Riding in Cars with Boys

I have the house to myself tonight. At first I was going to call one of the girls and get them over, but then I reconsidered in favour of some me time. I cooked, while listening to Patsy Cline and The Rat Pack. Later, I will watch Big Brother. If I had Doritos, they too would be involved in the plan.

This morning, I got up, went downstairs and put on some tea. I went into the conservatory and moved a photo album to sit down. My niece had been flipping through it the night before while we had our hair cut. (We have family sessions with a stylist who is friends with my sister.) I turned to the pictures at the back of the album while the kettle boiled. Alfie. I had already begun to think about the fact that it had been a month since I heard from him, and that I was going to have to emerge from beneath his spell. I kind of gave myself until today to stop wallowing, since it was meant to be the night out with 'Muffin and I thought it would be an appropriate bookend to the whole thing. I looked at a picture of Alfie and thought... well, you weren't what I expected you to be.

I finished making my tea and took it upstairs. I set up my laptop and checked my emails, including my work emails out of habit. A few times I have caught myself thinking: please, please, please while doing this. (Hey, I'm not proud of the fact!) But not this morning. And then, before I knew it, I was opening a message from Alfie: "Hello there, it's been a bit quiet from you lately. How's tricks?" he sent it around 9 in the morning. I waited until around lunch time to reply. This gave me plenty of time to text my sister and freak out. She offered me some firm advice: email him back but don't be over friendly and don't mention his birthday x let's know x

Anyway, in short, we had a tiny bit of banter, then he said he was off to lunch and told me to have a nice weekend and tell the sis the clit tease says yo. He has a real way with words :P The highlight of the emails was probably when I asked him how he was settling into his new workplace:

Chica: Walking round like you own the joint by now then yeah? ;)
Alfie: What dya mean, "like i own the joint". I do ;-) Alfie is in town

I've not let myself get too excited about it, but I am pleased he got in touch and it wasn't awkward. I think this makes it acceptable for me to text him sometime, maybe just forward a joke on to him or something, to keep the lines of communication open. Not with any goal in sight, but just because I like him and would like to try and be normal around him and treat him like my other male friends if possible. I was thinking the other day about how crazy I let myself get over him and how a lot of it was really unnecessary. If I text Mybug and he doesn't reply, it doesn't bother me in the least. I don't have a crisis and think he hates me. But I totally over analyse everything with Alfie, and it has to stop if I want any kind of shot at getting through this without a broken heart and/or a restraining order. Even if I never hear from him again, I think I've come off quite good. I held out for ages and didn't contact him; he contacted me; I was friendly but not overly flirty; a kind of friendly stalemate has been resumed. Now, if I bump into him I won't be thinking: oh my god I want to die this is the guy who rejected me, and he won't be thinking, oh fuck how awkward.

I'm sure this isn't the last loop of the roller coaster, but for now I'm quite content with things. My sister popped in before Dedalus picked me up and couldn't stop laughing at me. She kept saying: look at your face, you're smiling now!

Oh, Dedalus is another matter. Bobby was excellent, the ending was particularly well done, and the approach was really interesting and not at all what I expected. After the film, Dedalus gave me a ride home because we went to a cinema close to where I live. Since there was nobody home, I invited him in for a cuppa. And he freaked out. It was like he panicked, eventually declining the offer. Then he started to explain why and cut himself short and said to leave it. I was like, "Erm... okay." I was offering the guy tea not permission to ransack my body. He asked what my plans were for the weekend so I gave him a brief overview and then we said goodbye.

I let myself in and had a little chat with 'Muffin on MSN. Then the phone rang. It was Dedalus, apologising for not coming in. I told him not to worry and that I wasn't offended. He said he wished he had. I was like, "Well... no worries. I just thought we could have a chat 'cos we didn't get much chance to while we were watching the film." He agreed, then started going on about how he likes me, and even though he said it was his exes fault we'd stopped talking, it was also because he liked me and I was always with the Boyf. I said, "And I still am." He said things hadn't changed for him. I said, "Well it was all a long time ago." He repeated that things hadn't changed for him! I said, "It was two years ago! This is really hard to talk about not in person." He agreed. He asked if he could see me over the weekend, and I said I wasn't sure of my plans but I'd let him know if I was in town and we could meet up if he was free. We stumbled over a couple more niceties and hung up. He's text me since. I really wish he wouldn't force this issue because I really want to be friends but if he's going to be saying stuff like that I'm not sure we can. Plus, this totally smacks of rebound to me.

In the words of Avril Lavigne: why d'you have to go and make things so complicated?