It begins. Again.

Where I last left off in the When Mommy Met Daddy series of mine, Jesus and I had gone through an awkward encounter at work where we were throwing things at each other and then ending up kissing.

We later exchanged a few text messages about events from that afternoon. I told him if he didn’t know that I missed him he was crazy and he told me to meet him that evening at a park we used to frequently visit together. I showed up, though we hadn’t even specified an actual time. He had just said; “Come,” and I did and he was there.

We did what we always did. We sat on or bench. We went for a walk. We talked about how our summers had gone, movies, work, vacations. It took a while to work up to: “So hey, how about that wedding you are going to have?” Or “Hey, how about that girlfriend of yours that you went to Florida with and didn’t tell me about? How’s that coming?”

He told me things hadn’t worked out with his ex, that he had never really thought they would. I told him I was still engaged and still unhappy. After all that was said, we just sat in silence. I felt him looking at me as if he wanted to say more. I knew he wanted me to give him more of an answer, like what I was going to do, was I going to go ahead and get married? Was I going to call it off? What did I really want?

I didn’t have those answers. Truly, I knew what I wanted, but I guess I was just too damn chicken to say it. I guess I was too consumed with what everyone would think of me. So I just stared at him. And he stared back for a really time, just waiting. I knew I was going to have to say SOMETHING, so I started:

“I just….don’t really…know what I’m going to do….”

He held his hand up to stop me. Then he said:

“Just tell me this. Do you care about me?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to be with me?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“Then that’s all I need to know.”

Just when I thought it was over…

Where I last left off, I had just broken things off after I found out Jesus had a girlfriend, soft of.

Over the next four months, nothing happened. Summer came and went and I was still with Boyfriend and we were still engaged. Jesus and I frequently worked together but never spoke. I never got a call or a text message from him and I never once tried to contact him either. Boyfriend and I were getting along better than we had in a long time. He got a job, which he hadn’t had since I-don’t-know-when and we started having nights in watching movies and cooking dinner together. I can’t say I was happy but at least we weren’t fighting. There had been at least one major fight between us and that was because I had told him I had developed feelings for someone else. I even told him who it was. I down played it A LOT, I most certainly did not tell Boyfriend that Jesus and I had been hanging out or all the complex levels of the relationship. I just told him my feelings had been clouded because I had been I had been attracted to someone else but that I had come to my senses and I hoped we could move past it. It was a big ugly fight but he did move past it and started trying to do better with his partying and tried to stay home more. I know that throughout these posts I have portrayed Boyfriend in a not so fantastic light, but I have to give him props for this. He was more understanding than I thought he would be and he really wanted to make it work. This made me feel terribly bad about myself and all the things I had done.

Even still, at nights I would lay in bed awake as Boyfriend slept, thinking about Jesus. I wondered what he was doing and what he was thinking. I wondered if he was still with that girl that had called me. I wondered what she was like, if she was prettier than me, or funnier than me, or just all around BETTER than me. I pretty much hated her. I already knew from talking to her that she spoke Spanish, I had been able to tell from her accent. They, at least, had that in common and it made me feel completely inadequate. OF COURSE she was a better match for him, they spoke the same native language. My basic “Hola! Como Estas? Me llamo Raquel!” was no substitution for a chick that spoke fluent Spanish.

One day in October Jesus and I were working together. He was in the kitchen and I was shift managing, meaning I was a key holder for the shift, kind of like a little manager assistant because at that point  in my life I was thinking I might want to go into restaurant management.(That didn’t pan out. Just FYI)

That afternoon, one of the servers put an empty bottle of cleaning solvent on the kitchen line hoping one of the cooks would refill it. Jesus saw the bottle and having a low tolerance for lazy servers, he pushed it off the kitchen side of the line back to the server side. I saw him do it and it annoyed me, so I walked over and pushed the bottle back at him. He immediately shoved it back at me with force. “Why did you put that there?” He asked. I said I didn’t put it there, but told him to refill it anyway. I pushed it back. He pushed it back again. Then I picked it up and threw it at him and said; “Just do it already!” He didn’t. He left it lying on the floor where it had landed, which was to be expected.

