It's May 28th and I'm Not His Girlfriend

First time I met him was at a bar in Shoreditch, just off Liverpool Street station. It was my third ever date with anyone and the butterflies in my stomach was going mad. So mad that I thought to myself, I should just turn around and go back. But my heart was telling me to move forward, forcing me to take one step in front of the other, because maybe, just maybe, this will be the time when it is my last, first date with someone. Maybe this time it will work out, and maybe this time it will be the guy who'll finally make me forget about my X and stop thinking “what if.” 'Cause we all know that “what if” never turns into anything. It’s just there, like the annoying itching after the mosquito bites you got too many of last summer. So my heart is forcing me forward, 'cause I can’t settle with “what if" any longer. I'm ready to let someone else take his place. It’s been 2.5 years and I'm ready to let someone else be the new version, the 2.0, the updated one.

So before I know it, I turn around the corner, pulling my jacket tighter around my body because it's February 16th and it’s way colder than the outfit I'm wearing correlates with. And there he is and my heart thumps harder than before, the butterflies going even more mad. He is tall, and dark and he got freckles and glasses and you think he looks intelligent. And it’s a bit awkward when we hug to say hi and the security guard completely caught me off guard asking about my age, instead of my ID, so I say 25 even though I turned 26 last month. He heard that and I have to explain that I said it wrong, not because I'm nervous, just because. (please don’t notice how nervous I am) Then we sit down and he looks way deeper into my eyes than anyone else does and before I know it I'm more red in my face than the tomato I ate for breakfast that morning. The picture I had tried to paint, off me being this very comfortable, confident, sassy girl, fast came crumbling down. Damn it.

He ordered drinks until we lost count and then he said, “Can I kiss you?”

And I said, “You don’t have to ask.”

So there I was, getting kissed by a boy I finally felt a connection with. A boy who didn’t have chats about different flavours in crisps nor called me ugly and slapped my bum like my first two dates. He seemed like an alright one (even though his Irish accent made me say “sorry” more times than I probably have done in the last few weeks). The bill came to more money than I spend on a month worth of food and I prayed to God he wouldn’t ask to split it, he didn’t, he didn’t even give me a glance. Then we went to this other bar that quickly transformed into a club with sweaty teenagers grinding against each other and girls flirting to get a drink. We drank gin and tonic, doubles, even though none of us really needed any more to drink, and then we danced. Do I have to fleek in the awkwardness that can occur when you don’t know each other and are forced to somehow try to dance together without looking like you need to go and get a room nor are stuck in the 1950s? So I guess those double gin and tonics came handy anyway. For the first time in a long time I looked at someone, at him, thinking that maybe this will be something.

Before we completely lost track of our drinking we decided to leave and it all felt so right that we decided to go back to his place and the next morning he bought me avocado toast for breakfast and after watching Mulan, he ordered me an uber home and I thought to myself if this wasn’t a good first date I don’t know what.

It’s now gone 3.5 months and I still can’t call him mine. Love never comes easily and never has in my life. He broke up with a long term girlfriend only two months before he met me. A girlfriend who cheated on him and left him broken and I think when he met me, he wasn’t really ready for it. He wasn’t ready to meet someone who might hurt him again, someone he ended up wasting four years on. He wasn’t ready to give anyone his full attention. He wasn’t ready to commit to anything. I said I understood and that I felt really bad for him whilst thinking to myself, why can’t it ever go smoothly for me? After meeting him a few more times, I was about to call it quits. I didn’t want to waste my time waiting for someone who may or may not ever be ready. I wanted to meet someone who was as ready to fall for me as I was for them. But yet I found myself thinking I had more to lose if I gave up now. I don’t want to have to deal with another “what if.” So we kept seeing each other and it’s May 28th and I can feel myself falling for him. Although I’m very careful not to let him know, I don’t want to scare him off. I don’t want to push him into something he’s not ready to do. But we will reach a point where I will have had enough, where I can’t give any more time. I’ve said 6 months to myself. 6 months and then I need to know. I need to know if I have to start over, go on new first dates, be nervous and stumble on words. I need to know if you’re not ready because we both will know that I am. I need to know if you’re ready to commit to me, as I am to you. I need to know if you think I’m worth fighting for. Worth risking your heart for.

But it’s only May 28th and I’m not his girlfriend and as of today I have to be fine with that.