DC: The Finale

I wake up to two texts, one from DC, and one from the Chef. The Chef, who was a recent Tinder match, had texted after midnight, DC texted as soon as he woke up.

In the moments before I received the text from DC, I told myself, don’t expect anything, it was great while it lasted, but this is over, and there will be nothing on your phone. I was completely at peace with that. Completely. And then I see that he has woken up thinking about me again. It feels good, my heart still surges, it makes me smile. I slept more than seven hours straight last night. I can’t help but think that’s because the pressure is off. In the 24 hours before that text I felt everything. Brutally. Heart aching, wanting to cry and feel terrible for myself. Crushingly lonely. Crushing. Confused, angry, violent, hurt, disillusioned, insecure. So many things that I wanted to say to him. What the fuck was he thinking not spending every available moment with me, what the fuck was his problem, does he have ED? Why lead me on? The build up was so intense, the connection when we finally met was beyond what I had expected, yet completely in line with what I’d fantasized about having. I had romanticized about what would happen when he was here, and then it did. But, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t text him my rage, is that a sign of maturity? I also didn’t want to give him that attention. He didn’t deserve it after ending dinner in the friend zone after a week of intense ups and downs.

He missed his flight yesterday. I was amused. I was also trying not to think about the fact that he went back out and may have spent the evening with someone else. I was moving slow that morning. Heart aching, fully regretting that I’d gone out with him the night before. If it had ended on Tuesday after the evening of an awkward dinner, then an immediately intense walk along the coast where with almost no prompting we were hooking up in a cave, and then later sharing a bottle of Pinot on a bench overlooking the crashing waves.

He let me run up to his room to use the bathroom, and before I knew it we were hooking up again. It was fucking great. We kissed, held each other, and I was fully accepting of never seeing him again. I shed a small secret tear and drove home so blissed out.

When he asked me if I wanted to get together that night I was ecstatic.Of course, I loved seeing him. I was the one that wanted to spend every moment together. But I also knew, KNEW, that it wasn’t going to get any better than the night before. He wasn’t going to have me spend the night with him, I wasn’t going to wake up to his blue eyes, to that incredible kiss, to sentiments that we were going to miss each other and we’d do everything to see each other again. I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I was optimistically thinking we’d have one more tryst in his hotel room then it would be over. O V E R. Instead, another hand holding sesh through another beautiful tourist spot before a drawn out and awkward dinner where we drank too much, I tried not to blather that I didn’t understand, he convincingly said it wasn’t about me, it’s about him, and of course the sexual innuendo like turrets, that I had come to expect from him.

We kissed as I pulled up in front of his hotel, and I left devastated. Like, c r u s h e d. For a minute I was so angry and hurt I was resolute to move on to the next bed as soon as possible. Maybe not even a bed, maybe just an alleyway. I would fuck his memory away that night. Instead I went to my favorite wine shop, bought a bottle of wine, and sat staring at the full glass for a half hour until I gave up and went home. My heart literally hurt. I unmatched him on Tinder, trying not to notice the last time he was on there. Trying not to look at his pics and think, wow, he’s not thaaaat attractive, and then, fuck he was great to be with. I woke up at three in the morning, just as devastated. I knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere, we weren’t going to get engaged, have a great life together. Fly back and forth, meet in Colorado for long weekends in bed. But it still crushed me.

I sent a peace offering text wishing him a safe flight home, leaving out, “you confusing fucking heartbreaking asshat”. After letting me know that he missed his flight, he started texting me from the airport. At that point I’d been swiping on Tinder most of the morning at my desk. The rest of the conversations were casual, a little flirty. I asked what the highlight of his trip was and it was, “All the time spent with you seeing sights, great food and wine, and the fun/sex/great conversations we had.” Followed by, "I appreciate you..." blah, blah, blah. I’m awesome...we were both sorry to see it end. Him wanting to keep in touch but understanding if I didn’t. I told him I didn’t know how to answer that. Part of me just didn’t want to hear from him again. Bandaid. He was a band aid relationship, and now it needed to be ripped off and thrown away. Of course I wanted to see him again. I’d love to see him again. But he made it painfully clear that he was trying to preserve boundaries that I wanted to cross with him over and over again. And then again.

Then more sexually charged, NSFW texts. When he landed he immediately started texting again.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy? Let me go dude! You’ve done enough damage. I don’t want to keep waiting for your texts. Get stuck on watching the micro font going from Delivered to Read to the ellipses of anticipation. The next thing you know I’ll be waking up in the middle of the night expecting my good morning text and having it all come crashing down, again.

Of course I’d been filling in my girlfriends on this whole romance shit show, so when we were out getting balls deep into bottles of wine and he won’t stop texting me and I won’t stop responding, they’re ready to take my phone away and kill him.

4:12 am, Good morning and smiley text. He wanted to know why my girlfriends were pissed that I was still texting him. I told him it was because they didn’t want me to get hurt this week. He had hurt me a little, I had different expectations for our time together, and they knew how excited I was to be with him this week. I expected to wake up together, spend every available moment together after all of that intense build up. He apologized for letting me down in my expectations. I semi sarcastically responded that how was he supposed to control how someone felt about him? That kissing him was one of the best experiences in over a decade, that just thinking about him made me hotter that I’d been in forever, that that his eyes were ones that someone would want to see first thing everyday. It wasn’t his fault...He apologized again, and then I took myself to bed.

#single #singleinoakland #Tinder #DC