Want to know a secret? I have a boyfriend. Seriously.
Want to know another secret? My boyfriend’s name is not Grant. Seriously.
Curious yet?
So lets rewind to Grant. After our date at Namaste, he texted me the next day saying he had a great time. I responded in a similar manner and he asked if I would like to get a drink after work sometime. I said that sounded fun. And it did sound fun. Not necessarily an occasion over which I would obsess about what to wear, or be unable to work all day because I was so excited—but enjoyable, certainly.
We never set a firm date, but exchanged a handful of texts over the next few weeks. Ultimately, I did not get excited when he would text me, I found myself making excuses to let his calls ring to voicemail, and eventually I just realized I wasn’t really interested in him romantically. We just kind of trailed off in talking. If I were to see him out, I would say hi, but I just knew “it” was not there.
So let’s get to the good stuff, my new love interest. Read: borderline love obsession. So while I am not looking to beat clichés to death, I suppose there is something cliché about starting a blog in the throes of a dating stagnation, so I am allowed the occasional cliché. What I am getting at is it just happened. We pretty much bumped into each other accidentally. I was not out on a date, I was not looking for anything, I just found him. Right where I left him, in fact. So I guess that is true, you find love when you least expect it or when you are not looking for it.
I definitely did not expect to find love when I went to stuff my face with Coke and nachos at Q’doba in the ‘burbs in October. Even though I live in Minneapolis now, my parents still live out in the land of the ‘burbs. I was on my mission to satiate my nacho craving when I first bumped into Aaron.
I was not terrible in high school, but I was still really skinny and boys generally did not really think of me as an object of desire. For more information, please refer back to my first post in which I excruciatingly detail my lingering awkward stage.
This means that when I initially saw Aaron back in October, I hesitated for a second. I looked at him and my internal dialogue was as follows:
Shit. Say hi? Would he even remember you?
Then we made eye contact, so I attempted nonchalance, “Hey.”
He smiled and nodded his head back by way of greeting. A greeting that clearly said, “I do not know who you are, but I do not want to be rude.”
I shrugged it off. To be fair, I really do not look the same way I did when I was 18. Further, when I think back to high school, we only had one class together in four years. He dated a middle school friend of mine sophomore year, but then she went off the deep end. When we were seniors in high school, he was dating a 21-year-old.
I am completely serious. It all sounds creepy that I know these weird details, but Aaron was just one of those people you knew things about in high school. He was incredibly attractive, he had no problem with women and he seemed so unattainable. He was always known to be a nice guy, but he was in another league. For Christ’s sake, his girlfriend could legally buy alcohol while the rest of us still thought it was cool we could legally drive a car without parent supervision.
When I saw him in Q’doba, I thought back to what Megan said in the one class I had with Aaron–honors English junior year. I was probably looking through our new assignment, when Megan turned and said to me, “Are you ever confused by the people you are attracted to?”
I furrowed my brow and looked at where her line of vision landed on Aaron. I thought it was strange that she was confused about being attracted to him. They were both popular so it seemed like that would a normal thing for her. I shrugged and said, “Oh that is not weird, everyone is attracted to Aaron. He just has that thing about him, you know.”
numbers exchanged 