making the commitment of a one-on-one dinner with Zack until a week or two or three down the road; until the point at which I might be certain that Dustin represented my past and Zack was my future.
The second time, though, right around 3:00 that afternoon, I was prepared with a text message-sized version of how I was really feeling, punctuated by “let’s talk Monday.” But either way, I was so ready to back out of the dinner and slow things down.
But I didn’t. It all came down to one simple fact: I wanted to have dinner with Zack tonight, and the thought of backing out despite the conflicted emotions racing through me made me... sad, I guess. The thought of not sitting across the table from Zack tonight, sipping wine and sharing a delicious meal and getting to know each other better, was simply not one I wanted to contemplate.
And so I did my best throughout that Saturday to forget about my nervousness and disquieting emotions. I went down to my gym and did two circuits through the machines. I thought about going over to Rodeo Drive to see if I could find something new to wear tonight, but instead decided while I was still a little bit sweaty to go for a quick two-mile run. I finished my run right around 3:00, the same time that I came so close to texting Zack that I had changed my mind about tonight; my mind had apparently been whispering to me the whole time I was running that this date wasn’t a good idea.
After I talked myself into not canceling, I decided to do a little bit of work to get ahead of what was waiting for us on Monday morning... plus to try to force my thoughts away from Zack and dinner at Vivant for at least a little while. I was almost certain another wave of indecision about tonight was just about to wash over me; but whereas canceling on Zack at 10:00 in the morning or even 3:00 in the afternoon wasn’t necessarily a deal-breaker for something happening later on with us, doing so at 5:00 might well be.
I was also getting angry with Kensington for still not being available to talk this whole thing through. I had texted her a couple of times earlier in the day and called her twice as well, but no return texts or calls. Finally around 4:30 my phone dinged and I picked it up, and seeing on the alert screen that Kensie had at last texted me back, I thumbed to the messages to read:
Call u in 5 sorry
Realizing that I needed to start getting ready soon I texted her back:
Ok but only have couple min getting ready soon
Sure enough, five minutes later my phone rang and I quickly answered. Kensie started by apologizing profusely for not only not getting back to me last night but for going dark all day today. My irritation vanished when she said that the reason had to do with her younger brother, the one who was a sophomore at UCLA and had been having trouble with an oxy addiction for the past three years.
“Mom called me late yesterday afternoon to say that they went to Jeff’s apartment and made him take a drug test and he showed up positive,” she said somberly. “She was crying and wanted me to go talk to him and try to convince him to go back into rehab, that since the fall quarter hadn’t started yet he could withdraw before classes began and then pick up again in the winter quarter after Christmas. I went there last night and he wasn’t there so I went back this morning and have been there with Mom all day, we just left.”
Kensington continued for another couple minutes with an abridged update of her brother’s situation. The story was one I already knew from what she had told me when she, I, and Courtney had all met and were getting to know all about one another and our families. Fortunately in my family neither Lauren nor myself had ever had any problems with drugs – just a little bit of experimenting with weed for both of us in high school and college, but neither of us was really into using it other than at the occasional party – and of my friends in high school and college,
The second time, though, right around 3:00 that afternoon, I was prepared with a text message-sized version of how I was really feeling, punctuated by “let’s talk Monday.” But either way, I was so ready to back out of the dinner and slow things down.
But I didn’t. It all came down to one simple fact: I wanted to have dinner with Zack tonight, and the thought of backing out despite the conflicted emotions racing through me made me... sad, I guess. The thought of not sitting across the table from Zack tonight, sipping wine and sharing a delicious meal and getting to know each other better, was simply not one I wanted to contemplate.
And so I did my best throughout that Saturday to forget about my nervousness and disquieting emotions. I went down to my gym and did two circuits through the machines. I thought about going over to Rodeo Drive to see if I could find something new to wear tonight, but instead decided while I was still a little bit sweaty to go for a quick two-mile run. I finished my run right around 3:00, the same time that I came so close to texting Zack that I had changed my mind about tonight; my mind had apparently been whispering to me the whole time I was running that this date wasn’t a good idea.
After I talked myself into not canceling, I decided to do a little bit of work to get ahead of what was waiting for us on Monday morning... plus to try to force my thoughts away from Zack and dinner at Vivant for at least a little while. I was almost certain another wave of indecision about tonight was just about to wash over me; but whereas canceling on Zack at 10:00 in the morning or even 3:00 in the afternoon wasn’t necessarily a deal-breaker for something happening later on with us, doing so at 5:00 might well be.
I was also getting angry with Kensington for still not being available to talk this whole thing through. I had texted her a couple of times earlier in the day and called her twice as well, but no return texts or calls. Finally around 4:30 my phone dinged and I picked it up, and seeing on the alert screen that Kensie had at last texted me back, I thumbed to the messages to read:
Call u in 5 sorry
Realizing that I needed to start getting ready soon I texted her back:
Ok but only have couple min getting ready soon
Sure enough, five minutes later my phone rang and I quickly answered. Kensie started by apologizing profusely for not only not getting back to me last night but for going dark all day today. My irritation vanished when she said that the reason had to do with her younger brother, the one who was a sophomore at UCLA and had been having trouble with an oxy addiction for the past three years.
“Mom called me late yesterday afternoon to say that they went to Jeff’s apartment and made him take a drug test and he showed up positive,” she said somberly. “She was crying and wanted me to go talk to him and try to convince him to go back into rehab, that since the fall quarter hadn’t started yet he could withdraw before classes began and then pick up again in the winter quarter after Christmas. I went there last night and he wasn’t there so I went back this morning and have been there with Mom all day, we just left.”
Kensington continued for another couple minutes with an abridged update of her brother’s situation. The story was one I already knew from what she had told me when she, I, and Courtney had all met and were getting to know all about one another and our families. Fortunately in my family neither Lauren nor myself had ever had any problems with drugs – just a little bit of experimenting with weed for both of us in high school and college, but neither of us was really into using it other than at the occasional party – and of my friends in high school and college,
Similar Books
