Is Lump fast asleep or rocking out with the band?

 

 

So the weirdest thing happened a week or so ago.

About 16 years ago, when I was working in Mount Cook, back in NZ,
I was friends with this pastry chef, his name is Dean, he and I were really good friends,
he helped me out alot ( I was just an apprentice) and when it was quiet he would teach me all
sorts of stuff and we would talk and hang out out of work as well ( it was a live in job)..

I had always had this thing for Dean, he had these super cute dimples and was such an awesome guy, but
I was just starting a relationship with this guy Troy, and Dean had a girlfriend there too.
 
Anyway, one day he came into work and sort of said to me that we couldn’t be friends anymore,
because his girlfriend ( who’s name escapes me now) didn’t like how close we were becoming, and told him that it was her or me.

So, I got upset that he would cut me out of his life for her, but yeah, as you do when you are only 20… you do things like that.
And our friendship became more aqaintences than anything else…

Anyway, fast forward 4 months, and Troy & I had decided to move back to Christchurch, and a few days before we left, we had a farewell thing at the tavern and Dean ended up showing up.  We were both completely trolleyed
and I started having a go at him, for dropping me for his girlfriend (who no-one really liked)…
And in amoungst my "fighting" words, he said very calmly " well, it couldn’t have gone on much longer anyway,
seeing as I have been in love with you since I first laid eyes on you"….

I remember staring blankly at him for a good 30 seconds or so and then Troy came over… perfect timing.
Troy and I left Mount Cook without me ever getting to speak to Dean again.

16 years later, last week… I get a text.  
From Dean.  
Who stumbled into a girl who was a waiteress in Mt Cook that was my closest friend, the whole time I was there,  who now lives in  Melbourne.

He mentioned me, and she gave him my mobile number.

We text back and forth a few times and on Monday night he called me, and we ended up talking for about 3 hours.
then Tuesday, and Wednesday, and thursday…….and Friday, a good 2 or 3 hour conversation each night…

Its crazy weird, because like half of my life has gone by since I last saw or heard anything from him.  
Like anything, I didn’t know where he was or what he was doing,…. and we have gone from
being 19 & 23, to being 35 & 39.
He has a 2 year old son.  From a failed relationship, I have been married and divorced. 
He has been living in Melbourne for 14 years, I lived in Melbourne once the same year he went, then just an hour out of Melbourne a few years ago,  He is the regional manager of Safeway/Woolies produce department, and  I am still cooking..

He sent me a photo, and he still has the rocking dimples… lol.
But seriously, I wouldn’t know him if I passed him in the street.
Its funny,a crazy, weird kinda funny.
I feel so old now, its seriously a shock to my brain to think that I am 35 and he will be 40 this year..
It feels like maybe a couple of years ago we were sitting on the observation deck pissing ourselves
laughing about how I could introduce the word "cunt" into my family christmas dinner I was going to that year…

God we had some crazy (usually drugged fueled) times… but yeah.

Back to the present.

Tonight I mentioned that the last time I heard from him, was him telling me that he had been in love with me.

He said that he had thought about me so many times in the past years, and had wished he hadn’t ended our friendship for the gf, and that he had spent a fair bit of time wondering "what if", but had no idea that I actually liked him as well.

At some stage he said, and now look, we are bothing nearing our 40’s, but we are both single again.  
It may be 20 years later, but would that make it too late….

I just didn’t know what to say.

I have found my train of thought wonder over to him a few times over this past
few days, kinda thinking "WTF?"  its odd.
Its sososososo odd. Like I never, ever expected to ever hear from him again.  I don’t know I can’t even begin to explain how out of place I am finding this.

So what am I thinking?
That we still laugh like we used to, that I still find him one of the easiest people in the world to talk to, that despite 16 years passing, we are still fundamentally the same.

What will become?

Kip