I immediately felt ashamed of myself, I mean, what childish behavior! I spent the rest of the shift avoiding him and feeling pretty embarrassed. Later, I was walking through the dining room and passed by the employee break table. Jesus was standing next to it alone. I walked past him sheepishly and headed back into the kitchen. Then I stopped and turned around. I went back to the table and he was still standing there, leaning against it. “Can I talk to you for a second?” I asked. He didn’t say anything. I told him I was sorry about the water bottle thing, that I just didn’t know how to talk to him anymore. I told him I knew I had been immature and unprofessional. Then that was it, I had said what I needed to say and felt better for it. I turned to walk away to get back to work when he grabbed my arm and pulled me back and before I even had time to wonder what he was doing, he kissed me. Right there in the middle of the restaurant. I pulled back, stared at him and walked away without saying anything. I headed into the kitchen but he followed me, grabbed my arm again. I turned to face him. “I’m sorry too,” he said, placing my hand over his heart.

I felt like I might bust out into tears. Or pass out. I just stared at him. “Say something,” he said. I said I didn’t know what to say. And then he kissed me. AGAIN. So I pulled away, AGAIN.

“You can’t DO THAT,” I said, as much as I wanted him to, and believe me, I wanted him to. I wanted him to talk to me. I wanted him to kiss me. Hell, I would have settled for him standing somewhat close to me. Despite that, I knew I shouldn’t be letting it happen. I knew as much as I wanted to go back down that path, I had already been down it and it hadn’t worked out. So, I walked away, back out into the dining room, picking a random table in the middle of the restaurant and sitting down. (If you’re curious, it was table 53. And the employee break table was 31. Just throwing that out there for all my old coworkers.)

He followed me again. He stood front of me at my table and asked me what I was doing, why I wouldn’t talk to him. I told him I just couldn’t and that I needed to just sit there and be left alone. So he left, and I don’t mean he just left and went back to the kitchen to go back to work. I mean, he left and went home. I know that because after about half an hour of sitting by myself in a stupor, I went to find him and he was no where to be found.

I kinda got what was coming to me.

I’m really doing better about telling this story, considering that this is my third post in 2 days.

I had just received a call from Jesus’s girlfriend and I was completely shocked. I was not at all prepared, this was something that had never even crossed my mind. Later, when I thought about it, it made more sense considering he had never asked me to come to his house. Maybe he couldn’t have me at his house because she would show up or worse, maybe she LIVED there. Suddenly I understood how he could be so patient and kind about the fact that I had a boyfriend: he was in the exact same situation and had no room to judge. I had never had time to think about any of these things because I had been so wrapped up in myself and my problems.

I don’t remember exactly how the conversation between his girlfriend and I went, I can’t quote it word for word or anything. I was stumbling over my words and my hands were shaking. I do know this much: she asked me how I knew him and I said from work. She told me she had found my number in his phone. She asked me if we had been dating. I said we had been “seeing” each other because “dating” didn’t seem like an accurate term for what we had been doing. She asked me how long it had been going on and I told her since February; it was July at that point.

Then for some reason I started telling her that yes we had been seeing each other, but that it wasn’t very serious and that I had also been seeing someone else and had just become engaged to that someone else. (I’m sure she was thinking: SKANK.) I told her the engagement had happened while Jesus was in Florida and that we were now discussing what to do about it. Then she got upset about me mentioning him being on vacation and told me she had been with him. At that point she decided she had heard enough and ended the conversation saying, “Thanks for talking to me MISS RACHEL,” and hung up.

