Like a Fool

I sat in the parking lot behind the historic red building that housed a small room on the top floor I was allowed to use as an office.

We’d been texting since about 6 AM that morning. A much earlier start than normal. I reasoned that Emily was just excited to finally meet me. I mean, after all, we’d been texting each other since around Labor Day and it was now early November.

Of course, the whole reason I was sitting in the parking lot was because she postponed our date. Just a few hours, I reasoned. I mean, she’d said we could meet at 2 in the afternoon instead of the originally planned 10 AM.

Fine. Fair enough.

I changed my schedule for that day, got some things done in the morning, and freed up my afternoon.

To this day, I still have no idea what kind of “work” she was doing.

I texted her just before two to see how it was going, if two was really going to work. No response.

2:15. Sitting in the parking lot behind my office. Nothing from her. 2:30. I send another text, I wait. I figure that I can meet her as late as 3 PM and still have time to get my daughter from school after dance team practice.

2:40. She responds. She’s “technically” done but can’t really leave the place where she’s working. Setting up for something, is what she had said.

Now that I know a lot more about her - now that we’ve had not one, but two rounds of something resembling dating, I have a pretty good idea of what she was up to. But, I hate thinking about that. So, I’m just going to remember that she was working. That she just couldn’t that day.

So, I sat in the parking lot behind my office and I felt like a fool.

I went through all the logical reasons why someone would NOT want to meet me, not even for a first date. Not even after we’d bonded over text for months. Not even if we were the only people who understood how our minds worked.

20 years older than her, still “technically” married, a near-teenage child - those were the big reasons why.

Plus, there she was - young, brilliant, beautiful. A more age-appropriate man would be ideal for her. Men her age weren’t enough, but there were surely men just a bit older who had their shit together that could “wow” her. I wasn’t the only smart guy in town, and I had a fuck ton of baggage.

I mean, I really couldn’t believe she’d talked to me for as long as she had. Still, I believed - or, let myself believe - that she truly liked me, wanted me in some way. This was in part because she’d pretty much said as much.

Still, I sat in the parking lot and felt like a fool. This was at least the third “date” we’d planned together that she’d cancelled. This was the closest we’d gotten to a date, or at least it felt that way. The other two times were more like vague discussions about meeting after one or the other of us finished a project. This time, we’d set a time and a place. In fact, I was on my way to the place when she postponed.

So, I figured this was the end. And, well, maybe it should have been. I mean, if someone wants to see you, they’ll see you.

Anyway, she later sent me a semi-nude pic and an apology. This only made me mad - I mean, I wanted to see her. Actually SEE her, in person.

We would eventually meet, of course. We’d share a few weeks of pretty intense passion, then it just went away. Well, she went away. One night, about seven weeks after our actual first date, she just stopped responding.

I felt like a fool. Of course she hadn’t been that serious about this whole thing.

Then, nine months later, she was back. Almost exactly 11 months after our first date, we went out again. A beautiful night, drinks and Indian food, and talking past midnight on the roof of her building.

She suggested coffee two days later. Then, didn’t respond to my texts or calls that day. A fool. I felt like a fool.

I’d see her again a few more times. She’d promise to meet me, and then cancel. One day, after I’d seen her the night before, after we’d had drinks and gone shopping and she’d promised a day of lunch and groceries and just being together, she cancelled, then went away. Disappeared. For an entire week, she was gone.

I sat in the parking lot of a grocery store and cried when she texted me, when I knew she was ok. I told her that what she was doing was not ok - she couldn’t go in and out and disappear like that. She apologized, and we resumed texting.

But, I couldn’t help but feel like a fool. Tears streaming down my face, music turned up loud, wondering what it took to get her full attention and why I didn’t deserve it.

This type of thing would continue - there was the morning of texts almost non-stop from 7 AM to 9 AM - a day we’d talked about spending together. Then, she just stopped. Three, four, six days at a time. She’d be “gone.”

Here is how it ended. For good, this time, because I’ve been a fool, but I’m not doing that anymore - not for her.

I sat in her driveway. My face hot with anger and wet with tears. It was exactly two years from the day of our first date. Exactly two years from the time my heart jumped when I saw her face for the first time.

This night, I sat in the car having stormed out of her home only to return to the front door to deposit a half-consumed bottle of tequila she’d left. I just sat there. Feeling like a fool.

Turns out, when she told me I was her favorite, that really did mean there were others. Turns out, on a morning after we’d spent the night together in a week where we’d been together almost non-stop, she’d made plans to meet and fuck some other guy.

In our morning glow of togetherness, she served me a cocktail and breakfast and then arranged to meet him.

When I learned this - nearly 12 hours after she’d done it, I left.

I sat in her driveway and I cried. I felt like a fool. Just like I had on the day of what was to be our first date. She led me to a place where I was completed invested, just like she had on that day two years before - and then just left me there.

Like a fool.