Attempt #2

Another failed attempt at trying to tell my mom about Scott and he was becoming impatient. To quote him, "That's fucking bullshit." I was on the phone with her and the conversation just wasn't going anywhere where I could introduce him. He had even gone so far as to talk to me while I was on the phone with her so she could hear his male presence in my apartment.

Now we were sitting by my pool after work with a cooler full of beer and my pink cellphone in hand. "Will you just call her and tell her?"

"I have to. If she ever found out that my father is meeting you before she even knew you existed, her feelings would be so hurt." My father called minutes ago to expressly invite Scott and me to dinner Saturday night. I begged off the phone without responding and told Scott about the invite. Scott agreed to go and it caught me off guard. I guess it made sense seeing as how I'm meeting his parents the next day.

I chewed on my lip, "I feel like I missed my window to tell her and now it's awkwardly late."

"It is," he helped.

I groaned and dialed her number. Once again, the conversation wasn't going anywhere where I had an in. I had to force one.

"What are you doing for dinner?" she asked.

"I don't know, I'm sure Scott will cook something," I cringed.

"Who's Scott?"

"This guy I've been seeing for a little while."

My mother, having not heard me mention a boy's name in two years, got extraordinarily excited. "Oh!" she breathed, "Is he there now?"

"Yup."

"Well let me get off the phone with you, then. You have a nice time. Bye!"

That was a whole lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I jumped in the pool, "Baby, I did it!"

"Wait. Your mom didn't know you two are seeing each other?" asked my neighbor.

Scott leaned over my empty lounge chair, "I know, right?"

I swam to the steps. "How long have you been seeing each other?" he asked.

Scott looked at me, his face scrunched up. He didn't know. I did because I opened a calendar up the previous day after I love you to do the math. But if he didn't know, I wasn't going to admit it, "I don't know, a couple of months?"

"That's it?" said my neighbor, shocked. "But you guys act like you're practically married!"

"Blech," I made the obligatory face. I got up out of the pool and wrapped my towel around me. Scott got up to go to the bathroom.

"So has he told you he loves you yet?" my neighbor pried.

"No," I ended kind of high pitched, sounding like "noooooooo?" I mean, he hasn't expressly told me.

"It's coming," he offered. "Will you be the first to say it?"

"Hell no!" I laughed.

"It's coming," he repeated. "It's coming soon."

***

Scott pulled a beer out of the fridge and returned to the couch. He then lifted my skirt and thrusted the cold can against my thigh.

"Be nice to me! You like me!" I yelped.

"I love you and I am nice to you," he retorted.

So... the second time and it can't be an accident. Once again I glossed over it by extending my giggle. If he came out and said it, I would respond, but I don't know how to handle him slipping it in midsentence.

Mike told me that with relationship stuff, I need to have just one or two confidants. Unwittingly, that advice made him one. This morning I shot my friend an e-mail about the incidents.

He responded:

First of all, you are in the big leagues now, so this "pretending it didn't happen" thing has to go. Obviously, if he is inviting you to meet his family, he thinks the world of you. That rite of passage means, "she's in my life. Please include her if you include me in something. You will be seeing a lot more of her, and I want you to be comfortable". So, he's playing to win. It sounds like your shields are still up on this whole relationship thing. I think you might need to have another sit down with him, and really discuss how you feel about things, and where you want to be in your life. And how that when you heard him say "the phrase that pays" (and in his case, it paid well), you really want him to know how seriously you take that. If you are still doing this "pretend it didn't happen" thing, that tells me that maybe you aren't really sure where he is at emotionally, and you aren't really too sure of how you feel about things either. This is one of those situations that you really have to be engaged emotionally, or it isn’t going to work. Think of driving a car. You get on the road, you line up the steering wheel so that the car is going straight, you put on the cruise control and you take a nap. Relationships are the same way. It doesn't work if you try this cruise control thing. There are many minuscule imperfections in any road, and you need your hands on the wheel so you know where you are going, or eventually your relationship is going to go off a cliff.

And he put me in my place.

I do wonder how often Scott has said it to other women. I guess it doesn't matter as long as his feelings for me are genuine. But if he's said it flippantly in the past, it could indicate that he's not as serious as I am about the "phrase that pays."

And where do I stand? I'm not entirely sure. I've written about my stance on love before:

What chance is there for me, someone who is wandering through life, not really feeling anything for anybody? I'm not even sure I believe in love. I've never been around it: my parents divorced when I was very young and I don't remember anything but them fighting, my mother remarried someone she didn't love just to give us a father figure, my father remarried his mistress and the first time he even told me he loved her was last month... and they've been married 17 years. I've never even had a roommate who was in a relationship. I've never seen it: love in action. The only things I know of love I've learned from sitcoms and movies, and let's face it, that isn't love.

I'm not sure what love is and what it's supposed to feel like. I've read before that a lot of people confuse love with infatuation. That people who think they're in love are actually heady on whatever chemicals are released when they're in lust. And the lust wears off around the three month mark, these couples who thought they were going to make it, didn't.

I've actually declared my love twice, but in hindsight, I think I only meant it once. The second relationship just seemed too convenient. I've been thinking back to the one time I did mean it and what that felt like. Scott reminds me a lot of that guy. How I felt with my first love is very similar to how I feel now.

I find myself wanting to say it. When he called me during his lunch break today, I opened my mouth to tell him, but then paused and closed it again. He's slipping it in other conversations; I would just be putting it out there. Do I really mean it, or am I just caught up with him saying it? Does he mean it?

Does he realize what he's doing to me?