This semester, I’ve been embracing all kinds of adventures and new experiences. I’m doing it for the plot! Almost every new opportunity or experience that I get offered or think of, I force myself to say yes to. Sometimes it can be a bit daunting, but I have felt myself begin to open up to a lot of new activities and ideas. However, in my quest of thickening the plot, I may have made it a bit too thick.
I recently got a new job and a few days into my training, the girl who was training me asked if I had a boyfriend. Assuming she was making small talk, I said no and mentioned I have bad luck with guys. She took this as an opportunity to give me a sales pitch on her younger brother. The brother in question was about two years older than me, blue collar, gym rat, dating for marriage—basically checking off all my boxes. She showed me a picture of him, and I couldn’t really tell if he was cute or not so I said yes anyway and figured that worse comes to worse, I’ll just have a friend or a good story.
She sent him my number and he didn’t text me for about two days. Possibly the first red flag. My coworker said he just hadn’t texted because he had been looking at cars, which didn’t really add up in my brain because sending one text takes all of one minute. I ignored that and figured maybe he didn’t really want to get set up. Eventually, he did text me and the first few exchanges were awkward (but that’s to be expected).
We got to chatting about music which seemed to be the icebreaker for both of us. Conversation flowed a lot easier after that and we made plans to hang out at the beach. I was a little nervous about him picking me up because it’s a bit of a drive out to the beach, and if for some reason we didn’t get along, I was worried it would be weird. Luckily, it went well, and we kept conversation going the whole time in the car and at the beach. We talked a lot about life, jobs, and school, and I got home feeling like it had gone decently well.
On the contrary, there were two big drawbacks that were floating around in my mind. The first and less important was that he wasn’t really my type physically. He had pretty eyes and nice tattoos, though, which is honestly good enough for me to look past him not being my usual type. Secondly, he wasn’t as into cars as I am. At first, he made it seem like he was, but I got the sense he was playing into it just to impress me by talking about how he wanted a Hellcat. Once he heard me talk about cars, it seemed like he realized he had bitten off more than he could chew and admitted he wasn’t really that into cars. I didn’t want to annoy him with it, of course, so we mostly just didn’t talk about it, until he was dropping me off and wanted to hear my car. I took him for a quick spin in my car and to be honest, I think this is what dug my grave. I got the feeling that I might have accidentally emasculated him (unfortunately, not the first time this has happened).
After the date, we kept Snapchatting and texting a bit. I forgot to reply to one of his texts at one point because I had a long day with work and school, and when I did reply, I relayed that information and apologized. He didn’t respond for a day, so I thought maybe he was busy or being a little petty. Then he didn’t respond for two days, then it was three days, then it was four days. He had kept Snapchatting me during this time so I didn’t think he was trying to ghost me, per se.
I talked to my mom about it and explained to her that the date hadn’t gone well enough for me to be upset and hurt by him not texting back, but it didn’t go horribly enough that I expected to get ghosted. She and I decided maybe he hadn’t seen my text at all. So I sent him a message on Snapchat about it and he confirmed that he had not, in fact, seen my text. He texted me back, I texted back, and we exchanged maybe all of four texts before he didn’t respond again (but he did Snap me).
Okay! Well, that solidified my working hypothesis that he wasn’t really digging me very much. Honestly, that was fine by me. He was cool, and I would have hung out with him again, but I wasn’t vying to see him every day.
It did make work slightly awkward for me. His older sister is pretty much my boss, and I’m sure she knows about it, so it’s been a bit weird. She and I don’t really talk much because I’m not in training anymore, and it definitely feels like there’s an elephant in the room. Personally, it doesn’t bother me at all. Her brother is the one who stopped talking to me; I just ended it by not continuing to Snapchat him. It ended a bit strangely, honestly, but I suppose it could have been worse. Just another oddball story in the books!