I can barely stand myself right now. My face is stuck, pretty much permanently I’m sure, looking like a slice of watermelon.
I am glued to my phone.
I am sleep deprived.
I am listening to nothing but love songs (and the occasional “let’s get it poppin'” cut).
I have all the classic symptoms.
I have a crush.
I’ve resisted writing about him because a. I couldn’t come up with a decent pseudonym for him and b. I prefer to not entangle the destruction of one thing with the evolution of another.
And because if I wrote about him, captured him on a page, then, well, it would be real. And I would have to deal with it. And we all know I don’t wanna do that.
But he is persistent, this one. Stubbornly getting to me, making me feel like I am in high school. So you get to call him B, because I do.
I’ve known B for a little over two years, the subject of an ill fated match up that could never quite seem to get it together. The friend who introduced us told me, “La, he’s perfect for you.” But at the time, “perfect” lived 1,000 miles away. Apparently I talked to him once on the phone and was pretty damn rude to him.
Which, let’s face it, sounds like me.
Then I met him. I was instantly attracted to him, but I couldn’t focus on that at the time. Said friend who was responsible for seeing our “perfection” was in the middle of a confrontation with her most recent ex, and I was in the midst of a string of red faced, four letter words. I remember he made me take a walk with him so I wouldn’t be looking at the two of them and fuming. I even remember how he did it. He put his hand on the small of my back and just said, “Come with me.”
Without even making the decision to, I did.
Fast forward to now. After losing contact for awhile, I got a random text from him awhile back. I’ll spare you the sap, but it made me smile and continued to make me smile for the many days following because, yes, I saved and reread the message. Often.
If you haven’t heard, I’m all over the place, constantly working 50 or so hour weeks and text or email or IM straight to my phone are the best ways to get a hold of me. After the initial text, which led to a phone conversation that night, I started to notice that the texts started to come more frequently. And every one made me smile a little wider, and a little longer than the one before it. Every phone conversation stretched a little bit longer, the echoes of his words lingered in the back of my mind for a few more days after we’d actually hung up the phone.
Earlier this week, he texted me just to say goodnight. The following night he called me after we both finally left work. I was right in the middle of my whole not speaking to anyone thing so I almost didn’t answer. Before I could stop myself though, I was picking up and saying hello.
And then, that damn smile he puts on my face.
This whole week, thanks largely to him, I’ve been on whatever is just a tiny step above cloud 9. While talking to him last night, I just so happened to mention what time I had to be awake for work.
“Oh, and you’re like an hour behind me right?”
This morning, I woke up to my phone ringing.
“Since I kept you up all night, I thought I should at least make sure you got up on time. And I figured since my voice was the last one you heard before you went to sleep, it should be the first one you heard this morning.”
Oh, God. Oh, God, I am in so much trouble.
After picking myself up off the floor, I went about my day, my facial muscles stretched big and wide towards the outskirts of my face. It stayed there all day, and if it wavered, I only needed to double back to my cell phone and read one of his texts. I was smiling and happy, laughing out loud at even the dumbest things. I felt a little like singing. My usual loud rap music on my morning commute to work was replaced by some Alicia Keys and Robin Thicke. If this was some cheesy Disney movie, this would be where I’d go sing this duet with the birds.
I’m so disgusted with myself.
“You know,” I told him that night when I rushed to call him after getting off work, “if you keep this up, my mouth is gonna be stuck this way permanently.”
“I hope it does get stuck. I can’t think of anything better than seeing you smile.”
*sigh*
Me too. More than either of us probably realizes.
Liquor, Loans & Love 