Make An Afternoon of It

“Fancy going out for dinner?” Jock asked me, a day or so after that conversation about his ex-girlfriend and step-daughter. “I’ll see the kid in the morning, but I can come to you just after lunchtime? Make an afternoon of it?”

It sounded perfect, and just what we needed. Well, as long as he didn’t start bringing that ol’ shit up again. There was a chance I might scream if he mentioned the ex-girlfriend’s name again. Right in his face. As loud as I could, for as long as I could. I’d had enough of her, it, the whole situation already. That probably doesn’t bode well for us.

He took me to a local historic town, where we walked, talked, and held hands as we pottered along the cobblestoned streets. Every now and then, we’d pop into a shop, but we mostly just talked and wandered. It was actually really cute. Super cute.

I thought we’d gotten away with not talking about The Ex… and we got really close to avoiding it. But he had to ruin it, didn’t he? Well, sort of.

“So, you know we were talking about the ex and meeting the step-daughter?” he asked.

“Mmmhmm.” Fuck. Here we go again.

“That’s a lot to throw at you, all at once, isn’t it?”

I stopped walking and stared at him for a moment, not quite sure what to say in response. That might actually have been better than never talking about her again. Had he actually… considered me? Thought about how I might feel? Had he really done that? He had such a habit of steamrolling through things, already, without really questioning how I might feel about it… and I genuinely thought that it might be the thing that would break us. But here he was, being reasonable and compassionate and patient. Maybe he really is a good guy.

I wanted to throw my arms around him and give him the biggest smooch, but instead, I simply said, “It is quite a lot.”

And then, we kept walking, eventually stopping in front of a little cafe that he loved, then deciding to grab some cake in there. Paid for him, of course. It felt a little like an apology. Not enough of an apology as he hadn’t actually said the words, but enough of a step in the right direction, I felt. We didn’t bring it up again. I suppose we didn’t really need to, not yet anyway. It would come up again soon, I had no doubt. But for now, it seemed that it was just as happy as I was to keep our happy little bubble intact.

And to make sure that he knew just how happy I was about that, I suggested that we go back to his for a little afternoon delight, which he gladly took me up on.

And that was that. A hot, sticky quickie later, and all that baggage was left in the past… for now. 

The next blog post in the dating timeline is this one: Shooting Stars & Sex in Cars.