Immediately after hanging up I called Jesus and he answered the phone groggily, as if he had just woken up. “Well, you better wake your ass up and call your GIRLFRIEND. Because I’m sure she’ll be calling you any minute,” I screamed at him. He asked me what I was talking about and I proceeded to give him the run down. My “run down” was pretty much just: “Your girlfriend called me because she found my number in your phone.” Insert a few profane words in that statement and you’ll get the gist of the actual conversation. What did he say? He said: “Okay.” That was IT. I sat there fuming, waiting for him to say something else but he didn’t, he just sat there on the line in complete silence. So I asked him; “Aren’t you going to say something?” He replied; “No….what do you want me to say?”

That’s where the conversation ended, because I hung up on him. We didn’t talk for the next few days except for one text message I sent that said; “I guess you were too good to be true,” to which he didn’t respond. One afternoon I was driving by Chili’s (where we worked together, but hadn’t in a few days because I had been giving away any of my shifts that he was working) when I saw him walking to his car. He saw me passing just as I saw him. I kept driving, but he called my cell phone and asked me to come and talk. My heart was about to pound out of my chest. I was mad, I was confused and I was sad but I wanted answers. So I turned around and met him in the parking lot. We got in his car and went for a drive around town.

He told me he was sorry that I had gotten that phone call and that he hadn’t meant for that to happen. He told me that the girl that called me was not exactly his girlfriend, but his ex girlfriend whom he had been seeing again. I told him that didn’t matter and that he should have told me about it. He pointed out that I hadn’t exactly been 100% honest with him either. I asked him how long he had been seeing her again, he said a few weeks. I asked him why he had started dating someone and he told me that he hadn’t wanted to waste all his time waiting around on me to make a decision. He said that he liked me and he liked spending time with me but that he wasn’t sure what I was going to decide to do and the fact that I had just gotten engaged wasn’t really making matters any better.

Our conversation ended with him asking me what I was going to do. When I asked him what he meant, he said; “Well are you going to end up marrying that other guy or what?” I said I didn’t know and asked him if he was going to stop seeing “that other girl.”He said he didn’t know either and that was the end of the conversation. We hugged goodbye, I got out of his car, got back in mine and drove away.

A week later after thinking about everything I came to a decision. I wasn’t sure if Jesus was telling me the whole truth. I didn’t know if that girl that called me was REALLY his ex that he had taken back up with because I was being so flaky or if he was just telling me that to make himself look better. I didn’t like having doubts about him, it shattered the whole entire image I had of him in my head. The fact that he had been so detached when talking to me about her made me uneasy as well. He didn’t speak ill of her just said he was sorry she called. He was just so….matter of fact about it. I guess what I had wanted to hear was that he only wanted me, that he wanted me to leave Boyfriend and he would leave her and we would go skipping off into the sunset together and live happily ever after. But part of me didn’t think he even felt that way. Sure, he liked me. He was attracted to me. But he had also been dealing with my dishonestly and my unwillingness to make a decision on who I was going to be with it. There had been so many times that he told me he wanted to take me out on dates, in public, but couldn’t. And that was all because of me because I wouldn’t go places with him for fear of being seen by someone I knew. Perhaps I had driven him toward feeling cold towards me, maybe I had driven him back into the arms of another woman. And maybe he really liked her. At least he could take her out on dates at least she could go with him to the beach.

So like I said, after a week of thinking about it I came to a decision. I sent him a single text message and it said this:

“I’ve decided it’s best for us to go our separate ways. I have really enjoyed getting to know you and I wish you the best.”

Minutes later he responded.

“You too.”

O.M.G.

Where I last left off, Boyfriend had just proposed.

I said yes. I took the ring. I have been attacked for doing this many, many times. I don’t know why I did it. But when someone is standing in front of you, someone you have a history with, with a proposal and a ring, well, I couldn’t say no. I just took the moment and figured we could discuss it later.

The next few days are a blur. I was engaged, I didn’t know what I was doing, our friends threw a party with fireworks…Jesus was still out of town….I was lost. My engagement was buzzing around work by the time Jesus arrived back from his vacation. I wanted to talk to him about it before he heard from everyone else, but I was too late. When I approached him at his first day back at work, he said,”Let me see your hand,” which was followed by a stiff, “Mmmm Hmmm,” and him turning and walking away from me.

