The Post I Shouldn't Publish, Part 2

You know you’d better finish the story when you get an email from your mom saying, “this is getting interesting.”

Remember when I said that if I summed up what happened next in one sentence you’d get the wrong idea? It’s true, so promise you’ll read both the following paragraph in it’s entirety!

What happened next? We slept together. BUT WAIT!!!! Not in THAT way, sillies! The beach house only had two bedrooms for the 15 people staying there. We HAD to sleep together. In fact, I slept with 7 other people that night!

oh boy, please don’t unfollow me…

You see, we all had to cram into one of two rooms. Apparently this is what they do at the shore. I wasn’t quite used to that, this was my first time visiting a shore house with friends. And before you make any connections to the MTV show “Jersey Shore”, let me assure you, it was nothing like that. Okay, well, maybe my friends had some fun stories from that summer but the weekend I was there it was nothing like that. {I promise, Mom!}

{And if you jumped to the conclusion that we did indeed do the– deed– it’s okay. Even though we didn’t, the entire guest list at our wedding thinks we did because of the way our best man described our first meeting in his toast. Great Auntie Lois probably loved that…}

So back to that night. We were all crammed into one room, and Casey and I spent the entire night talking. Actually, whispering, so as not to wake the people around us. It was amazing to get to know this guy that I’d had a crush on for so long. He really was as wonderful as I’d assumed just by our brief smiles and waves during the college years. By the time the sun came up in the morning, he’d convinced me to stay one more day instead of driving up to Boston right away. I decided to stay, I mean, my friends were still all there and I’d get to hang out with McCutie so why the rush to go home?

In my mind, I had us all going to the beach and grabbing lunch and another fun night out full of flirtation and long conversations. Here’s what really happened: he ignored me the entire day! We spent the day at the beach and getting lunch and having dinner and hanging out– but not once did he say anything more than, “want a freeze pop?”I couldn’t figure it out. Was he a player? That didn’t make sense; players don’t talk to someone all night. They hook up. We didn’t do that. So what was the deal?

That night, as 15 of us headed to bed, I watched him brush his teeth and get ready. Before I headed to the other room I gathered all my courage and said, “just wanted to say goodnight.”

That was all it took.

Instead of us each heading to different places, we sat up all night on the couch and talked again! About our jobs, our lives, our families, our dreams– and also about that day. He was totally embarrassed by it, but he had been too shy to approach me. His best friend, who oozed confidence (he was a star NCAA basketball player who now played pro basketball– he had good reason to be confident!) teased him incessantly– not because he was falling for me, but because he was too shy to even say hello.

To this day, he still jokes that if I hadn’t said “goodnight” he would have been on his way and lived with regret. To think, my whole family wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t screwed up enough courage to say that one word! I drove up to Boston the next day, lost in thought, wondering if I should let my heart fall for him. I was very careful about who I dated, who I introduced to my friends, who I kissed– should I let this boy in or let the miles do their job and keep us apart?

That’s the key word, too– kiss. That was all we did. I realize the show “Jersey Shore” and my cliffhanger ending would have you believe otherwise, but I think I knew he was “the one” when we did wayyyyyy more talking than kissing, and no more than that. That day I’d visit my family on cloud 9 (but still hesitant, I really didn’t want a broken heart) and he’d spend the next weekend making what his friends called “outrageous claims” saying he was going to marry me someday.

The next two weeks were spent in Maine and Boston with my family, but I still had that pesky drive back to North Carolina. The road home just so happened to go near Philadelphia, where McCutie lived. What to do, what to do?

The decision was almost made for me when, as I pulled into the driveway after a 6 hour drive from Maine, a skunk appeared and sprayed my car and our family beagle with the pungent scent of– well, skunk. I could not believe it. I was going to visit this adorable guy smelling like SKUNK!

The next part of our journey involves a skunk, a migraine, and Ellios frozen pizza. But, that’s a story for another day. 😉

{Find Part Three Here}