Hi all! Thanks so much for all the well wishes on my move. I'm taking a packing break to get a post up for you. This one is probably taking the place of Monday's post but I'll try to get another post asap for you. Thanks for your patience!
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As busy as I was for the rest of my
trip, I couldn’t get Ryan out of my head.
I was angry by the end of it because I just wanted a vacation from
everything bouncing around in my brain, but I couldn’t even get that. I tried to ignore it, but Jamie noticed on
Wednesday evening.
We were eating a delicious meal at
a seafood restaurant on the water when he set down his wine glass and cocked a
curious eyebrow at me. “What?” I asked,
noticing right away.
“You’ve been distracted nearly your
whole trip so far. What’s up?”
“What are you talking about?” I
asked, trying to deny it.
Jamie laughed. “Knock it off and talk to me. What’s going on?”
I sighed. I hated his ability to read me. “It’s a guy,” I admitted, grumbling a little.
“What?!” Jamie said in mock
outrage. “There are other men in your
life?”
I laughed at his tone and the face
he was making. “Unfortunately, yes. It would be much simpler if it was just
you.” I realized what I had just
accidentally implied and the alarm must have shown on my face because Jamie
started cracking up.
“Don’t worry, I know what you
mean,” he said. “I think we both know
we’re not any sort of good match.” He
was right. I had no desire to live
Jamie’s adventurous life, moving wherever the wind blew him for the next
opportunity. I would probably live in
Minnesota until I died, and I was completely okay with that. Jamie would never be happy with that. “So tell me about this guy.”
Feeling weird, because Jamie and I
had had sex no fewer than 5 times since I got here, I told him about Ryan—the
way we met, the way we were re-introduced, our weird ‘relationship’, and the
night at Nate’s party, and the poor choice of spending the night with Ryan
after.
“Okay, but you don’t actually think
that spending the night is the thing that fucked this all up, do you?” Jamie
asked when I finished.
“Well…” I said, before I shrugged.
“Jenna, come on. Don’t be ridiculous, you’re smarter than
that. Spending one night together did
not make those feelings happen.”
“There are no—“ I started.
“Oh, there certainly are,” Jamie
said. “You’re kidding yourself if you
want to sit here and tell me you don’t have any feelings for him. You absolutely, 100% do, and so does he, and
you need to get over yourself and stop being stupid.”
I gaped at him, not pleased with
this tough love approach. “I’m not being
stupid, I’m being careful,” I argued.
“You’re being stupid, Jenna. This guy cares about you. You know I love you but you are being stupid.” He
strongly emphasized each of the last four words, and then stopped talking,
letting me bask in the irritating glow of his lecture. When I didn’t say anything, he took a sip of
his wine and then said, “It’s okay to be freaked out. You thought you found the one and he turned out
to be a cheating shitpig. But that
doesn’t mean that every man out there is.”
“I’m not freaked out,” I said
softly, but I couldn’t hold his gaze.
Instead, I fiddled with my empty wine glass and then looked out over the
water. “And,” I met his eyes and continued,
my voice a little louder now, “I know that not every man is like him, but the
problem is that you can’t tell. You just
have no way to know until it’s too late.”
My voice caught in my throat and I looked away again.
“Well, if it helps, I never liked
Kevin and I like this guy so far,” Jamie said, grinning. I rolled my eyes and shook my head, trying to
fight the smile that was threatening the corners of my mouth. He waited until I looked at him again and
then gently said, “I think you’ll regret not seeing what happens with
Ryan.” I shrugged. “Well, at the very least, be nice to
him. I know how you get.”
“Rude!” I exclaimed, glaring at
him.
“You don’t do it on purpose, but
you get pretty cold to people when you want to shut them out,” he told me. “I’m not telling you to be a dick, I just
think you should know.” He wasn’t wrong,
and he would know. I did the same to
him after I started dating Kevin, as if to punish Jamie for not wanting to date
me.
I pursed my lips, then asked, “Do
you ever wonder what it would have been like if we had dated?”
“No,” he answered immediately. I frowned and he continued, “Just because I
know what it would have been like. It
would have crashed and burned. We never
wanted the same things. I mean, you want
kids and I don’t, and that seems like a really big deal breaker. I’d rather have you as my friend than my ex
that hates me.”
“Do you still not want kids?” I
asked curiously.
He shrugged. “Not really,” he said. “I guess I’m not quite as firmly against it
as I used to be, but I still think I’d be happiest without them.” He frowned and studied me. “What’s happening in your head over there?”
“Nothing,” I assured him. “I was just kind of curious if I was the only
one that ever had feelings here.” I motioned between the two of us.
He chuckled. “You, feelings? Nooooo!” I rolled my eyes. “I did for a little while, but I just kind of
talked myself out of them, I guess,” he said with a shrug.
“Got any tips for that? Talking yourself out of feelings?” I asked,
smirking.
“No,” he said, shaking his
head. “I don’t want you to talk yourself
out of your feelings for him. I want you
to go for it.”
“I don’t think I can,” I told him,
glancing out over the water again. “I
know too much about him and how he operates.”
Jamie made a skeptical face. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I explained
what Ryan had told me about not missing people and not thinking about the
people he’s dating when he’s traveling for work. “Okay, except 15 minutes ago you told me that
he emailed you while he was traveling.
Which means he thought about you while
he was working.”
Those two sentences hit me
hard. I blinked several times and then
frowned. “But…” I said. I tried to think of the rest of what I wanted
to say but it wasn’t happening. Instead,
I said, “Are you ready? I’m ready.”
“I’m ready,” Jamie replied, not
pushing me.
Ryan was on my mind for the rest of
my trip, to the point that I couldn’t even shut it off long enough to have sex
with Jamie. I turned him down. I had fun, though. It had been a long time since I’d taken a
vacation just for me, and it was a good one.
I resolved to do more traveling soon.
When Jamie dropped me off at the
airport, I was sad to leave but definitely looking forward to being back in my
own bed. Sharing a bed with Jamie made
me appreciate having my bed to myself all over again.
My flight was pretty good, and I
drove home to drop off my suitcase. Then
I took a deep breath and made a phone call.
Ryan answered on the first ring. “Are
you in town?” I asked him. “Can I stop
by?”