
Caution, this is kind of long, and I'm tellin' my draws (as my Grandmother would say)
Okay so as usual, I'm sitting at my desk, madder than snot, that we're at work on what seemed like one of the coldest days in NC. I'm all bundled up...everything short of a snowsuit, and he walks in.
At first, my mouth just drops open, and I initially run around my desk to hug him. Then I stopped, barely a foot away from his outstretched arms, and put my hand out to shake his...
"Well well well, look what the wind blew in. How ya BEEN?"
He grabs my hand and pulls me in, and hugs me anyway. "I'm good. Better now that I see a familiar and friendly face. How have YOU been, Sweetness".
I hated when he called me that. Made me feel so dayum vulnerable.
So I pull away and start asking him 101 questions. Stuff like
What brings you here?
How's your wife?
Where's your wife?
You're not stationed here, are you? (had he been, I was driving to Quantico VA to GET me some orders!)
How long are you suppose to be here?
Couldn't you take this class at YOUR duty station?
(Why do I feel my stomach doing flipflops?)
(Why am I shaking?)
(Why does he still wear that cologne?)
(Is it fresh?)
(Doesn't he know it still drives me insane?)
How are your kids?
Do you and your wife have any together yet?
When are you leaving?
Do you have orders?
Are you leaving soon?
(Is that dog tag tattoo still on the left side of his chest at the bottom of his rib cage?)
(Does he have to keep smiling at me like that?)
So he says "I'll be here for a month, so we have plenty of time to catch up".
*wondering what his version of catching up meant*
I've got Marines doing everything short of moonwalking past my office because they're trying to see who this man is in my office. As much as I wanted to close the door, I couldn't.
Someone would've had my Husband on the satellite phone in a New York minute. LoL
So we sat and talked. He told me about getting shot in Iraq. That still weirds me out. I always had a child-like sense of awe when it came to this man. I always figured that as much as he had been through (i.e., Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and Operation Iraqi Freedom), he could get through anything unscathed.
Then he told me how he and his wife had a baby. It was a girl (the first girl for the both of them), and he was truly devastated when they lost her. Imagine how foolish I felt when I asked to see a picture of her before I realized he said it was a girl. From there, they have just been "existing" as a married couple, so he said. We sat and talked so long that I didn't realize that it was past time to leave...and believe me when I say that you're normally looking at the back of my truck at 1631. I'm just not one of those bosses who believes in keeping folks at work when we really have nothing to do.
A few days later, I get a Yahoo Messenger message from him (dayum. forgot i gave him that), asking about what kind of night life did we have here....in this all but one horse town. Now me in my infinite wisdom, told this man that I barely lived 2 miles from the club.
He did the dayum math, and showed up in front of my house!
Well duuuuuh Tiki! There's only one housing subdivision going west of the club. A big a$$ chromed out Yukon isn't that hard to find in our neighborhood. Okay, so I did plan on going out with a couple of my girls just to drink and cackle and whatnot....but I curse the day that one of them called at the last minute to say she wasn't feeling good. I told him not to make a habit of that...make that his last trip in my neighborhood, let alone my house.
Conspiracy?
I think very deeply.
Okay, so I stopped being so standoff'ish and me and my girl follow them there. I see a few friends and hop at the chance to dance with them and socialize. I just knew Razor was waiting to catch me for a slow song. Now mind you, one of my friends, "Mack" (about the only man D doesn't mind calling the house all the time) is gay as the day is long. The fact that we were dancing like a high school chaperone was standing between us, didn't help any. Well, he was the only man in the I could stand that close to...and not get a reaction from. *shrugging*
I turn to walk off the floor as soon as Vivian Greene's CURSED starts to play...
And I'll be dayumed if Razor didn't reach me before I made it to the table.
Ohhhhhh nooo.
That heffa said "You were my love, you were my first".... and Razor was indeed the first in alot of things I learned. Then this wench said "I was too serious, you wanted to have fun". She was singing everything I felt back in the day.
I wanted the dancefloor to open up and swallow me.
Razor messed with me, mentally, far more than the old flame from Poetry Night.
I said "Razor, I can't do this, so let's stop, alright?"
He hugged me, rested his chin on the top of my head...like he use to do...and I thought I was about to start swinging because...I wasn't in control.
My friend met me at the edge of the dancefloor and said "Bathroom. Now". And me, like a puppy, followed. I walked in the bathroom saying "Girl, I'on know what happened to me out there"...kinda sparing myself the "WTH IS WRONG WITH YOU?" question. It didn't work. She started nailing me. "GOT'DAYUM GIRL! You still feelin' him ain't you! You let him get to you girl, and he KNOWS it! D isn't neglecting you! He's in phucking harms way, Tiki!"
*sigh* like I wasn't thinking that the whole time I was dancing with him, right?
I got read the riot act, and I couldn't do anything but stand there and take it. She was right about everything she yelled at me. I love the girl, but I swear I wanted to slap her when she shook me. I ain't need to be snapped out of anything. Hell, it felt weird knowing that not only had those old feelings resurfaced with a vengance in a matter of a couple of minutes on the dancefloor. but I felt guilty as sin, thinking of someone else they way I would think of my husband.
I need some closure in the worst way. Funny. I thought my marriage was all the closure I needed.
I need to sit down and write a letter. I can't leave this open for any kind of interpretation.
Double dayum.