Day 108: Fields of Gold, Chapter 107

Pardon me while I ramble a moment.

Some of you have asked me what Dave has thought about the stuff I'm writing. It has been fun for me to meander through my memories, picking and choosing the ones I want to share. I've referenced back to journals I kept at the time in an attempt to remember how I felt about everything as it was happening. When I finish, I drag Dave over to my computer and make him read the latest entry. He reads it, and then he gets this look. This look says "That's not quite how I remember it."

I then tell him to get his own blog.

Really, though, to be fair--he didn't much like where I left off last night. Because he says that he and his roommate invited that girl *together* even if he was the one that called her. He also still doesn't understand how I thought that he was asking me on a date. ("Hm. Maybe because you asked me if I wanted to spend New Years Eve with you while we were cuddling. But I can see how that might be confusing to you." is what I think.) Anyway, for the record, he didn't think that he was asking her on a date. He also didn't think he was asking me on a date.

Are we clear? Okay, good. Carry on.

**
New Year's Eve was great fun, although I was confused by the addition of another girl to our double date. Was she the fifth wheel? Or was I? I figured I had prior claim and decided not to worry about it. (Let Dave worry about it--he'd invited her, right?)

Shortly after New Years, I moved into my new apartment at BYU and started school. My schedule was rigorous: oil painting, ballet, stained glass, German, and religion. I didn't know if I would be able to handle the mental strain of that course load, but I decided to give it a try. I'd also gotten a great new job working at the campus bookstore in their art framing department, which I was working to learn and loving. I was in a good place, and in a perpetually great mood.

One day, after work and between classes, I was browsing cards at the bookstore and I came across a card that said "Good friends, like good meat pies, are hard to find." And on the inside it said "Hello, my little meat pie." It cracked me up, and suddenly I just wanted to share it with Dave. I wanted him to stop stressing about dating me or not dating me, and just be my friend. So I bought it, with some candy, and dropped it off at his work on campus.

The next day, a Tuesday, he asked me to come over to his apartment to try out the new blender he'd gotten for Christmas from his oldest brother Gary and his wife Melissa. We were going to make smoothies. I put on my periwinkle coat and walked to his apartment where we spent the night eating and chatting. It was a great night. He offered to walk me home.

It was a crystal clear night, and very cold. We were close to my apartment when I asked, jokingly, what he'd been thinking about lately. He said quietly, "You mean besides you?" That response took me by surprise, and I didn't quite take him seriously. Suddenly, he reached out and took my hand, sending shivers up my arm, and pulled me across the street to a small park.

He told me that he'd been thinking about me and about dating until he was tired of thinking about me and dating. When I had showed up at his work with that card and that candy, it had just stressed him out even more. He told me that he'd decided that he didn't want to date me, but then talked to a church leader who kind of said "What have you got to lose?"

My stomach was tied in knots. I couldn't tell which way this conversation was going. He was holding my hand, so that was good--right? But then he was telling me about the turmoil in his heart, and I felt like I was pushing too hard or twisting his arm somehow. We walked around the park, re-crossed the street, and ended up on the metal and concrete stairs outside my apartment. We tried to tie up the loose ends, but we couldn't--we left them open.

I walked into my quiet, dark apartment, leaned my back against the door, and slid to the ground. Throwing my arms around my knees, I buried my head and sobbed. I just didn't know how to think or feel. I had no idea why I was in love with a guy without even trying to love him, when it seemed so obvious that he just didn't feel the same way about me.
**

Friday night, he took me to see a John Schmidt concert at the Provo Tabernacle. After it was over, we drove to a nearby park. It was dark and cold, but--even though it was January--there was no snow on the ground. We got out of the car and played on the playground equipment for awhile when, suddenly, I tapped his arm and said "Tag! You're it!" I took off running across the park, dodging through huge trees in the light of the full moon. When I was nearly all the way across the park, I stopped to catch my breath and turned.

Dave was walking slowly toward me through the trees. The brilliant moonlight was met with a silver fog rising up from the ground. His eyes were focused intently on my face. Until the day that I die, I will never forget that moment in my mind. My heart started to race. I walked slowly up to meet him, laughing breathlessly.

He wrapped his arms around me. I said, "My heart is pounding" then, laying my head on his chest I said, "Your heart is pounding, too."

Looking up at his face, he looked down at me and softly said, "But I don't think it's for the same reason."

I had three years to imagine my perfect first kiss. I had envisioned them in every season. But, for me at least, none of my imaginings even came close to being quite as perfect as that one in a cold park on a January night.

We kissed. Then we laughed, and we hugged, and he said "That was a long time coming."

We both had lost time to make up for.