Okay, so my ex said yes to coffee in Denver. (See last week’s post if you want the background.) I emailed Sunday night and he wanted to meet Monday. Um. Sure. I could get it over with.
What did I really want in meeting Evan?
The last time I’d met an ex who’d dumped me was thirty years ago. By then, a year had passed and I was in another relationship. Coffee was closure and it was an easy process. Within five minutes, I was bored with the conversation, I realized we didn’t have much in common and I felt no more need to look back on what could’ve been. It was never going to work out.
Truth? I kinda love the band.
With Evan though, I’d had decades of dating behind me. I’d fallen in and out of love with others. I’d learned a few things about what made relationships work or fall apart. I’d really felt we had a good shot of going the distance. Still, I couldn’t shake the look on his face when we’d FaceTimed a week after he ended things. It said, “I would rather be anywhere but in this moment.” Prison in Siberia. In line for the guillotine in an unfortunate time travel episode. Nickelback concert. Would coffee be punishment for both of us?
And yet…
He’d started texting me twenty minutes after I emailed. It was textbook texting for Evan, a rapid-fire series of short statements.
Thanks for reaching out
I’ve missed you so much
Think about you every day
The eagerness was disarming. How was this the same man who had so quickly dropped me like I was a handkerchief infested with COVID, avian flu and cooties?
When he suggested his place instead of a café, it felt too intimate for a closure conversation. Having some couple sitting beside us, rehashing the plot of Wicked seemed like the protection I needed so I wouldn’t cry into my hoodie and he wouldn’t suddenly snap back to February 2024, remembering all the reasons I’d seemed unworthy. Clutching a warm oat latte in a hipster café seemed safer, saner.
But, no, I drove to his place which was itself a strange experience. Technically, I saw it back in February. I was there ten minutes, walking around stunned as he gave me a tour that seemed utterly pointless since he’d ended things in the car ride from Union Station. I could process nothing other than things were OVER and I needed to find a hotel for the night.
Adding to the strangeness this time was the fact I had my sister’s very hyper dog with me and my first actions involved following her own thorough inspection of the place, sniffing everything, seeking socks, shoes or basically anything to put in her mouth, a wet, slobbery way of staking claim.
Somewhere in the midst of me playing Follow the Dog, Evan and I hugged. Long, tight…that kind of don’t-let-go gesture ruined by the fact the dog had discovered the roll of toilet paper in the bathroom.
Evan and I talked, we teared up, we kissed.
Wait. What? Kissing was not in my mental flow chart of possibilities for how our conversation would go.
He was clear about wanting me in his life. It sounded like he was proposing something on the friendship path. And I knew I didn’t want that. I don’t kiss friends on the lips. Certainly not the way we were kissing. I couldn’t redefine us, going from my partner for life to a buddy I hiked with when I occasionally ended up in Colorado.
We continued talking…and kissing until I had to leave. Being mid-December, darkness loomed and I had to get back to my sister’s mini ranch with the three horses that needed attending to. I wanted to make the drive in daylight because the “highway” to her place was basically a curvy roller coaster track without the loop-de-loop. (Plus, as it turned out, there was considerable snow coming down within thirty minutes of her place.)
I was in the area for two weeks. We’d have time to see each other again. Maybe we’d even figure out what, if anything, we might be to one another again.
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