Rachel

  After Lori was dating Chris for a few weeks, it was clear that things were working out for them.  Lori was a bit selfish when it came to these sorts of things. Always has been. If I had gotten involved in a new relationship first, she would have had a hissy fit. She was now in one, I was free. The only problem was that I had not been in a relationship for so long waiting for Lori to find one, I was a little ‘love starved’ so to speak. Because of this, I developed ‘crushes’ pretty quickly.

  There were a few girls that I developed ‘crushes’ on over the past year. Mostly girls that were ‘unavailable’. I think it was by design because I wasn’t able to act on anything anyway. Over the course of this time, there were a few stand-outs. There was a girl named Dana that was a customer of the bank I worked at. She was the girl I would send lollipops to through the Drive-Thru tube when she came to cash her paycheck when I first started at the bank.  She was an absolute sweetheart and when she came inside to visit we got along very well. Over the years we talked about our respective relationships. She was always in and out of relationships, but mostly in. Online, I would chat with Elaine often. She was another girl I developed a crush on. Since she lived in Canada, it was easy to be ourselves and chat without fear of being judged. During work I would also get into long E-mail conversations with Mandy whom I had first chatted online with when I moved to Colorado and had no friends. It was mostly for entertainment. She lived local, but I was always afraid to meet ‘online people’ in real life. Like I said, I was unable to have a real relationship at the time, but these girls were great day dreams though.

   Lori was out of the apartment a lot and I stayed home. I didn’t mind I was enjoying my time alone and if I did get lonely, I could always go and chat with friends Online. There was always someone I knew from New York up late and online and I did chat with other online friends like Elaine. As matter of fact, now that I was truly single and available knowing that there couldn’t possibly be a backlash from Lori, I was more open to be more social with other people and keeping possibilities of relationships open.

 A few months into Lori’s relationship with Chris, she asked me if I was eying anyone. And it just so happened that there was someone…

  When I was working my monthly Saturday at the Denver branch as manager, I had been working steadily with Angela. We worked together every time for months now with one other teller that usually changed. Angela wanted the overtime but the others didn’t want to work on their Saturdays so much. However, there was a girl from the Englewood branch that did want extra shifts. Her name was Rachel and she was very pretty with long straight black hair that went past her shoulders with big round eyes and an oval face that made her look absolutely adorable.

  On top of that, I found her to be really funny in a quirky sort of way. She would say things that would make Angela and I look at each other and laugh. For example, I usually brought donuts in. I offered them to her, but she said that she was good. She had brought leftovers from her dinner the night before. It was some meal that sounded absolutely delicious, I forget exactly what it was, but she totally burned it in the microwave. She came back with puppy dog eyes all dejected about burning the food and then immediately perked up and said “I’ll have some donuts after all. That’s just as good.” That attitude totally took me back. For Lori, she would have mopped and been in a foul mood for the duration of work.  This girl was happy, polite, sincere, care-free and yet seemed grounded. I loved it.

  She was planning to close on a condo with her father’s help which was why she wanted the extra money. She didn’t live far from me and she also seemed to show interest in me. I was very open to this possibility. The second time I worked with Rachel, we talked for the whole three hour shift rather than my sitting in the office surfing the web and watching the clock.

  It was then when Lori had asked me that ‘eyeing someone’ question. I had never said anything out loud for fear of jinxing it, but I tested the waters with Lori and mentioned her by name. “Well, there is this girl named Rachel.”

  Lori was taken aback. She was actually confrontational when asking me about her. Grilling me about how long I knew her, what do we talk about, a whole bunch of questions and not in an ‘I’m happy for you’ way.  We almost got into an argument over this. In my mind I was like ‘What the Hell, I didn’t date anyone for over a year just to avoid this crap and I have to put up with it anyway even though she has a boyfriend?!’ At the time I thought it was the most irrational thing I’ve ever seen from her, but thinking about it after the fact, she might have associated the name Rachel with a different Rachel that worked briefly at the bank as a teller , but was fired because her drawer was always out of balance. Either way, I tested the water and was bit by a shark. And she wondered why I hesitated to tell her anything.