visit me, would still happen. Maybe some how we could stay connected and hold on to a piece of what we had. You know, so when that day came in a year or so we would move to San Fran together and live happily ever after.

For the first time in my adult life, I saw a real life with someone. I saw a life of family and friends. Of children and trips to the grocery store together. I saw my life with you, and it only took 2 months. 2 months to want you to be the guy who chased after me because I saw it all with you. From the moment you parallel parked my car to the last time our lips met. You were it, and I left.