The One That Got Away?

[Claire]

When I was a freshman in high school, I was friends with the most popular senior, Adam. I met him at the grocery store he worked in when I was in 8th grade, and he and my mom just had this mutual admiration and I got pulled in to the mix. Adam is the kind of guy who makes everyone feel special and cool and loved. He's the best. He has this network of friends that literally spans the globe. I used to go places in college for spring break and people from other states would say, "You're from Oregon? Do you know a guy named Adam?"

So Adam's group of friends in his class are/were extremely good looking. And they're nice, still connected to one another, see each other constantly, go on vacations together (I've gone camping and rafting with them several times), and one of them hosts this big luau every summer and hundreds of people come and take over three houses on one little cul de sac in our hometown.

It's really the most amazing group of people. If it wasn't for them and their network of friends that include a lot of my friends from high school and college....I would never have been good at keeping in touch. But whenever there's an event, a concert (Def Leppard, Depeche Mode, Prince), a wedding, a funeral, a trip, I'm called and invited.....and they completely took in my husband. He's now part of it, which is really cool for me.

So last night.....was the Duran Duran show. The usual people were there....plus one.

The one.

Dennis was a senior when I was a freshman and despite my "Adam's little sister" status, Dennis was untouchable. He had this curly black soft mullet, always wore white button up rayon shirts, perfectly pleated dark pants, and loafers. He was beyond cool. My friend, Vanessa, used to drag me past his house on most sunny Saturday afternoons, so we could catch a glimpse of him playing basketball with his brothers. We never talked to him, we'd just walk by and try not to get caught staring at his bare legs.

Dennis went stag to the Sadie Hawkins dance (girls were no doubt afraid to ask him) and he asked me to dance. Big mistake. My friend Vanessa literally didn't talk to me for months. I never talked to him again.

Until college. Our friend Mark was a DJ at this club in Corvallis, and on Thursday nights, hundreds of college students would flood the club and it was pretty much a weekly high school reunion for us. Dennis showed up twice (went to college out of state, so he'd only be there if he was staying with Mark), and the first time, he didn't talk to me.....until it was closing time and he slipped me his phone number.

I called Mark to ask him what the deal was, and it turns out Dennis had this huge crush on me......for-e-ver. It was the best/worst kept secret. Unfortunately, I had a boyfriend. A crazy ass boyfriend. I never called Dennis, but I kept his number in my wallet for a year.

The next time I saw Dennis at the same club, he approached me right away and gave me a hug. First time I'd had physical Dennis contact since I was fourteen at the Sadie Hawkins Dance. He asked why I hadn't called him, I explained about the psycho boyfriend, we left and went outside and talked for a long time, sitting on the curb. It was really nice. Turns out he's super shy--that's why he always went stag to dances, never dated anyone special, never asked anyone out, etc. I always thought he was a snob, even though we had the same circle of friends.

So that night, we ended things with a hug and he gave me his number again.

Six months later, I'm single, and for some reason, didn't call him.....I never called him. He got my number from Adam once and called me and left a message.....I never called him back. I ran into him and the gang of guys one night in Portland. We immediately hit it off again, hung out all night, and ended up kissing. A lot. We stayed out all night as a group and it was the best night!

Then he left the next morning for basic training for the freaking MARINES.

He called me when he could, about two months later, but I'd started dating someone (a guy named Kelly ) and a few months later he came back to town to visit and called me right away. We got together for lunch and he told me he was marrying Gretchen. She was a year older than him and from our town. Our friend Andy had gotten her pregnant and ditched. Dennis decided to marry her and was going to adopt the baby.

I fell in love then and there. Holy crap, what a man.

So.....I get married, he gets married.

We ran into each other about four years later at the annual luau. We show each other our kids' pictures, talk awkwardly until his wife shows up. She glares at me, and I said my goodbye.

So last night, he shows up at the concert. I wasn't expecting him. Turns out he and Gretchen are divorced, Gretchen lives FOUR blocks from me with their daughters and he lives in the burbs. How freaking WEIRD is that?? Our daughters will go to the same middle school at the same time. UGH!

My heart pitter pattered all night, and not just because of Simon LeBon. I was good, though. Tried to keep my distance, but he wanted to catch up. We did, and I'm glad, but the man has GOT to stay away from me. Far away. That's just playing with fire. He's such a good man, married to the wrong girl at the wrong time.

I hope he finds someone excellent. Someone worthy. Someone wonderful and amazing and sexy and hot and someone who will be an awesome step-mom to his gorgeous daughters. I want all that for him.

I also want to NEVER see him again!!! He's my kryptonite. He makes me all squishy inside. Dangerous.

