Pretty Sure.

I stayed at Eddie’s that night, and when I left in the morning, I was pretty sure he would never call me again. I didn’t know the status of his girlfriend, and it definitely didn’t help that he was my manager. So I tucked it away in my mind as a great night, and left it at that, trying not to expect anything more.

But when I worked with him next, he said he wanted to hang out again. So I invited him over to my condo, to have some wine and meet my roommate. I raced home from work, ran through the place picking up random crap, and told my roommate I had someone coming over.

“Is it a hot guy?” he asked me, in a sing-song voice.

“How’d you know?”

“You’re all red,” he said.

So I was. Eddie came over, and impressed my roommate. When Eddie left, my roommate told me he thought Eddie was a great guy, and that I needed to keep him around a long time. Little did I know that I wasn’t going to have a choice.

My relationship with Eddie grew very quickly. We clicked in a way I hadn’t clicked with anyone else. And because of that, I jumped into things with Eddie, without a second thought.

I remember the night Eddie told me he had a girlfriend. He said he wanted to go to dinner, so he picked me up and we went to a little sit-down deli. I asked him what he was doing over the weekend and he said he had to changed the oil in a car, “for the gf.”

I was silent.

“What do you think about that?” he asked.

“What do I think about what?”

“Me having a girlfriend,” he said.

I told him I didn’t know what to think of it—that I wasn’t sure what was really going on between them.

He told me they’d been together for two years, and then uttered a combination of words I will never forget:

“It’s been bad for a long time,” he said. “Girls are crazy.”

Of course, I wanted Eddie to be with me, not her. But I also felt for her.

That night, we were laying in Eddie’s bed, and I asked him if she still had a key to his house. He said she did, and I was terrified she was going to bust in on us, sleeping peacefully.

Before I fell asleep, I thought about her. Eddie had made her out to be the enemy, but in reality, Paige was me. Adam did to me exactly was Eddie was doing to her, and I was the other woman.

The next week, I was in class when Eddie texted me that he wanted to surprise me. So I met him after class, out in the parking lot. He said he wanted to take me to lunch at a place that he liked. I was dressed in sweats, told him i wasn’t prepared for a little date. But he insisted we had to go, right then.

He took me downtown to a small pizzeria that was delicious. Afterward, we went back to his house. Once we arrived, his roommate told him Paige had stopped by and left a letter for Eddie. I felt dirty for being in the house, for having my car parked out front, for hanging out in the daylight hours.

But at the same time, I was falling quickly. I loved spending time with Eddie, laughing with him, and being in the company of his friends. Eddie didn’t read the letter—not in front of me anyway.

That night, Eddie said he would cook us dinner. I sat in the kitchen with my elbows on the white tiled counter, enjoying a glass of wine, while Eddie steamed crab legs, and stirred a pot of mashed potatoes. I was in heaven. We enjoyed our dinner watching a football game with his roommates.

Later that night, I remember finding a hat of Eddie’s—one of those furry ones with the flaps over the ears, and insisted on wearing it around the house. That day and evening remain to be one of my fondest dating memories.