My Anniversary Part 2

We went to the Red Coach Inn in Niagara Falls for dinner Saturday (our 5 year anniversary). The food and wine were great and the evening was shagadelic! ;-) But I should finish up this story...

Okay, so Kevin and I had our horrible first meeting, which ended with him going home to New York bummed out and me staying where I was bummed out. I had left him under the impression that he just wasn't attractive to me, which wasn't the problem at all. I was just too afraid to be involved again seriously, so any little fault I could find, I mentioned it. REally, a full on relationship was just too scary for me. I had broken up with a lot of people that I should never have gotten involved with, but it hadn't changed the fact that each time, I had to make some guy VERY upset, usually enough to make me feel awful for weeks at a time (especially sinces some of them reall went out of their way to make me feel worse when they saw me in public!).

After this one, I was pretty sure that was going to be it for any sort of relationships.

Unfortunately, by this time, I had really gotten used to coming home from work to talk to Kevin online. Suddenly, that was completely gone and my life felt a LOT emptier because of it. By the middle of September, I was missing him terribly and wanted to talk with him, but was afraid of the guilt trip I was sure he was going to give me if I tried. I was still ready to take the chance, though, so I started playing Terris and unblocking my instant messages. Eventually, he talked to me and was TOTALLY cool about everything. He said he was missing our friendship, too, and wouldn't mind staying friends, so long as if I DID find another guy, I didn't tell him about it. I had NO intentions of putting myself through the emotional wringer again, so that was cool with me.

We decided to do what my dad had said and take the time to get to know each other in person. So, I came up to Buffalo for the few days before Thanksgiving of 1997. We met up in Toronto (which is only a few hours from Buffalo) and had this AMAZING weekend! We had dinner with his brother's family, we hung out and had dinner with his friends (some of whom were my friends, too from Terris). While we were in Toronto, he took me to see Phantom of the Opera, we had dinner on this boat on the edge of Lake Erie, we had a hotel room a good 25 stories above the city and it SNOWED, something I hadn't seen in nearly 10 years by that point. I cried like a baby at the flakes and he held me by the window...

Oh, right, we were SUPPOSED to be acting like just friends...!

Friends who are girls, by the way, do not buy lingerie and sleep in it in a romantic hotel room with friends who are boys. This is part of the weird "yes, I want to impress him with my sexiness and feel all tingly, but I don't think I want the guilt that accompanies it" attitude that I have developed after years with other guys and years of being a school reject. So, even though this weekend went well, I still left feeling nervous about being near him. All the sexual tenison for someone like me who'd never done it (and waited until marriage TO do it) was just too much. When I got home, I decided that if this is what guy/girl relationships were all about, I was going to be single forever.

The cool thing about Kevin is that he KNEW something was wrong and, unlike most guys, he actually called me to ask what was wrong. "I know this didn't work out for some reason, so I'm just gonna list all the things we did that could have upset you and you just tell me which one it is. Is it when we hung out with my friends?"

"No," I told him, "that was actually fun."

"Was it when we went to see the Phantom?" And he continued like that until he finally hit the one part that had really done it. "Was it when we were intimate with each other, the kissing and hugging and all that?"

I didn't want him to feel bad, but I had to be honest. "Welllll..." I faltered.

And then he started LAUGHING at me! I was a little shocked, but he finally said, "Oh, hon, if you only knew how small a part of our relationship that is to me, you wouldn't even worry. Look, I want to come visit you for New Year's and I promise, the entire time we're together, that I won't touch you. I'll sleep in the other room, you can have people around all night and all day if you want to keep things light, but I will NOT lay a hand on you, not even if you ask me to."

At that point, I laughed at HIM. "Hey, I know how hard it is for guys to make a promise like that, so I'll understand if you have trouble keeping your end of the bargain. Girls don't have that problem, though, so I'll be fine, trust me!"

Okay, I'll tell you the end later...gotta get to bed!