proceeding with caution

Around 11 on Sunday morning (after the cuz's house party) I managed to pull myself together and get of bed, what with having a brunch date with Megan at the local -- or rather, at Celtic Crossing, which we've dubbed "the local," being the Irish and English wannabes that we are -- at noon and needing to get showered and presentable before then. A girl's gotta earn those free mimosas, people.

On the way home from the party the night before, Lindsey and I had an intense, very drunk, exceedingly Bridget Jones-esque conversation about how long one should wait before friending someone on Facebook. (Bitch, all these RULES!) Of course, I suppose it isn't really how long one should wait, but how long girls should wait, since the act of the friend request seems to resemble a virtual first move. We tentatively decided that if I was going to make the first Facebook move, it needed to wait at least 36 hours.

Luckily, I didn't have to wait or make the move, since I had a friend request waiting for me from Mr. Risky Business when I woke up Sunday morning.

Whew. One hurdle down.

Sunday night, the first Facebook message arrives in my inbox, and by the time I leave work on Tuesday we've got a thread of messages so long it could stretch from here to Mexico. There's flirtation, there's lots of music talk, it's good. And then.

And then.

I'm out Tuesday evening at a Vagina Monologues rehearsal, and when I come home there's an e-mail from Mr. Risky Business. It's a 180 from the tone of our previous messages, but its sentiments weren't entirely surprising to me. Basically, he said that things are still fresh and that the he was going to be giving me a little more space. Maybe in a few months, when things are more settled, we could see what happens. In the meantime, just friends.

And it was disappointing, but I understood. I mean, I don't understand, and I sincerely hope I never will. But I can extrapolate, based on my own past hurts and heartaches, that the recovery time on something like that is going to be fairly extensive. And healing is important, and I respect that, which is pretty much what I told him in my response to his e-mail. Disappointing, but copasetic. And with a hint of hopeful optimism for that "maybe in a few months" idea.

Only, it doesn't end there. Because by Wednesday afternoon, we were chatting online again off and on. And by Thursday, it was almost constant. And Thursday night -- when the idea of space was squashed once and for all when we coincidentally had meetings in the same place at the same time and the sexual tension was so thick you could've drowned in it like quicksand, consequently causing a level of awkwardness that frankly has been unprecedented, even in my storied career of awkward -- I had an inkling that we weren't going to be just friends.


cheers,
elizabeth