We did talk about it later that afternoon, and he again told me I needed to make a decision. He knew I was confused but told me if I was going to be engaged he couldn’t keep hanging out with me. He was right. I couldn’t accept a proposal and just expect him to stay around. Jesus also had an out of control sunburn from the beach and could hardly concentrate on me and my problems because he was in so much pain. He had blisters everywhere, it was awful

Anyway, that night, I was overcome with guilt. I knew that I liked Jesus. I knew that he was fantastic. I enjoyed his company and he was so sweet and patient. We had meaningful conversations; I knew that he was the one I wanted a relationship with, not Boyfriend. I planned on telling him so the next day when we were scheduled to work together. But when I showed up to work, he wasn’t there. He had called out because his sunburn was bothering him. I sent him some text messages asking how he was. He told me had gone to a doctor, they had given him some medicine and he was going to try and sleep and so I left him alone for a good part of the afternoon to let him nap.

I got home from work around 4 that afternoon; I planned to spend a quiet evening at home, possibly talking to Jesus after his nap and discussing my decision, and then dealing with ending things with boyfriend and returning the ring.

I sat down to my computer to check my Facebook and my email when my cell phone started to ring. The number registered as “unavailable”. I figured it was a sales call or something but I answered it anyway so I could tell them I wasn’t interested. Instead I got:

“Is this Rachel?”

“Yes it is.”

“Do you know Jesus?”

“Yes …I do.”

“Well this is his girlfriend.”

My thoughts?

Oh. My. God.

To be continued…again….

The Proposal

This is an ongoing series about how Jesus and I met. It is taking me quite some time to finish, but in my defense, it is a long, long, long story that took many years to build up to an actual relationship. What I’m about to tell you really gets the story going though because it’s where things really get complicated.

Where I last left off, I had just told Jesus that I actually had a boyfriend on the side. A boyfriend that I had been with for quite some time, over 2 and half years at that point. Boyfriend had a lot of drug and alcohol problems and I would like to point out that I do not and never have, despite the fact that I like an occasional margarita and used to smoke the occasional cigarette. So, this caused a major difference of interests in our relationship, meaning, I was pretty much a constant babysitter. I know some people are asking why I just hadn’t ended that relationship and the answer is, I just don’t know. I guess when you’re young and you’ve been with someone for awhile, someone that you fought pretty hard to be with in the first place, and someone that you used to think you cared about, it’s just kind of hard to call it quits. I guess I was afraid of what Boyfriend would think, and what everyone else would think as well. That said, let’s move on.

During the next few months, Jesus and I continued our normal routine: working together, texting all day, meeting up once or twice a week to talk or take walks together. That was about it. We didn’t really talk about my situation after that, like at all. Instead we just talked about other things like movies, books, school, jobs. I was happy to not have to have any of those hard, gut wrenching conversations. We just stuck to what was easy and what was natural. To be honest,”Boyfriend never came to my mind when I was around Jesus, so it was quite easy for me to not bring it up.

One night in early June of that year (2007), Jesus came to my house before I was going to leave town for a wedding. I don’t know what our conversations that night involved exactly, I just remember knowing that when it came time for him to leave and go home, I didn’t want him to. I remember knowing that I had developed feelings for him that went far beyond friendship or companionship or flirting. But alas, he had to leave, and I had to go to the wedding. And who was with me at that wedding? Boyfriend.

It was the most unpleasant weekend ever. Not the wedding part with my friends, that was fantastic. It was the moments I had to be around Boyfriend and engage in conversation with him. The night of the reception we got into an explosive fight after he became belligerently drunk and then disappeared for an hour to go smoke pot in a friend’s car. I wasn’t happy about it because I didn’t like him smoking pot and I hated the idiot he became when he did so. I had voiced this frustration to him on numerous occasions but it never seemed to take. He just resorted to hiding it and lying to me, like I couldn’t tell when he was stoned or drunk. (eye roll)

The next day we got in a huge fight again after returning back home because he wanted to go out on the lake and get drunk again. I don’t know what I was so mad about, maybe because it was like 10 AM and he was still drunk from the night before. Maybe I was just sick of being around him in general. I don’t know. He got mad at me for not wanting to go with him to the lake, blah blah blah and left to go by himself, well, not by himself, with his drinking buddies that always surrounded him. We didn’t talk for the few days and he started telling everyone it was over for good. I start telling everyone the same thing. I tried to get some of my stuff out of his house, he locked me out. It was a glorious time.

