"I hate my life," I said as I plopped myself on the couch.
"I'm sorry, Tom. I'll do my best to stay out of your hair," said Sandy. "And I'll do whatever I can to hurry up and find a new place to stay."
"I just want you out as fast as possible," I said.
"I understand."
This is one of those situations where you can't help but to ask if you're being punished for something that you did, but you are not sure what it is. That's the situation with me and Sandy right now. I had finally had enough with spending my life trying to be with her, but could never get out of that friendzone situation that I was stuck in. And I blame it all on that damn, coronavirus outbreak that is forcing me in this situation.
We became friends in high school; we were in the same biology group together. She and I were the only ones not afraid to dissect the frogs we were given. We bonded over some of the jokes we made as cut up those frogs, and making fun of the others in our group for getting squarish about it, even the one person in our group from the football team.
Besides the frog dissection, she was very girly otherwise. She was a cheerleader, in the drama club, one of the popular girls in class, but not one of the mean girls. She had dark hair, a slim body with medium size breasts. I was a little taller than her, in a lot of academic classes, but also on the varsity baseball team, so not a total nerd. We had fun hanging out together among our friends, but she was always dating someone and I never had a way in.
It wasn't until we found ourselves in college that I first tried to make my move. We were in different schools, but not too far apart, so sometimes we found ourselves in similar parties or we kept in touch online or getting together for lunch, or if we had time watching some show on TV together. It was around this time she was finally without a boyfriend and I finally asked her out. Of course, she turned me down, giving me the spiel that she just wants to be friends and we shouldn't ruin that. I went with it, because I was stupid. But I still dated other women in college, I wasn't going to let some crush I had from getting laid.
I tried again after we graduated, telling he how I felt and how we belong together. But of course, she found a reason to say now and how we should just be friends. I was upset, but soon after I ended up dating Laura, a woman I fell very hard for, and she began dating Greg, the man who would eventually keep ruining her life.
Laura was amazing, things were going so well for us we ended up living together six months into our relationship. Three months later she admitted to cheating on my and left me for her personal trainer. At the same time, Sandy had broken up with Greg, the first in a series of break ups with them. We got together for drinks at a bar to complain about our exes, and a few hours later when we were wasted, we found ourselves making out in the back of an uber car. If it wasn't for Greg being at he doorstep when we got to her place, I'm sure we would've ended up in bed together. He apologized for whatever it was he did to get her to break up with him, and she jumped into his arms. He thanked me for getting her home safely and they went into her apartment together.
I tried to talk to her about the make-out session we had that night but she wanted to forget about it and move on, and like a chump I did.
Over the next few years, I did my best to move on and dated a series of women. Some good relationships, some bad, and few who just wanted to fool around and I was of course ok with that. Sandy had at least five breakups with Greg; she dated a few guys in between but always managed to get back together with a man who always cheated on her, took money from her and never paid her back, and thought it was ok to make fun of her in public, making it sound like he was just having fun but really was just being cruel to her. Every time they broke up, she came to me for a shoulder to cry on, but after that night we made out I never tried to go after her again; I didn't want to put myself in that humiliating position ever again.
So, one day about six months ago, she showed up on my doorstep with a few bags, asking if she could stay with me because of another break up with Greg. Usually when she was in an argument with Greg, or had just left him she went to one of her girlfriend's places, but even they were beginning to be fed up with this drama. So, I was the final choice. I thought of saying no but saw she really had nowhere to go. And I thought it would only be for a week or two before she went back to Greg, so she wouldn't be around that long.
To my surprise, it was a lot longer this time. As much as Greg tried to sweet talk his way back into Sandy's life, she turned him down. She told me that she was done being a sucker, not going to fall for his bullshit ever again.
"Never again," she said. We were at the kitchen table eating cereal for breakfast when she declared this
"Are you sure this time?" I asked. "You've said this before."
"I know."
"you said that plenty of times."
"I know, but I can't take the lying, cheating, and stealing."
"Stealing" I asked with surprise.
"I'm sure he was stealing money from my purse."
"I see."
"And from my back account."
"Wow."
I was sure she was serious this time. We spent the next several months living together. She stopped taking Greg's calls or texts and eventually he gave up trying to contact with her. She began dating again, the few guys she dated were decent guys too. I had thought about trying to start things up with her, but I didn't want to risk getting rejected again. Besides, we were having fun as roommates; we enjoyed playing video games, binge watching various tv shows, hosting parties at the apartment together, and so on. We were having too much fun, and this time I didn't want to ruin that.
Or course it was kind of hard not to think about hooking up with Sandy. I had this beautiful, sexy woman in my apartment who loved to wear skimpy clothes around the house, and on occasion didn't mind going from room to room in her underwear. That didn't happen a lot, just occasionally; she said I've seen her in bikinis plenty of times before so it was no big deal.
Eventually, I couldn't deny my feelings anymore. I didn't care if it might affect the relationship, I was falling for her again and needed to make my move. So, one day, I got her to agree to have dinner with me at our place. I made the excuse that I wanted to test out my cooking skills; I am an amateur chef and she had some of my meals before so it made for a good excuse.
"This looks amazing," she said. "What is it?"
"Creamy Tuscan chicken," I told her. "I've been wanting to try out this recipe."
"I hope it's better than your shrimp gnocchi you made last week," she said.
"I hope so too, it was terrible. I'm surprised I didn't give you food poisoning."
We both had a good laugh at that. She tried the chicken and she loved it. As we at our dinner we jut talked for a long time. We talked about things that were going on in our lives, told funny stories of things that were going on at our jobs, we reminisced about past events in high school and college. When we started to talk about how we met dissecting frogs in in high school, we had a great laugh about it. Everything was going well so there was no reason for me to finally tell her how I felt.
"Sandy, I need to tell you something," I began to say.
"What is it?" She asked.
"Its something that I've brought up before, but you always rejected."
Sandy began to look nervous.
"Tom, listen, if you're going toβ"
"I still have feeling for you," I blurted out. "I tried to avoid it, thinking we were just better off friends, and we certainly are great friends. But I can't deny this anymore, and I know you feel the same way."