The story of us, part two

You know looking back on it now, I'm reasonably sure that I wasn't even a blip on Skippy's radar that day. I was just another curious face in a big intimidating group of people who for half a year, had already been doing the job that he was about to start. But I sized him up GOOD. I took one good hard long look at his six foot, four inch frame topped by curly hair and some majorly THICK glasses, and pretty much wrote him off. Just another co-worker. No threat. No problem.

And as the weeks wore on, I became accutely aware of how much I DISLIKED him.

He was loud. And he had more dirty jokes in his arsenal than anyone I'd ever met. His residents liked him and he settled right into the RA dinner table with no problems. You'd do rounds on his floor and there he was, sitting at his desk with the door open feverishly working away at some foreign piece of computer code. He'd want to chat, of course. He ALWAYS wanted to chat. But I already despised him. I despised his easy going manner and the way he seemed to be worming his way into what I considered *my* group of friends. When I was on duty, I'd RACE through his floor during rounds so that I wouldn't get stuck talking to him. He was way too nice - no one could possibly be THAT nice. Besides, he was a computer geek. Computer geeks like, so totally weren't my thing. But once he caught on, I swear he made it his mission to antagonize me in any way he could. He's go whizzing by me on his bike while I walked home from class, missing me be mere inches. He'd decide that the night I had a term paper to write was the perfect night to hang Christmas lights in his room. It was like third grade all over again, without the pigtails.

But as the year finally ended and the summer loomed ahead, I got excited about my desicion to stay on campus and work in the conference center. Then I found out that Skippy was staying on as well, as a summer RA.

Seriously? Was God punishing me?

But a funny thing happened that summer. We became friends. We started eating lunch together with the same group of people. We found ourselves hanging out when he came over to our building to chat with one of his best buddies, who I worked with. We started watching movies together. Played volleyball. Went to the bars. Hung out. Much to my surprise, I found myself missing him when he wasn't around.

And then out of nowhere, one fateful night we were MORE than friends. I won't go into details, because my Mom reads my blog and that's just weird. So does my grandma for that matter. But suddenly, I was plunged headfirst into actually LIKING Skippy. And I didn't tell a soul. Because how do you admit to your closest friends that just MAYBE, you have a thing for the one guy you spent all year professing to despise? I figured it was a summer fling and that like the summer, it would come to an end.

And sure enough, it did. We spent the next school year in a odd flux between friends and almost friends and not quite friends and more than friends. I had confessed the truth about our fling to my best friend Jacquie, who stared at me in disbelief for a good two minutes and then promptly pulled me out the door and towards margaritas and salvation. But it was over. Done. He had a new girlfriend. And man did she hate me with a passion. I had a new boyfriend who was so totally different from Skippy, and so not right for me in every sense. To complicate matters, we had floors four and five so we literally spent the entire year living right on top of each other. We had a major love-hate thing going on.

But eventually the year ended, and with it came the end of my college carreer. For a variety of reasons, Skippy and I weren't on speaking terms when I left NIU. And for the most part, I wrote it off. I missed him, but it just wasn't meant to be. Besides, he had a girlfriend. I had a boyfriend. And it had just been a fling.

Right?