“Do you not like me?”
I looked up and scrunched my eyebrows toward my eyes. “What do you mean? Of course I like you. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t like you.” I rolled my eyes.
“Well we’ve gone out several times now and…I don’t know. You’re so hard to read. We haven’t even kissed.” He looked hurt.
“I’m sorry, Bill. I guess I just take a long time to warm up. I’m not like those other sluts that you date.” I laughed. He still looked hurt. I started to walk away. We had just finished having drinks at Solstice in my neighborhood. He was fun to be with, I just didn’t feel the attraction. If I had, I certainly would have kissed him on the first date. “Call me, ok?” He watched me walk further down the block. I called out again, “Don’t forget to call me. I want you to!”
Two weeks later, the tables had turned. I watched him cook me dinner while I sat at his dining room table reading the Wall Street Journal. “How was your day, honey? You stay there. Let me get you a glass of wine.” I smiled. He was such a nice guy. Then dinner came out and I liked him even more: salad, spicy ravioli, and home-made garlic bread. I headed out to his beach house in Stinson for the weekend and fell in love. I watched him make dinner again. He focused on the smallest details like making sure the wine was chilled, hunting for his toaster oven to toast the french bread that I had brought. I looked over at him in the kitchen, multi-tasking, while I sat on his couch reading and I wanted to cry. He saw me look up at him and I smiled. My eyes were glistening.
Maybe it was then that the tables turned. He was no longer in love with me. The phone calls stopped. The emails in the middle of the day stopped, too. So did the text messages. And almost immediately, my heart caved in. “Oh God, please. Please don’t let this happen to me again. Why? Why do they stop loving me?”
More than a week had passed since I heard from him. Probably ten days. I called my matchmaker in a panic. “Amy. Amy, I haven’t heard from Bill. Have you heard from him?”
“No, Catherine. I haven’t. He’s probably really busy. He is always very difficult for me to track down.”
I asked for advice. She was on it. “Here’s what you do. Ok. How about this? ‘I’ve been so missing you!!! I have tickets for blah, blah, blah on Friday. Was wondering if you want to join me?’ Don’t ask why he hasn’t called. Be perky, be happy, and see what happens.”
I chickened out. I couldn’t call. I sent an email. He was enthusiastic, said he had been busy.
In my mind, if someone likes you, they show it. And I just haven’t felt it in several weeks. I had killed it off, but then decided that that has been a long-standing problem with my relationships. Ending things so decidedly, so quickly. So I’m trying, but it’s tough.
Hence, the Bachelorette.
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