No Regrets

Tuesday evening, Elena wanted to go look at flowers for the wedding.  Sarah and Maddie already had plans, and her parents weren’t driving in, her sister had after school activities, Jeff didn’t care about the flowers, and so that left me.  I’m kind of with Jeff on this.  I’m not really a flowers person, either.  I agreed to go, but I was dreading it deep down, although I didn’t want to admit it to Elena.  I upheld my official bridesmaid duty and went and told her what I like and didn’t like.  She ended up picking a bouquet for the girls that had a wide variety of flowers in it, but among them were stargazer lilies.  Now, I have to say, although I don’t like flowers in general, there are something about stargazer lilies that I absolutely love.  And when I see them, they relax me.  The only other flower that makes me feel that way are lilacs.  Those, however, are due to my mother having them around the house, and breathing in their aroma during the spring/summer, when the windows were open.  They take me home.  I digress...

So the bouquet she picked out was pretty, for a group of flowers.  Afterwards, we picked up food to go and went back to the apartment to eat it.  We sat around eating, watching Modern Family, and joking and laughing.  I told Elena about my trip to New York and she told me about her wedding planning.  She started talking about how blessed she was, and she started crying.  I moved over next to her and put my arm around her and we were side hugging.  She asked me how I felt about how everything happened with Zach, and where I was going with Luke.  I leaned my head down on her shoulder and sighed.

“I don’t know.  I’m devastated about Zach.  I feel so... broken.  But Elisabeth, you know, the girl who I told you about who spilled coffee on me?  One of the last things she said to me on the phone on Sunday was ‘no regrets’ and I think she’s right.  Even though my heart may not be in it completely, I think I need to keep talking to Luke for now.  There are no guarantees.”

“Have you slept with him?”

“No.  I mean, at least I’m pretty sure I haven’t.”  I felt her shift a little bit, and figured she was looking at me funny.

“Um... are you saying you couldn’t feel...”

“Oh!  No!  No.  I have no idea.  I haven’t seen... or felt... him...  Ugh... Awkward.”

“Why don’t you know, then?”

“It’s kind of a weird story...”  I told Elena all about the night with Luke, where I woke up not remembering a lot.  I sat up, to look at her as I was speaking, to gauge what she was thinking.

She frowned at me.  “That doesn’t sound like you Aleah.  How well do you know Luke?”

I shifted my eyes upward, thinking.  “For a couple of months, I think.  But he seems like a really good guy.  Why?  What are you suggesting?”

“Nothing.”  She looked like she wanted to say something, but then said closed her mouth, and opened it again to say, “I just want you to be careful is all.”

I furrowed my brow at her.  “I know.  I think you’d like Luke if you got to know him.”

She smiled weakly at me and nodded her head.  We went back to reminiscing on funny stories from our childhood and watching Modern Family.  However, what she said lit a small fire of doubt about Luke’s character.  I pushed it down and out, though, because she doesn’t know him like I do, yet.

On Wednesday, I went to my morning class, which was the first time I had seen Luke since before I left for New York.  He showed up late to class, and there were no seats by me, so he sat diagonal and to my upper left of where I was sitting. He poked my shoulder and I turned to see him holding a small piece of paper between his pointer and middle finger.  I grabbed it and opened it up slowly. In Luke’s sloppy handwriting was written:  I’ve missed your face!  In spite of being in class, and not being entirely sold on the idea of Luke, I smiled.  I turned to look at him quickly while the professor wasn’t facing the class and gave him a little grin, and he winked at me.  My heart fluttered slightly.  Oh good, I still had emotions left in me, after all!

After class Luke waited for me by the door and put his arm around me, escorting me.  We came across an empty lecture hall and he pulled me inside, shutting the door behind me.  He pushed me against the wall, pressing his body against mine.  He bent down and kissed me deeply.  While I kissed him back, his tongue felt foreign in my mouth.  It felt a little off.  It just wasn’t Zach.  I pushed the thought of Zach out of my mind and focused on Luke.  He put his hand just under my arm pit, grazing the side of my breast, and ran his hand down to my waist and let it linger there.  He pulled away quickly, smiled at me, and said, “Welcome home.”  Then he walked out the door.  I shook my head, shocked at what just happened.