I know this is long......way longer than I intended.......but does anyone else have someone like this in their life?? The one that got away? How do you deal?? Do you ever have to see him or her?

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

"I also want to NEVER see him again!!! He's my kryptonite. He makes me all squishy inside. Dangerous."

I love this post, I love Dennis, I love you, I love your history with Dennis. Good girls need a Dennis.

This is a freakin' Wonder Year's episode.

I also love The Wonder Years.

I have one, from when I worked at Border's. I suspected, after it was too late, that he actually liked me, though maybe not as much as I like him. He even wrote me a lovely poem that I totally misunderstood, and was - most likely - very sexual and hinting. FIE my insecurity. But it was suspicious because he really didn’t start showing a romantic interest in me – however vague – until after I started dating someone else I was less nervous to date – heh.

Honestly, I would have never moved to NYC if I'd know for certain that M.T. liked me even half as much as I liked him. Only man I've ever known who actually made me seriously reconsider my position on wanting children. When I was around him, I wanted them without any doubt in my mind. I wanted at least 6 of them.

Too long a story, but years later I saw him when I was home visiting my family. He was walking hand in hand with a pregnant girl and they were with her mother. He didn’t notice me and I breezed by quickly. And the moment I passed them I just started sobbing. I cried all the way home. I’d harbored a secret wish that we’d run into each other and he’d say, “I wanted to ask you to stay,” and I’d move back home and have lots of kids we couldn’t afford to have.

And it hurt to see that silly dream crumble. A while later, after I moved back home, I saw him, his wife and child at a restaurant together and it STILL hurt.

It would probably hurt today. FIE!

When I really, really like someone, it's to a ridiculous degree.

[Claire]

Originally Posted by Eliza Hodgkins 1812

He was walking hand in hand with a pregnant girl and they were with her mother. He didn’t notice me and I breezed by quickly. And the moment I passed them I just started sobbing. I cried all the way home. I’d harbored a secret wish that we’d run into each other and he’d say, “I wanted to ask you to stay,” and I’d move back home and have lots of kids we couldn’t afford to have.

Dude, I have goosebumps. Exactly. I know exactly what you felt. The only other person I can see myself married to (well, besides Amy Sedaris or Chuck Paluhniak) and raising a billion daughters with (between us, we'd have SEVEN!!!) is Dennis.

I've had a lump in my throat that isn't due to my screaming all night. I can't swallow it down. I have to NEVER see him again.

[Baileykat]

OH my gosh Claire! That's so sweet..yet so heartbreaking...bittersweet I guess!


I'm feeling you pain...and I know all too well how it feels!

I'd dish about my "one"...the one I can never see...the one I can never be alone with...the one..that thankfully lives hundreds of miles away in Texas...

Ahhhh...I'll be thinking of you...as I'm driving to Phoenix with whiney kids!

[LSPoorEeyorick]

I'm proud of you, C. Lesser women wouldn't be so stoic (or appear to be so, to him. Despite how squishy your innards might feel.)

[dsnylndmom]

Wow Claire what a story!!

THis line

Originally Posted by CLAIRE

"I also want to NEVER see him again!!! He's my kryptonite. He makes me all squishy inside. Dangerous."

I think captures your whole story. I also think there are quite a few of us that can relate I can feel your "pitter patter" through your story.

[Claire]

And, ladies, he's still the best dresser (down to the shoes!) and extremely hot. He's amazing. And he wasn't sleazy or hitting on me, just interested in me. In what I had to say, how I was doing, my favorite places (he moved out of my neighborhood when they divorced right when I moved in--how ODD is that???) in the area, he casually had his arm around my shoulders on the train, he sat next to me in Mark's car, stood next to me at the bar, lots of eye contact, but never anything overtly icky at all. I remember sitting on that curb with him talking for hours that one night with my head on his shoulder and cuddled up next to him.

When we first saw each other after the show (I was surprised to see him, it took me a minute to orient myself, freaking Adam and Mark didn't tell me he was with them, the bastards), he gave me the longest, sweetest hug, the kind that lasts and lasts.

And considering I once fell hard for a guy who kissed me on the forehead and called me Sweet Claire, this hug was too much for me. I never fully recovered from that hug, even though we spent the next few hours together.

It's been 12 hours.....I'm still not recovered from that hug.

[Scrooge McSam]

I'll call him "P". I doted on him. His absence for even a little while was just intolerable for me. He told me no one understood him like I did. He told me we'd always be friends. Then he told me we couldn't be together because society was more likely to accept him with a woman than with a man.

