For my legions of fans eagerly awaiting news regarding my courtship of
Ms. O'Brien, enjoy. And for the crazy
Google-watchers among you, just scroll on by — this is as
bloggy as blogging gets.
Sunday I went out farther on the limb of honesty than I've ever gone, and in one grand gesture let a
girl know about my crush on her.
In her words:
"OK - so to top it all off, I have to spill that Eric gave me a Valentine's gift!! Holy moly!! I was completely surprised, and totally delighted because it's the yummiest sweetie treat from this awesome new bakery called Gâteau et Ganache... The Raspberry Sweethearts and the Strawberry Marshmallows. YUMM!!!! Eric had me blushing... what a total surprise. :) Thank you!!! xoxoxoxox"
It was a fantastically uncomfortable moment — my heart-rate had skyrocketed and I must have been visibly shaking. Here's the dialog, as clearly as I can recall:
Me: "Oh, this is for you." (I hand her the pink bag)
W: "Um, what's this for?"
Me: "Use your imagination!"
W: "No way!!! Eric Case, are you courting me?!"
Me: "Um... yes!"
I'm surprised I didn't fall out of my chair when she asked for a hug! After a bunch of smiling and tasting the sweets though, she softly whispered,
"
But I don't think you're my type..."
Gulp.
At this point I should have
pulled a Mary Swanson (
context) and asked what my chances were. But my heart had already fallen through the floor and I somehow mustered a weak smile. See, my cynical side was expecting this, so I was already somewhat prepared.
The rest of the evening was still lots of fun though, because we listened to a bunch of music and laughed and geeked and even went out for dinner. The conversation we had was wonderful and fascinating, and we got to chat about our pasts, our spiritualities, travels, aspirations...
She finally headed home around 9:30pm, and we parted with
hug like none I've ever experienced — wow, I can
still feel it. I assumed that was the end of that,
meditated for a bit, then fell into an uneasy, disturbed slumber.
Yesterday afternoon however, Valentine's Day, a
book of an email from her arrived in my inbox, and my pulse leapt again. A few words immediately jumped out at me: friendship, friendship, platonically, friends.
Sigh.
(lots of stuff in there had me grinning ear to ear though — it was an
awesome email, thanks W!)
So now I get to wait for the infatuation to diminish sufficiently so we can hang out again, without me tripping over things and missing heartbeats. (this should only take a week or so, I reckon). It's funny what this process is actually involving:
- unsubscribing from her site feed in Bloglines so I won't read her blog
- removing her from my contact list at Flickr so I won't see her photos
- deleting her from my buddy list on AIM so I'm not tempted to IM
- further contact management at other social Internet services I've forgotten about
(I'm sure I'll redo these soon enough, once my heart has settled a bit...)
"We're just so great together!" my mind continues to plead...
But the journey *is* the reward, even when it's a
year-and-a-half in the making.
:)
Update: a
followup post from W, as well as linkage from
Biz &
Mai.