Skip forward about 3 weeks and Boyfriend and I are being civil again, as much as possible. Jesus leaves to go on vacation to Florida, he invites me, I decline. I can’t go skipping off with him to Florida, what kind of excuse would I give everyone? We keep in touch while he is on vacation, he texts me about dinners he is having and the sunburn he got, yadda yadda.

While Jesus is out of town, mine and Boyfriend’s 3 year anniversary rolls around. Or what would have been our anniversary. I’m not even sure what we were at that point we were so at each other’s throats. Boyfriend asks me to meet him for dinner and that tells me that he has made reservations. I have to get off work early at the last minute and am pretty frustrated about it. I go to meet him at his house and he is standing in his driveway waiting on me. I think, weird, but okay. He tells me not to get out of my car and asks me to open my car trunk. I do, he puts something in there and closes it and gets in the car on the passenger side. He asks me to go for a drive before dinner and directs me where to go.

We drive to the ridge overlooking the City of Chattanooga. He tells me to park and asks me if I would like my gift. I say sure. He says it is it in my trunk. We get out of the car and he out a gift bag and hands it to me. On the front of the bag there is a slot for a card. I pull out the card, it says “I love you. I always have, I always will. Will you do me the honor of being my bride?” I look at Boyfriend in shock as he opens a ring box to display a diamond.

To be continued….

Confessions.

So, where the hell have I been?

Good question. Several places….taking care of a toddler, working, planning a wedding, stalking the web designer that was supposed to redesign my blog back in…oh…uh MAY. That’s a developing story.

In the meantime, I think I’ll get back to When Mommy Met Daddy.

Last time I left off, Jesus had almost caught me with “boyfriend“, and I ran and hid to avoid the truth. Then I I spent the next few weeks making sure that we were scheduled for separate shifts at work so that I didn’t have to face him. He didn’t try to contact me AT ALL. Not a single text message, phone call, nothing. Jesus knows how to play hard ball and he knows how to get his point across when he’s ticked off and he was in fact, really ticked off.

Who finally cracked in this whole game of avoiding each other? Oh. Well, me of course. I wasn’t used to silence after months of talking to him every day, waking up to a message from him every morning that said “Good morning beautiful,” or our late night meet ups and talks. I couldn’t take it and I gave in. I was so pathetic that I would go and sit alone on my parents’ driveway late and night thinking about how if I hadn’t been such an IDIOT he would be sitting next to me.

Anyway, after several weeks, I sent him a text message that said something along the lines of “I’m an idiot, I’m sorry, I need to talk to you.” He responded. He always did. He wouldn’t be the first to come forward but he would always be quick to respond and quick to forgive.

We met up that evening at our usual park and despite the fact that he wasn’t pressing me for any information, I told him about “boyfriend” anyway. He wasn’t devastated or angry….anything really. He was just understanding. He had had suspicions so he had been somewhat prepared to hear something along the lines of  what I had to tell him. However, I imagine the truth was actually better then some of the scenarios he had come up with. He listened to me ramble for a very long time about how confused I was and how I didn’t know what to do. He didn’t pass any judgement or call me selfish or stupid or immature like most people would. He simply listened, and at the end of my babbling he told me he cared for me and hoped that I would make the right decision.

**Can I make a side note here? The whole time this was going on, when Jesus was always so willing to forgive, so willing to listen, I kept thinking to myself: This is too good to be true. I was actually quite right. It was too good to be true and there was a very big “something” that I didn’t know about. But we’ll get to that soon…