I made it through the rest of the day of classes, and practice, my mind wandering as I was gearing up for my outing with Luke.  He was picking me up, and we were going to a pub to eat and have a couple of beers.  It had been chilly, so after I showered, I braided my hair and threw on skinny jeans, high heeled knee high boots, and an oversized sweater.  I heard a knock on the door and went to answer it.  Luke was standing there wearing a zip-up hoodie, jeans, and some Converses.  After I finished sizing him up, I saw he was doing the same to me.  “I feel overdressed,” I said.

“I was about to tell you I feel underdressed.”  He grinned back at me.  I shrugged my shoulders and we left.

We chatted about practices and school on the drive to the pub.  After arriving, we decided to order appetizers only, and I got a Blue Moon while he ordered a Killians.  I wrinkled my nose at him. 

“You don’t like Killians?”  He looked offended as he said this.

“Gross,” was my response.

“How was New Yahk?”  His New York fake accent was terrible.

I rolled my eyes.  “It was fun.  I got a lot of good shopping and sight-seeing done.”  I had decided already to keep my details quiet, because frankly, it was wasn’t his business, nor did I want to rehash them with him.  I quickly tried to change the subject, “How was your spring break?” 

“Oh it was good.  I got a lot of relaxing and studying done.”  He leaned back against the chair, spreading his long legs to surround me and my chair, resting one hand holding his beer, and running his hand through his hair.  “I had considered going home when you mentioned you weren’t going to be around, but using the gas wasn’t worth it.”

“I see.”  The appetizers arrived then, quickly thankfully, and we started eating.  I was so hungry due to having practiced and not eaten anything since lunch.

As I was stuffing a chip with spinach and artichoke dip on it into my mouth, Luke asked me, “I don’t want to sound all cliché and stuff, but where do you see this going?”

I tried to keep my face as neutral as possible, and slowed my chewing down, to give me more time to think of exactly what I wanted to say.  But before I could respond, he continued.  “I’m not trying to put you on the spot, but here’s what I’m thinking.  I really like you a lot.  And I know we weren’t exclusive, so whatever you’ve done up to this point, is fine.  I don’t want you to see anyone else anymore, though.  I do want to be exclusive.  I want you to myself.”  He was leaning forward at this point with a serious look on his face, and staring at me intensely.  My jaw slightly dropped as he was talking.  He was so straight-forward.

“So let me get this straight.  What you’re trying to say is you want to make this Facebook official?” I teased him and smiled.

His face relaxed.  “Yes and no.”  I tilted my head sideways and looked at him questioningly.  “I mean, yes, I want to make it official, but I’m not all about social media.  I like to keep my relationships private, so I really don’t want it ‘Facebook official’ per se.”  He used air quotes around Facebook official.  I bristled immediately.  I’m always so suspicious of people that private.

“Did you drug me when we went out before I left?”  I couldn’t help it.  Since my conversation with Elena, I needed to get it off my chest.

The smile left his face and he simply stated, “No.”  We sat there looking at each other in silence for a few minutes.  Then he said, “Why would you ask that?”

I explained to him about how I couldn’t remember anything, and that wasn’t like me.  I told him about discussing that with a couple of my friends, and how they agreed with me.  I told him I just needed to ask, if we were going to be taking our relationship to the next level, because I’m over honest and wouldn’t be able to let it go until I said it.

He sighed.  “Aleah, I did not drug you.  If I had, don’t you think I would’ve taken full advantage of you?”

“How do I know you didn’t?”

He narrowed his eyes at me and smiled widely then.  “Trust me, you’d know.”  I shook my head and rolled my eyes then.  He reached across the table and grabbed my hands.  “So what do you say?”

I took a deep breath, thinking to myself Elisabeth’s words to me:  No regrets.  I smiled tentatively, pushing the lingering thoughts and feelings of Zach to the back of my mind and said, “Well, I think you should’ve done it the right way and passed me a note in class earlier that actually said ‘Will you be my girlfriend?  Check yes or no’, but despite that missed opportunity at greatness, yes, I will be your girlfriend.”  He beamed at me then, and squeezed my hand. 

We sat around talking and joking, and having a couple more beers each.  By the time we left, it was around 11:30 p.m., and we decided to call it a night, based on having classes the next day.  We made plans to see each other briefly the following night after my practice.  He said he would make me dinner at his apartment and promised to not have a late night, since I was leaving Friday morning for Indiana and wouldn’t be back until Monday evening.