For how I felt.
I might not be able to say such things to his face, in person, from my own heart, but I could borrow the sentiment from poets who say it so much better than I ever could.
His reply came through as a gif.
Bugs Bunny with heart eyes fainting to the floor and the wordswoonin big, flashing letters.
It made me laugh.
Dad clapped his hands to get my attention. We were in a barn with twelve goats. “Work now, smile at your boyfriend later.”
Embarrassed, I pocketed my phone and got back to work. We had to be back at the clinic in half an hour, so we were on a time crunch. I needed to focus.
But . . . boyfriend?
Smile at your boyfriend later, Dad had said.
My boyfriend?
That word made me feel positively giddy and jittery, and swoopy and...
And then a ram escaped my hold, and Dad had to grab it, and it was the jolt of reality I needed.
To focus.
Focus now, think about the wordboyfriendlater...
And think about it,I did. I thought about seeing Winter again. I thought about dating. I thought about the word boyfriend, And I thought about what that meant.
Overthinking, overanalyzing, over and over . . .
I barely slept. My stomach ached too much to eat breakfast, and I considered not going to work. But that would just mean I’d have the whole day to overthink and make everything worse in my head.
Because that’s what I did, and I was incredibly good at it.
But I was certain of one thing.
I didn’t want to meet his friends at the diner. I didn’twant a date where there would be other people. I wasn’t ready for that.
I knew Hamish, that was true. But I didn’t know the others, and I was sure they were all lovely, but I didn’t want to put myself in a situation I wasn’t ready for.
I didn’t want to freak out in front of them, in front of Winter.
Once I’d made the decision not to go, I expected to feel better, relieved. But no... I was disappointed.
Mostly at myself.
I was grateful for work and being busy. The thing with Dad was he knew when I needed to be pushed and snapped back into focus, and then other times, he knew whennotto push and to just let me process the mess in my head.
Like I was today.
At eight o’clock, instead of the line of poetry I had planned to send, I typed out something else.
Something I knew by heart.
“I’d rather end up wishing I hadn’t than end up wishing I had.”
Then I watched as his reply bubble appeared, disappeared, then reappeared, my stomach churning.
