Curiosity Killed the Cat

1999

After my shifts at the restau­rant I’d sit around with the other servers & bar­tenders chat­ting. I didn’t like leav­ing & going home to an empty apart­ment.  Mike often worked later than my shift ended & I wanted to wait with peo­ple ver­sus wait­ing home alone.  Plus, if I waited then I wouldn’t have to walk home alone.  After the guy on our front porch cor­nered me I didn’t want to be alone walk­ing.   Some­times I’d wait there if it was later in the evening & he would come up.  Then we’d head home together.  I loved those nights.

While sit­ting there one night while wait­ing for Mike to meet me one night, Alex, one of the guys I worked with, men­tioned he was leaving.

Mov­ing away.  Off to New York to work there & make a change in his life.  I was sad to hear he was leav­ing I thought he was a nice guy & enjoyed talk­ing with him, but thought it was a great move for him.  And of course I asked a mil­lion ques­tions, my curios­ity has always been known to get the bet­ter of me.

I asked: If he had friends there? Had he lived there before?  Would he go to school there too?  Was he going to set up an apart­ment before rolling into town?  And then if Sarah was excited to be moving.

I had fool­ishly assumed his girl­friend Sarah was mov­ing with him.

I mean why wouldn’t she?  They were liv­ing together & had been together for a long time.  It made sense to me. You move as a couple.

His face looked strange, almost like I had put his feet to the fire at the men­tion of Sarah.

“No, Sarah isn’t com­ing with me.”

“Oh. Well, I know lots of peo­ple who’ve had good long dis­tance rela­tion­ships.”  Lie, I didn’t know any­one who had, but I was try­ing to pull my foot out of my mouth.  Except I had just shoved so far down that it was tick­ling my ribcage.

“Sarah & I aren’t going to be together any­more.  We’re break­ing up.”  He looked down & his voice was quiet.

I’m such an idoit.  Why did I ask so many ques­tions?  My mother was right, I ask way too many questions.

“I’m sorry.  I, I, I, I didn’t real­ize.  I…I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry.”   My mum­bled & fum­bled apol­ogy came tum­bling out.

“It’s OK.  In fact, I needed to talk to you about it.”

Huh?  Me, what? I began to shift in my seat.  Sud­denly I felt like my feet where being held to the fire.   When did it get so hot in here?  Why would he need to talk to me about Sarah, mov­ing, break­ing up?  Who talks to a co-worker about mak­ing a big deci­sion like that? Who does that…I mean unless…Oh,no…Oh, no…Oh, no…

My mind was rac­ing, like water rush­ing for­ward & crush­ing me where I sat.  He needs to talk to me, this whole sit­u­a­tion it can’t be a good thing.  Oh, please don’t say this is about feel­ings.  Please, don’t say it. Please, please, please.  Please, don’t say it.

And then he said it.

“You look uncom­fort­able, I’m sorry I’m not try­ing to make you uncom­fort­able. I just need to tell you how I feel about you.”

At that moment I under­stood how the cat was killed. Curios­ity came in the form of a sur­prise con­fes­sion that appar­ently caused the cat to have a heart attack or maybe in a panic of run­ning away didn’t pay atten­tion to where she was going & was run over by a semi-truck.   The cat should have known bet­ter than to ask so many ques­tions, her mother was right.

[this is part of my  “how I met your father” series]

Tagged as: dating, how i met your father, love, Marriage