Moving forward, communication is spotty at best. There is a text the day after date two asking how my day is going. I've made sure not to be the first to reach out and am mildly pleased to hear from him first. "Great I say."
"I had a good time last night," he offers up from his man cave of Sunday Football. I breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe I'm not just a piece of ass I rationalize. Later that night I've made dozens of Christmas cookies while Dad visits from Kansas. I offer to bring a batch over to Paul which he willingly accepts and then the trail more or less goes cold because Dell's fiscal year ends January 31st and he has to "bust his butt to meet quota".
Fine, I got it. I work for a sales organization and I more than understand what quota means to leadership and shareholders. Two plus weeks and a work drama later it's the Wednesday before Christmas. I'm at Target checking off Santa's Christmas list for my kiddos when Paul texts: "My wife knows about our dates."
Okay, and the problem with that is what exactly? He's near the end of a divorce, right? It's not that simple it appears and my enthusiasm for having gone out with Paul - which I shared with my barista friend, Michael - is now widely known throughout the coffee world at 1431 and Parmer. So how did that news make its way to the not-yet-ex-wife?
I go back to dinner that night on date #2. Between bites of capers, lemon-butter sauce and sea bass did I hear him correctly when he suggested I should not share with the Starbucks crew about meeting and dating him? "Too late," I told him as Michael knew full well about our dates along with scores of customers who could have witnessed our near canoodling in between dates. Oops, an apparent over-share when I thought there was nothing to hide.
So from Michael to Jeffy to the not-yet-ex-wife whose young boys are in the same cub scout troop. Long story short, "I'm going to have keep low until the divorce is final."
"And when will that be?"
"Late January."
Awesome. I suppose that means no Happy New Year's kiss... after all it is about me! Actually, a week later he calls and for a brief moment I dare hope that we'll go out to ring in 2012. On the contrary, he's calling to reiterate the unfolding drama with his not-yet-ex-wife who's told their daughter he's cheating on them. OMG. What am I supposed to do about this? I haven't a clue.
I work diligently through January to micro-manage my over-communication tendencies. Once a week or less I send a text checking in to which he consistently responds right away. "Fine, still plugging along, almost there with the divorce, work is going well... nearly burned out from the stress." But I notice I'm the only one initiating the texts now.
I vacillate between playing it cool and telling myself we're adults not childish twenty-something year-olds navigating through a he-said she-said dating world. We don't NEED to play by rules I tell myself all the while beginning to realize he's not that into me. Yep... nope, push it down just push it down. I was not just this guy's piece of ass.
Hmmm. January bleeds into February and inspired by a chance meeting with a relationship coach I place a phone call to share what's on my heart while leaving the door open. He answers immediately and I tell myself, wouldn't someone who's "not into me" let the call roll to voicemail? I nod to myself with certainty and continue with absolute and complete honesty.
"Look, I know you're going through a lot right now. I just want you to know that when you get to the other side of it - work, divorce - I'm interested in seeing you again... if you feel the same, I mean it seemed as if we had a connection." I stop, waiting for a reply.
"Wow, thank you for saying that," and then it's a blur because I pretty much stop listening, figuratively hung up on the acknowledgment. Did he say he felt the same way? I think so, but right at the moment my customers walk into the hotel lobby for our meeting in San Francisco and everything else blurs. I think he said he felt the same... I think.
A few days later there's a chance encounter on Valentine's Day that ends with a kiss but I've already decided to move on. A few days later is my first night at the Austin Dinner Club, a strategic move my friend Laura recommends to get past "this Paul guy." It's a well developed plan that introduces me to someone infinitely more real, more tangible and infinitely fantastic in bed. Thoughts of Paul fade throughout the spring and I assume he's moved away considering his total absence from the neighborhood.
Then one day - yesterday to be precise - Michael approaches me as I drink in my Sunday morning with an Ameriano and the New York Times.
"So, guess who's engaged?"
I sit up straight and momentarily grab the counter with my finger tips, wanting and yet not wanting to hear what will come out of his mouth next.
"Do I have to guess?"
Sharon leans over from the espresso machine and both of them are wild-eyed in their eagerness to share the hottest gossip this side of HEB.
"Paul. He's engaged to his girlfriend of two years." And a rush of conflicting emotions run their course while I try to remain calm and cool.
"So just to be clear, he was cheating on his wife with his girlfriend and cheating on his girlfriend with me?" He is a classy guy and I guess that explains the beige SUV parked in his drive-way.
Actually, more like a total fucking douche bag. I feel stupid for the time spent dwelling on something that now seems to have only existed in my imagination, ridiculous for making that last phone call, regretful that my interpretation of this "romance" has thwarted what was great about the person I met from Austin Dinner Club.
I feel simultaneously relieved to not be involved with someone who so calculatingly described his wife as unstable, while describing that what he detested most in women was their "emotional neediness." Who's unstable? Who's emotionally needy?
I feel validated to have sensed there was always something intense and off center about him that I could not put my finger on. Thank God in a hundred thousand unanswered prayers that he never called again. How fucked up would my life be and my girls to settle with a chronic cheater?
And with all of that rationalizing what do I also feel? I still feel a little played. My intuition told me he was looking for one thing and I ended up being right.
There's this saying friends have, "do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?" If I'd never met Paul or agreed to go out with him I wouldn't have been played so in a sense I'd be happy.
Having been proven "right" about getting played may not be so bad though. Without the Paul drama there'd be no dinner club, and without that there'd be no Rich who may or may not be the ONE but will certainly remain a friend who gets full credit for recalibrating me in a way neither douche bag Paul nor any other guy could.
And on this side of "being right" I know to better listen to my intuition the next time some tall or not-so-tall, dark and handsome dude tries pulling a number over me. Not that I will stop being gracious in the face of a compliment, but I won't need it to validate me and fill me like a vessel in need of fuel. I don't need fuel from a man. That tank is all stocked up.
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