Getting Together

Today's theme in the Valentine's Day Extravaganza is Romantic Screwups.

Now, I gotta say that when I first saw this theme I just couldn't think of anything & neither could Russ.  (I guess that means that we are romantically in tune...or we both have really poor memories!)  But then it occurred to me that our 'How he asked me out story' could be categorized as romantically screwed up so, as I alluded to in post on Tuesday, I am going to tell you the story of how Russ & I started dating.

We met in September 2002 and became friends.  He would often come over and hang out with me and my friends (who also happened to be my housemates.)  About a month after we met I came to the conclusion that he was wonderful and that I would love to date him.  I couldn't tell, however, if the reason he came over so much was because he liked me, because he wanted some friends, or worse (for me) because he liked my friend, K.  Logically it seemed as if I was the person he was interested in because I was the one who he talked to until well after bedtime; I was the one who he escorted to the Olde Main to listen to the Jazz Birds; I was the one he brought rootbeer from Colorado for.   But I wasn't sure because Russ was so polite, attentive & charming as a general rule...not just to me.  And some of that could be simply because I was the one who didn't want to go to bed & I was the one who wanted to go to the Main.  (Insecurity makes people miss the obvious.)  

Anywhoo....on October 29th, 2002, the phone rang while I was getting ready.  It was Russ but he was calling to talk to K.  I was all sorts of confused.  Maybe he really did like her instead.  I left for class shortly after that.  A couple hours later, as I was walking to my art class, I ran into K.  She was all sorts of smiles as she told me that Russ had called to ask her if she thought I would say yes if he asked me out.  We couldn't talk long because we didn't want to be late for class.  I had the worst time concentrating for that next class!  I was all aflutter inside.  At lunch, my grandparent's showed up and wanted to take us out so K & I didn't get a chance to talk then either and as soon as we got back I had to rush off to the bookstore for work.  When I got there, it was really slow so before digging into work I checked my email.  I had one from Russ in which he asked me out.  He asked me out in an email.

I was so excited I told my coworker and she was excited for me to.  I didn't write Russ back right away because 1) I was at work and 2) I didn't know how to accept him via email.  As soon as I got off work I went home and called him.  I was expecting him to bring up the email so I could give him my answer.  But he didn't say a word about it and I was too embarrassed to bring it up soo...nothing was said.  He came over later that night and we hung out and I waited for him to say something about the email & he waited for me to say something about the email....we waited until 2 o clock in the morning but neither one of us said anything about the email and so Russ didn't get his answer.  At that point I started second guessing which made me feel even more awkward about bring it up.  However I felt a little more free about how he felt about me so during the Halloween party a few days later I took the liberty of leaning against him & touching his arm & whatnot.  He was confused & I was embarrassed.  We called each other a lot...he came over a lot, we began to act like we were dating in a lot of ways but it was left unspoken and thus unestablished. 

FINALLY after a couple weeks of this nonsense I finally asked him (I can't remember now if it was in person or via email)  what the status of our relationship was and we worked through all the awkwardness and 'officially' became a couple. 

We still jokingly argue over who screwed up more in us trying to get together...I still say asking a girl out in email and not taking the initiative to bring it up in person later was pretty lame.  But I will concede that it was probably bad form to leave him hanging after he put himself out there like that.  

At least it all worked out in the end.  :)