Coworker 1: “After this is over they’ll never want to talk to you again.”

Coworker 2: “Plus must of them will be closed in 20 years anyway.”

Me: “Huh. Wait. What? Mean!”

Let it be said here and now that if I ever get married, my sister-in-law is in charge of the planning.

Dearest Kristin,

Seeing you last night was like the weight of a thousand elephants being lifted off my shoulders. Your continuing blowing off of me (not in a good way), made my heart heavier than the combined weight of a lesbian biker gang. To know that you still love me back makes me fly higher than a lost seagull. Whence my feet touch the ground once again I can only hope we shall visit the establishment known as Pizza Man to continue our courtship.

Sincerely,

Phone Number Guy

Poet Laureate of the State of South Carolina

A shocking look swept across my face. I’ve been called a lot of things. Sassy. Ignorant. GENIUS. Mellow. Scared. (Just to name a few.) But referenced as a heartbreaker? Or a man spitter outer? I think not. No wait. I know not.

My shocking look turned into a verbal response slightly less Southern than, “Matt, what in the high heavens are you talking about?”

“That’s what you did with Pal!” he said, not skipping a beat. “I told him that’s what you were doing. I could see it happening!”

“Sweet Lord,” I did not mumble as I grabbed Partner in Crime’s arm and walked up the street to another far more amiable location.

I hadn’t seen much of Matt in the weeks since that incident. Largely being because I had merely been out of town in the weekends that had followed.

Last night he grabbed me up when he saw me, cutting the distance made between us by the pool table in a swift instant.

“Where have you been!?” I said, spirited as I was. “I haven’t seen you since – oh wait – since you told me I chewed men up and spit them out.”

His face first registered confusion. His words followed with ignorance to that conversation. And then this: “Well you did! With Pal!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I told him. And in part that was true. I hadn’t chewed him up. And I hadn’t spit him out. I’d maybe, well, I’d sized him up. And that’s different. And there was no spitting. There was me, being busy, and merely not making time for him. Which had I liked him? Well obviously I would have made the time.

“If I told him right now to call you he would. He liked you a lot,” he added, in a way that encouraged me to change the subject.

As the conversation dissolved I looked back at the quiet birthday boy to my side. The one who’d bought the drink in my hand. The one who’d asked me on Monday about having that drink and made an effort to meet me, where I was, with my friends, on my terms.

When the hours began ticking by faster and the morning light began drawing nearer he looked at me, told me he was going to head because he needed to be up and at ‘em in the morning, and ducked out of where we were, promising to call me later. Which he did.

I found my Partner in Crime and her on-again off-again and told them about my own impending departure when the on-again off-again started with me.

“You really like that guy?” he said of my beer purchaser.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Kristin, my boy The Wrestler really likes you.”

“Okay.”

“And I think he’s getting his feelings hurt when he sees you hanging out with this other guy,” he persisted.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I continued. “I’m not crushing on anyone. I like no one. Ask my Partner in Crime.”

“It’s true,” she said, shaking her head. “She still can’t figure out what she wants.”

“I could go get surgery like all my friends and your daddy’s colleague’s wives and I could look like I’m not really 56 years old. I could get rid of every last one of my wrinkles,” Mom started off.

“But then,” she continued, smiling, “I figure my wrinkles are proof of the life I live. So as long as I have wrinkles that means I’m alive and I think that’s good! I want to be alive.”

I thought about what she’d said the rest of that day and through the night. I thought about it as days later the two of us sat on the beach, a towel beneath us, and watched the rain as it came from both sides of the coast, barrelling towards us with a striking inevitability.

“Now this is definitely something I’ve never done before,” I said to her, as we watched everyone around us packing their belongings and rushing to the indoors. “I’ve never gone out to the beach for the rain. I’ve never sat on the beach and waited for it, willingly. I’ve never done that anywhere.”

“I know,” Mom said, her face lit up. “Isn’t it fantastic? There’s nothing better than doing things you’ve never done before.”

We sat there, together, for a long time in silence, the rain and the ocean being the only sounds for some distance. I thought about the conversations Mom and I had shared lately. The ones about her college years and her crazy jobs and the Thomas Earl’s she dated and the Bill’s her parents broke up with for her. I thought about the time I told her, for the first time, that I was smitten with a guy and the very first question she asked me: “What color are his eyes?”

I thought about how much I want to know the answers to the questions.

I’m going to make wrinkles. I’m going to live my life.

In the end, the experiences we had together, and the memories that then formed, those didn’t matter. Instead, it was the absence of memory that defined our togetherness, the things we never did together: we never kissed in the rain; we tried once, but it was only drizzling. We never spent the night together as teenagers, there never came a weekend when parents went out of town. We never had dancing lessons or took a summer art class together. Those gaps in memory are what give birth to loneliness, when all you can remember are all the things you did not do, things you only read in books or saw in movies, superimposing your faces onto perfectly framed bodies. That is love, when you only wish you had done more. It’s almost as though you feel you are forgetting something, you are forgetting that there is nothing to forget. It is something the opposite of amnesia. We are all scrambling to recover memories of lives we never led. The list goes on: we never made love in a hotel in South Carolina. We never visited the Smithsonian. We never held hands and watched fireworks on the Fourth of July. We never, we never, we never. (Bernard Hitch, 67. Excerpt from True Accounts of Love and Loss as Reported by Bethany Bailey, Special to the Tribune.) (via 52 hearts.)

