Back Away Slowly

Submitted by Lizzie:

A few years ago, I reconnected with John, a guy I hadn’t seen since high school. We hadn’t been friends or anything like that, but he was insanely hot and when he asked me out on a date, who was I to say no?

We met up at a Starbucks and everything was going pretty well. From there, we went to a fairly nice restaurant. He was a perfect gentleman.

By the time the date was over, it was dark out.  He asked if I could give him a ride home, as he took the bus to our date. I told him it was no problem, since his house was on the way to mine anyway.

Just as we were pulling up to his street, he turned to me and asked what I planned on doing after I dropped him off. I told him I would probably hang out with my best friend, since she and I were close and spent the night at each other’s homes a lot.

This is where things started getting ugly. He began freaking out and saying things like, “I can’t believe you’re ditching me to be with a friend who you see almost every day anyway!” and “You have no idea how much I care about you, you don’t even know!” I calmly told him that I could hang out with him for a little longer, if that’s what he wanted. Unfortunately, this process took nearly an hour, with him freaking out to the point where he accused me of lying. “You’re just going to hook up with some random guy, and if that’s what you want to do, then just do it!”

After this aggravating hour had passed, he had tears in his eyes, but he had calmed down enough to let me stay with him for a while without any more crazy talk. He had me drive us to a nearby 7-11 to get some ice cream, and we went back to his place once again. I ended up spending the whole night with him, eating ice cream and watching cartoons.

At about eight o’clock the next morning, there was a knock at his bedroom door that woke me up. I started panicking, thinking he had a wife or a kid that he failed to mention. Just as John was waking up, a man’s voice shouted, “John, what did I tell you about having friends over?”

As it turned out, John still lived with his parents. Leaving his house was one of the most awkward things I had to do, considering his parents probably assumed that we had had sex the night before.

He had tried calling me later that day, and on and off over the next few weeks, but I never picked up. As you can imagine, he left me some pretty overly emotional voicemails.