Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there lived a very single princess and her new bestie the Fairy GodKat...

So I'm at dinner with my friends Kat and Shannon one night. We had gone out too spend way too much on a nice dinner before meeting up with some of their college friends that were in Tuscaloosa for the Avett Bros concert. At some point during dinner, someone named "Ruggles" came up. Both Kat and Shannon continually talked about how incredible he was; specifically, how funny he was. Bingo. So finally, I interrupted their little lovefest to say, "Okay, so who is this guy? Is he single? Is he good looking?" They assured me he was single but warned me that he was very, very tall... little did they know, they were singing my song-- if you know me, you're surely aware of my Tall Men Fetish.

After something like five Shirley Temples, I excused myself to go to the restroom (you may have read my blog that reviewed the public restroom-- this is then). When I came back, I could almost literally see the lightbulbs above each of their heads. Apparently, they had taken advantage of my absence to discuss the pros and cons of a Hays-Ruggles union. Evidently, the pros outweighed the cons because they were in full matchmaking mode by the time I had sad back down and requested another Shirley Temple. After multiple harassing text messages to this mystery man, we met and chatted in a booth upstairs at the Grey Lady. Later that night, when we had all gone our separate ways, Katherine decided to play Cupid: Alex and I have since pieced together that she was totally playing both of us, telling each of us "She/he thinks you're totally cute" when neither of us had in fact come out and said anything about the other. Hence, the Fairy GodKat.

Two weekends later, UA had their annual A-Day celebration, and, like any good alum, Alex and his friends came back to Tuscaloosa to tailgate and cheer on the Tide, or whatever you do at an A-Day game. And wouldn't you know, he invited me to his tailgate. By now, the jig was up. Quite a few people-- myself included, Alex notably excluded-- were onto Kat's matchmaking ideas, and Alex and I were watched by many amused and excited friends. Honestly, I've never felt so much on trial. He is dearly loved by his friends, and I was clearly auditioning for a highly lauded position in this little friend circle I had found myself in. I was even more awkward than normal, if you can imagine, knowing I was being watched and all. Meanwhile, Alex played right into the hands of his scheming friends as he was time and again placed next to me at dinner, after dinner, and so on. I blushed and avoided eye contact and fiddled with my hands and whatnot. In what I now know is just typical Alex style, he moved through the weekend totally oblivious.

Sunday I got a Facebook message from Alex giving me his number. Just call him Rico Suave. 

That week he called me on a Wednesday night to ask me to come celebrate his birthday with he and his friends. What should have been a five-minute conversation quickly turned into laying in my floor attached to my phone charger until 1 am. 

On Easter Sunday, I got a text message from him asking if I wanted to have dinner on my way back to Tuscaloosa that night-- Prince Charming strikes again. Despite his less-than-romantic approach-- he has been properly scorned now, obviously-- I agreed to dinner and met him at The Purple Onion in Birmingham. Once again, a would-be quick dinner on the road turned into a 4-hour chatfest over Greek food. Now, this all seemed very promising until Alex dropped this closing line on me, "Welp, let me know if you're ever in Birmingham again." Say what??

Obviously, I called Kat in a tizzy, desperately trying to put the pieces together of what on Earth had just happened to me. 

The next day-- what we now call The Day of the Truth Bombs, a day that will live in infamy-- Alex called me on his way home from work to lay some truth on me: namely that we lived in two separate cities, had both gotten out of relationships recently, and quite frankly just didn't know each other that well, so we needed to take things slowly. I took all this in and willed myself not to freak out. It took me a few hours of analyzing before I was enormously offended, "Wait just one second, if he felt like he needed to tell me we had to go slow, did he think I wanted to go fast?" So obviously I sent him a lengthy text to tell him that if he thought for one second that I was the one pursuing this relationship, he had another thing coming... and so on. I can be quite the charmer myself when my sensibilities are affronted. He called back directly, and we talked it out... Well, it's really more accurate to say that I talked it out, as I had come up with quite a few things to send his way since our initial conversation that afternoon when he called to "set me straight."

Then the tornado hit and missed me by about 100 yards. Alex is one of the people I was talking to while I pleaded with God for my life in my shaking closet. Maybe that's when I realized that he wasn't just someone that wrote me funny text messages from time to time. I'm not really sure. I just know that there was much to smile about that afternoon other than the comic relief he sent my way.

The weekend after Cinco de Mayo, I went over to Alex's apartment on Sunday before lunch. We had lunch with some of his friends before they went somewhere-- where they went to escapes me now-- and then went back to his apartment. For eight hours-- EIGHT-- we sat on his couch and talked. No TV, no music, no movies: just eight hours of talking from end to end of the couch... sometimes about TV and music and movies, sometimes about Alabama and Auburn (although it didn't take us long to determine that's a seriously taboo subject), and, about 7 hours in when the conversation hit something of a lull at long last, he asked me for my testimony. You know, just everyday stuff. Ha.

A week or so later, I went to Italy with my mom. Italy's kind of a big deal, but it was an even bigger deal to have an email from Alex waiting for me when I got back to the hotel. I kicked myself repeatedly for being "that girl." Nobody likes or respects "that girl." Weeks later, I still don't like it. But everything he wrote made me laugh, and by the end of the trip I had to admit that I kind of missed him. That was one of those odd defining moments, a mix between excitement and, "Here we go again..." I may have mentioned before that I don't love to not be in total control of my life, and here I was on the other side of the world and this boy I had barely known for a month was having a serious impact on my feelings. Gross.

The day after I got home from Italy, I went to Alex's apartment to watch Gladiator-- something about the Coliseum lit a fire in my life to see that movie, duh. Somewhere in the night he passed me a note that said, "Will you be my girlfriend? [  ] Yes, [  ] No, [   ] Maybe. Not wanting to seem too available, I let the pen float over Maybe for a minute. Gotta keep 'em on their toes, you know.

And that's that... the story of us, or what have you. I wouldn't say this 'Once upon a time' merits a '...happily ever after,' but I think it's worth a solid, 'To be continued.'