When Two Weirds Collide: Our Love Story (Chapter 11)

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7

Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Raj started the car and we drove away from his Garage-Mahal and headed to the car wash. There was a lull in the conversation as we passed though the quiet neighborhoods of Northeast Minneapolis but, strangely, it didn't feel uncomfortable. As I sat there, with my toasty bum and frozen feet, I wondered - was he thinking about kissing me?

A couple of minutes later we arrived at the gas station, which was shockingly bright compared to the rest of the closed businesses around it. Raj drove around the back and punched in the code for the car wash. Soon we were in a white world of suds; the only noise was the dull roar of the brushes overhead and on the sides of the car.

We turned to each other in our seats. Was he going to do it right away? But as Raj began to talk, that question was answered. We laughed about our co-workers regular antics in the breakroom and wondered if any of them had noticed something was up with us. I felt my insides squealing as Raj acknowledged the "us"-ness of our situation. But while we talked, my mind kept shouting at me: When is he going to kiss me? Was he just going to lean in and...? Or will he ask me first? 

I continued to wait for the kiss as we talked and laughed. Waiting, waiting, waiting...

Teen magazine circa '89 would have me gently laying a hand on his forearm to show my interest, but I wasn't sure I could pull off that kind of thing without looking like a complete tool. Maybe I should just lean over and initiate a kiss myself? Because I was not going to be able to tolerate this much longer. The anticipation might actually kill me.

But then the garage door in front of us opened up. Car wash complete. Please pull forward.

Well. Maybe Raj hadn't taken me to the car wash in some master plan to kiss me. Sometimes a car wash is just a car wash. The flecks of water outside my window danced towards the roof as we drove away. But...why hadn't he kissed me? Did he not want to kiss me? 

My chance to dwell and obsess was thankfully interrupted when we once again found ourselves asking what we should do next. The option of ending the date was noticeably not in the mix even though the neon numbers on Raj's dashboard told me it was getting late - 10:30 pm on a school night. We debated the options - a bar? Another restaurant for dessert? A coffee shop?

"You could come to my place," I finally offered, trying to sound nonchalant and not like I was trying to lure him to my den. Because it wasn't like I wanted to bring him there just to make out with him. Well, it was like that. But I had enough self-control not to do that. Maybe.

"Sounds good to me," Raj said.

"Alright. It's a plan, man," I said. We smiled at each other, co-conspirators in whatever this thing was. As we drove along the dark highway, I thought that it was at times like this that being a grown up was seriously as awesome as you imagined it would be when you were younger.

Twenty minutes later we were walking up the steps to the front door of my apartment building. I unlocked the front door and the act of bringing him into my personal space caused the scary early-date feeling come over me once again. I felt shy, nervous, exposed. We headed up the interior stairs to my apartment and I felt unbearably conscious of each step I took since Raj was directly behind me. I hoped he wasn't looking at my butt, but what else would he be seeing? I turned my head to talk to him over my shoulder, solving that little problem.

Team Gray greeted us at the door. Toonses sneered at the sight of Raj and he stalked back to the bedroom to sleep, but Stevie, per usual, wanted to be right in the middle of things. I quickly scanned my apartment, making sure I hadn't missed anything and that Stevie hadn't dragged my dirty laundry out into the living room. It looked fine, but suddenly certain things were sticking out - my Freddy Prinze VHS movies had spotlights on them and that stupid "He's Just Not That Into You" book stood out like a sore thumb on my bookshelf. I crossed my fingers that he wouldn't peruse my books. I found myself wishing I had a more adult apartment, one with tasteful books and decorations. I could offer him a glass of sherry. Or something.

"Want something to drink?" I asked, taking his coat and laying it on the back of a kitchen chair. I took off my own jean jacket and pashmina and then suddenly felt ridiculous in my low-cut tank.

"Sure, what do you have?" Raj asked. I looked in my fridge.

"Um...milk. Diet coke. A bottle of gin. We could have gin and tonics, if you don't mind diet tonic water?" I told him.

"Gin & tonic? Sure." I inexpertly fixed us two gin and tonics, although I certainly wasn't needing to be drinking any more tonight. I carried the glasses into the living room where Raj was sitting on the loveseat next to Stevie. I handed Raj his drink and then pushed Stevie off the loveseat with my free hand. I sat down next to Raj, feeling overly formal in my own apartment.

"Cheers!" he toasted me. We clinked glasses and I took a sip. Whoa. Strong. I set it on the coffee table. Stevie hopped up onto the couch again and settled in between us. Raj pet him so I decided to let Stevie stay.

For the next thirty minutes Raj and I sat together on the loveseat and continued talking. But there was a very different feeling between us than there had been in the restaurant or even the car. We weren't in chairs, separated by a table. We were on a small, soft loveseat. Separated by a fat gray cat.

I moved Stevie to the floor.

Our positions shifted a bit and our legs were touching. I felt that prickly, tingly feeling and I was incredibly conscious of the point where our legs were touching. Raj knew we were touching right? Was it on purpose?

At some point the talking died away. I looked at Raj. He looked back at me. The atmosphere was practically buzzing.

Another beat passed.  Thump, thump, thump. Were our faces closer together?

And then they definitely were as we fell into a kiss. And all that thinking that my mind had been doing all night finally stopped. 

I didn't know it yet but this was my last first kiss...

THE END
(finally)

*          *          *          *          *

The first date led to a second date exactly one week later, on the day Raj returned from his trip to South Carolina. We went to dinner at Big Bowl (I had chicken pad thai) and went to see the very romantic "Team America." (Fuck yeah!) That second date led to a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh date...all in the same week.

Raj and I embarked on what we called "The Accelerated Plan" because everything just happened very quickly for us. We were committed to each other from the start. We took our first trip out of town a mere month and a half after our first date and it was around that time that our dating status was revealed at the workplace. Four months in, we exchanged "I love you"s after Raj accidentally blurted it out one day in a totally random way. He had been consciously trying not to say it for weeks and I had been in the same position, always having to put forth great effort not to throw it in after every sentence: "Want to watch TV? I LOVE YOU!"

We moved in together at the beginning of 2006 and shortly after got life insurance at Raj's insistence, because he didn't want me to be left paying a mortgage I couldn't afford on my own should something happen. That, more than a diamond ring perhaps, gave me no doubt about the road on which we were headed. On February 2, 2007 "Raj" proposed on the top flight of stairs in our townhome. We were married that same year, on December 8, on a beach in Mexico. And then you know the rest.

I think I'll do one last "Afterward" post for this love story series that will include Husband's perspective on our story and a few other things that I want to say. Let me know if you have any questions for him/me and I'll include those in that post.

Picture Time!

My Apartment Building in 2004 - I lived in the upper left unit.

My Living Room with the yellow loveseat (site of our first kiss!) and Stevie the cat.

"Raj" building the Garage-Mahal. Note the jeans.

The (almost) finished Garage-Mahal

Raj's disaster of an apartment during our early dating days. It stayed like this until after Raj and I had moved into our current townhome. He could never understand why I couldn't get excited about living there...

The tank I wore on our first date (this picture was from the following Spring.)

Our first picture together, a few weeks into dating. The funny thing is that I always thought a different picture, one taken of us during the early Spring of 2005 was our first picture together and I was disappointed that we didn't have anything from earlier on. But then as I was putting together this story and looking through the old pictures on Husband's computer, I realized that this was actually our first picture. It makes me so happy to actually have a picture of those very, very early days.

This video is the one I made to surprise "Raj" with the news that we were expecting Bella, but it includes a lot of photos from our earlier days so I thought I'd include it here.

Our Life from Laura on Vimeo.