a baby story: part v

Catch Up: part i, part ii, part iii, part iv

I was supposed to go to the club with Shy, but with the Baby on my mind and worry in my heart, I changed my mind. It is the worst feeling in the world to be with someone and be thinking of someone else. It’s not fair to them and not fair to you. This was the turning point for me.

When I am single, I usually have more than one woman floating about. I have a short attention span and that’s the only way I can keep myself entertained. I can only do this with women I have crushes on. For me, there is a huge difference between liking someone and crushing on them, but that’s another story…

I called the Baby and I immediately ask her if she’s ok. She says that she is, but she asks me what we are doing. She wants to know if we are leading towards something serious, if I take her seriously. I felt so guilty. The last thing I wanted to do was to hurt her. Ten minutes into our conversation, she said she was tripping. She said she didn’t know what to do with herself when she can’t get in contact with me. I told her that she wasn’t tripping. I spent the next twenty or so minutes explaining to her that she could feel however she wanted to feel and that we’d always be able to discuss whatever was bothering her.

Our conversations started to change after that night. We started to talk more about family, our future, what we wanted out of life. Shy and Den were still calling, but our conversations were brief. I was completely and totally wrapped up in this girl. So wrapped up that when Den told me that she only saw me as a friend, it didn’t even matter. She thought it mattered and apologized profusely, but at that point she thought more highly of herself than I did.

After my last relationship (I promise to write about it one day), my biggest concern with the Baby was her lack of life experience. I wondered how she would handle bad times, if she would be there or run away. Then I had a bad day. I’m not sure if it happened to show me I could rely on her, but it’s what I got out of that situation.

I found myself referring to the Baby as “my girl” or talking about us being “together.” I even told her on the phone that I would ask her to be with me when I saw her. Of course things didn’t go that way. The love came first, then the commitment. And somehow, that makes all of the sense in the world.

That brings us to current day. In the middle of writing this post, I booked my flight to VA. (Yall don’t sleep on Airtran’s Tuesday through Thursday specials.) The Baby is 2 days in on a 3 day field exercise. In our last conversation, she told me about pink and purple sunsets and bright, bright stars. She said she had never seen anything like that before. She’s such the city girl. She didn’t realize that city smog covers so much of the night sky.

When she started talking about the stars, it reminded me of the movie American Tale. Do you remember it? It’s a cartoon movie about a family of mice immigrants that end up seperated. There is one part during the movie where the mouse son, Fievel, is looking at the sky and the song, Somewhere Out There starts playing. Echoing in my heard were the lyrics: And even though I know how very far apart we are/It helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star.

I’m lame, I know, but what are you gonna do about it? Shoot me?

The End!