“You want some wine, Kristin?” he asked me.

“You want a refill?” he asked shortly thereafter.

“Where are your cowgirl boots?” he inquired.

“Where’ve you been!? I’ve missed my girl since last week!” he begged.

A good girl friend of mine from college was in town and I was set on meeting up with her and thus set out to convince my company of 3 to head downtown with me. And they obliged.

After I reaffirmed my love for college friend Kake and all things about her, she grabbed my hand, shouted “let’s go dancing!” and set out for greater heights, our company in tow.

I stood there, breath fresh from a shot I’d just taken, Lover Boy to one side of me and Partner in Crime and beau to the other, when I felt someone poke me in the back. As I turned around, the guy next to Poker said to me, “I think we should hang out sometime.”

“Oh, um. Okay.” I said. “I’m Kristin.”

“Kristin _______,” he began. Filling in my last name. “I know,” he added.

“And how is that?” I asked him. Because really? Our town is not that small. And I am not that infamous.

“I work Here and There. I’ve gotten your drinks.” And clearly I am buying my own drinks way too often.

Following my eyes he started introducing me to his guy friends. “You look familiar,” I said to one of them.

“Yea, I work There too. That’s why I waved at you earlier,” he said to me. This too I missed.

As I compared notes with my Partner in Crime later on, recounting the words passing between the boy and me and listening to her “Lover Boy was so upset” antics I heard her say, “That’s my girl. You point and you get.” Because I had asked her who he was. Because I had seen him at Pizza Man before and said “that guy is so familiar.” Because I had seen him before his friend nudged me and I had said, “See, there he is again.”

But I don’t point and get. This isn’t duck hunt.

I told her I get over things too easily for the point and get. I am the girl that once I get someone’s interest, usually I lose interest. It’s a pattern I’ve had on repeat for years.

On Monday Stephanie Klein wrote that “the man needs to love the woman a little bit more than she loves him. It’s just the way it is. Period.” And I get that. I do. I have for so long been a member of the ‘Jennifer Aniston needs to date someone that’s not as good looking as she is so that they appreciate her’  fan club. But what I really want to know is when I’m going to get to a point when I’m impressed by a guy that’s equally impressed by me.

Everything.

Song lyrics? Check. Directions? Check. There was this one time when the cable and the internet were out at my house and I was on the phone with the roommate, who was in the car en route to a funeral, and I waxed on about how I was supposed to find the phone number to the cable company if the internet was out and therefore my laptop was of no use to me and then – oh yes! – I figured it out. Duh! I have internet on the phone.

“Or, Kristin, you could use the phone book…” she said, in that voice that lets you know she thinks you’re a real genius.

(Mind you, it took less time to find the number using google on my phone than it did flipping through the foreign pages. Don’t worry, I tested the theory.)

So today, when trying to decide what to do about the rent checks which did not make it into today’s mail, I decided to turn to google and decide if a) the mailman would be visiting us tomorrow or if he was taking a 3 day holiday as well or b) I needed to email the landlord and let him know not to expect our rent until sometime next week. (Tardy rent checks he is not unaccustomed to.)

I turned to google and I entered into the search box: “mail columbia, sc.”

I’m aware there could have been other more applicable search terms used here. For instance “post office” or “United States Postal Service.” But what’s the fun in google if you can’t expect it to do all the work for you?

And google never disappoints.

Low and behold the first search result I get is: “Exclusive: Read e-mails between Sanford, woman.”

I don’t know if this shit will ever get old.

I coordinate my dress with my mom.

I entice others to dance.

I entertain the single groomsmen.

I rock.

They roll.

I back it up.

They can’t compare.

“I think the important thing to remember is that all relationships benefit from a bit of breathing room. Especially friendships. It’s only when you find yourself without the women who understand you that you realize there are very few women who will.” megan crane, frenemies.

I remember when I was in 9th grade the boy that lived behind me started singing “why can’t we be friends… why can’t we be friends…” in an irritated and repetitive fashion right to me. And all I wanted to do was smack him upside the head. I hadn’t wanted to be friends with him for the past 2 years. And despite that we’d had to ride in the car to school and back all that time, I’d made sure were weren’t friends and that was that.

He’d hurt my feelings, he’d tested our friendship, and I was over it. And for the next 4 years we were in school together, I was over it. Every time we awkwardly ran into each other and he looked me in the eyes but didn’t say a word, I was over it.

And so when I saw him downtown Friday night and we didn’t speak all I could think was this is stupid. Treating people like they’re disposable is stupid.

***

An hour into my work day today I felt defeated. And I don’t like to be defeated. I don’t like to lose a tennis match, or even a point. I don’t like for people to just give up on me or to not care enough. Or decide I’m “a waste of energy” or someone they can just cut out and never be affected by again.

I’d probably have died if Rhett Butler had told me he didn’t give a damn.

20 minutes into this feeling (and several emails deep with the roommate validating said feeling) I had purchased a dress.

After returning from lunch I ordered 4 new books.

And since then I’ve spent some quality time purusing Sephora and speaking with my spa-employed friends about things of which I’ve all but clicked “place order” on.

And I’ve got to say, I honestly feel a little bit better.