the fool

The winter melted away, and I prepared for a summer in the Rockies.  My job ended in early June, and I had time to kill before starting a teaching position in September.  I spent most of my time hiking, going to free concerts, and reading by the river.

Out of the blue, Amy texted me to ask if I would ever consider giving Kurt (see “The One Who Got Away”) a second chance, assuming of course that he would apologize extensively for messing up.  I was puzzled, but said yes.  How could I not?  She explained that he had been talking to a mutual friend about me and his regrets for what had happened.  The x-girlfriend was supposedly now the past, and he was wondering if he could have another chance with me.  I tried not to take this too seriously, but despite myself all the dormant feelings began to bubble back up to the surface. 

One day, Amy and I went on a hike on the day of another friend’s party, also a friend of Kurt’s.  Amy's boyfriend called to ask if I was going to the party because Kurt wanted to know.  I couldn’t quiet the butterflies that started frantically batting their wings about in my stomach.  Before the party, I got a haircut and put on my most killer, curve-flattering summer dress.  It was a while before he showed up with a group of friends on bikes.  We smiled at each other but didn’t start talking right away.  I figured he owed me the first move.  From a distance, I noticed him talking a lot with a pretty blond girl that had arrived with his group of friends.  At one point when she was elsewhere I went over to talk to him.  He said something nice about the job I had gotten, and we chatted about how things were going.  But the conversation faltered, and we drifted off.  Later on, I saw him talking with the pretty blond for a long time in the candlelight.  They looked so engrossed in conversation, the way we had been on that first date.  I left the party with that same sinking feeling in the stomach he had given me so many months before. 

Amy later found out that he and the girl had been friends on Facebook.  She lived in a bigger city a couple of hours drive away and showed up on a whim that very day to visit him.  He had been looking forward to seeing me, but then she arrived.  Apparently she won him over because shortly after I heard they were together, and she moved here.  Truly, I suppose, it was not meant to be.

Not long after this disappointment, I was at a summer concert with my friend Rachel, also a friend of Mason’s (see the “Yoga Gansta”).  We ran into him.  I wasn’t overly friendly to the guy that had blown me off so many times and walked off to get a drink.  Later she told me he had asked if I hated him and wondered if I would give him a second chance.  She encouraged him to ask me to out again.  I didn’t hear from him, but shortly after Rachel and I ran into him at the farmer’s market.  I was friendlier this time, and we chatted.  He asked what I was up to later that day and if I would like to go for a hike with him.  Like a sucker, I accepted.  I waited for his text, and waited, and waited, as the hours went by.  I noticed the weather storming over the mountains where we had planned on hiking, but all the same, that’s when he should have called to ask me to go to a movie or at the very least rescheduled.  But no, nothing.  I felt like such an idiot for falling for it all over again.  For an “enlightened” person, he sure knew how to make a girl feel like crap.

Later that summer, I took a road trip to the national park where I worked the previous year.  A month before the trip, I had Facebook chatted with a former summer fling, and he expressed excitement to see me again.  After my recent luckless experiences, the feeling was mutual.  At the very least, I would have a couple days of romance that summer.

When I showed up, he already had a girlfriend – a beautiful, blond, blue-eyed Russian-American girl.  One of the evenings I somehow got sucked into playing a Russian card game with the two of them.  It was a game called “the Fool”, that she taught us.  The point of the game was not to lose, or be “the fool”, rather than winning.  I lost round after round and, yet again, was the fool.

All summer I was very aware of the fact that come late August, I would be starting my job as a first year teacher, as well as beginning an intense online graduate program.  The summer seemed the perfect time to find some romance.  I had absolutely nothing of importance going on and was in many more social settings than usual.  Nonetheless, it was a summer of constant disappointments in the love department.  Ironically, as soon as my job and graduate classes began (and I became ridiculous busy, stressed and antisocial), the dating scene picked up its pace.  That’s the trouble with romance.  It doesn’t come just because you’re ready and want it.  It comes when you least expect it, when it’s least convenient, and when you least look for it.  I swore off boys for the school year, believing I would need to focus on my work.  But that’s when the all boys showed up.