Justin, Two Times Too Many

  Lori was spending most of her time over at her boyfriend’s place. Like I said earlier, now that I was on my own more I became more social with others. Around the time I met Rachel, I had been hanging out with Annette, a girl from the bank I worked at.  When I first met her she was working at a different branch than I. My honest first impression of her was that she was abrasive and mean. She clearly had a chip on her shoulder. I didn’t think she liked me at all, but I was fine with that.

  Months after that, she transferred over to our branch when a spot on our teller line opened up. On her first day at our branch she got locked in the vault. She took it remarkably well and my view of her lightened. She still had a chip on her shoulder, but was hardly the mean person I first thought she was. After a few weeks we hit it off quite well. She also used to work at the same branch that Rachel currently worked at. More importantly, she was also friends with her. 

   After I first mentioned her, Lori started pressing me about ‘that girl Rachel’ wondering when I would ask her out. She apparently got over her initial shock. To sort of push things along, Lori pushed me to invite her to a get together at Chris’ house. To make it less date-like, when I talked to Rachel, I asked her to join as a group thing and drafted Annette to attend as well. I usually dragged Annette to things lately as a ‘go-to date,’ (not really a date, but a friend I would bring) so I knew she wouldn’t mind.

  After inviting Rachel and her agreeing to come I invited Annette. I mentioned that Rachel was going to be there and she noticed right away how excited I seemed about that. “You know she has a boyfriend, right?” she inquired.

  I did not know that. She never mentioned that. Even when I geared questions in conversation that would get that sort of information she seemed to go out of her way to make it appear she was not in a relationship.  I told Annette that it was okay, Rachel and I were just friends, but Annette saw right through that and was worried about my feelings. Regardless of her concerns or maybe because of them, she agreed to come even though her impression of Lori’s boyfriend, Chris, was not a great one.

  Her opinion of Chris was formed weeks before when Claudia and her husband hosted an Adult Dinner Party.  Having two kids, she lacked the kind of sophisticated adult conversations she used to have. She invited Amanda and Nate, Alan, Lori and Chris as well as me and a ‘date’. I went with my go-to date, of course, Annette. Annette and Claudia became great friends after that night, however when we all regaled each other with stories of alcohol/college/parties and other amusing anecdotes, Chris, who did not drink at all, opted to submit stories about driving and mocking drunk fraternity brothers around during college and having to kill a deer he hit with his car with a rock to the skull and other assorted anti-social stories that added nothing to the merriment. Anyway, bad first impression.

  When we were all at Chris’ place, I got to speak to Rachel and inquire about her boyfriend. She admitted she had one and sort of downplayed the seriousness of her relationship. Mostly, what I got from the conversation was that she purposely neglected to mention him because she was afraid I would stop talking to her if she did mention him, because guys do that to her.  I informed her that above all else we were friends and she had nothing to worry about. When it came to girls, that is the way I’ve always been. If there is a girl that I really like and thought was cool, even if she isn’t interested in me ‘that way’, I’m more than happy to have them in my life as a friend than not at all. I’d like to think I wasn’t alone in this thought process, but I know a lot of guys who think exactly the way that Rachel had experienced with guys.

  Meanwhile, Annette hit it off really well with Justin, Chis’ roommate. Ironically, Justin was also the name of the boy Rachel was currently dating. But this Justin, the one we were hanging out with was a bit of a player. He was breezing through girls rather quickly between his on again, off again relationship with one particular girl. So here he was, off-again… and Annette developed a fast crush. Having originally bonded over trying to get Chris to drink alcohol, when Annette got into an argument with another guy named Kevin during a ‘drinking game’ because  Annette wasn’t actually drinking (despite the fact that we agreed beforehand she could play with water). Justin took her out for a walk to cool off.

 I might have been more pro-active to prevent her from getting too close if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with Rachel. Still, it might not have mattered, if what she felt for Justin was anything like I was feeling for Rachel. Whatever it was about this girl, I kind of tuned out everything around me when she was around. What was worse was I was prone to drop whatever I was doing just for her. I had fallen hard and fast for a girl that was not available.