I decided I required a man who could stand up to the world and be his own man. I didn't fight for him, though I desperately wanted to. Why should I? He wasn't willing to fight for me. I asked him to leave. It nearly destroyed me for a while. But I still remember the evening, several months later driving home from work, when I realized I hadn't thought about him at all that whole day. It was a start

He was married in less than a year, and 2 kids later, divorced. Then he started trying to start something up again. I rejected him.

20 years later, I still miss him sometimes. But I don't regret how it all turned out. If I'd still been with him, the next chapter of my life may never even have happened.

[Ponine]

Wow… amazing stories. Amazing. I thought I was alone in my torment.
The quote that gets me every time that I see Ever After, and thats a LOT is.. “Then let's say God puts two people on Earth and they are lucky enough to find one another. But one of them gets hit by lightning. Well then what? Is that it? Or, perchance, you meet someone new and marry all over again. Is that the lady you're supposed to be with or was it the first? And if so, when the two of them were walking side by side were they both the one for you and you just happened to meet the first one first or was the second one supposed to be first? And is everything just chance or are some things meant to be?”

I met Chris when I was a sophomore in high school. I dated his best friend for four years. (85-89) All through that time period, he was by and large nicer to me than his friend was. We all went together once and saw legend.. he proceeded to give me a note the next day with a picture of a unicorn, and tell me how innocent I was. (he was delusional, but it was still sweet)
When I would hang out with their group of friends, somehow something would always happen where he would have to jump to my defense. I know once, he rubbed my shoulders as I sat in my boyfriends house, and it was one o those moments where I thought.. okay, no, I have to get away from this situation or its gonna go down a path I cant go down since I already have a boyfriend.
Once we went to the beach as a group, La Jolla Shores.. anyway.. my boyfriend was throwing cans of soda down to those of us on the beach, and ended up hitting me in the neck with one. Didn’t care a whit.
Chris on the other hand, cared a lot. That night, with everyone in sleeping bags, and me in pain, I held on to Chris the whole night long. NOT my boyfriend..
We went out on a date in ‘89.. to this day I don’t know why that didn’t pan out.
We would run into each other at Halloween time, random Renn fair events, he would always be the gentleman, make my heart flutter, and bring me roses. I always had a boyfriend at the time, I never knew what to make of it. I always picked the guys who treated girls like dirt. Never knew what to do with him. He was too nice. And I was too popular.
In the early ‘90s.. maybe 92 or so.. we were at an event together, I was with Joe.. who I ended up breaking up with at the event. Since I rode up with Joe, I had no ride home I was willing to take. I rode home with Chris… I remember that ride being emotionally taxing. It was better to be with him even in silence. We got back to his home at around 11pm, not a time I wanted to be taken home to my parents, and decided that I would stay at his apt till morning.
I don’t remember how, or why, but prob sleeping in the same place with a guy that you’re not actually involved with, but has loved you intensely for years.. isn’t such a good idea. By morning, we were an item. And I was so in love with him.
I never thought I was good enough for him, he made me happy, but I didn’t deserve it. Anyone else been there? He sang to me, bought me flowers, remembered my birthday, called me Kitten. I thought he was wonderful.
My new friends depised him. He had gotten to me too fast. Other people were jealous. They did everything to tear us apart. After a few months, it worked. He walked away, leaving me in a pile of tears and broken hearted. Telling me that he was seeing someone else. (years later I will discover this was a fabricated lie)
I took the next proposal that came my way because I saw it as the last chance. Chris was at my wedding, I wouldn’t speak to him.
Three years later, he finds me in Colorado, where I have whisked myself away to in order to rebuild my life. He’s vacationing, alone. I am still insanely attracted to him. Once again I let him break my heart when he went back to CA.
He marries, I end up being the one they called when po’d, they tick me off… we don’t speak for a few more years. In the process we both have sons, two months apart. They divorce.
Feb 2004 I saw him at someone else’s wedding. I all but fainted. I wanted to talk to him, and bolt, all at the same time. In the fall, I finally had the courage to speak to him again. It’s all still there..every last emotion; and that scares the hell out of me.
No question he’s the one that got away, and I should LET him get away. Never mind the fact that its lovely to have someone around me who has known me for twenty years, and that I am so in love with him it hurts.
He is wonderful, always has been. Soemtimes when I talk to him, I am totally enthralled by his face, and how beautiful he is. Oddly, I'm not generally physically attracted to people. I could be happy just listening to him talk, even if it wasnt to me, just to hear the sound of his voice.
My confidence soars when I am near him, and it seems there is nothing I cannot do.
Alas, I have no idea if I have anywhere near the same effect on him.
Oh.. I need to stop.. I’m rambling.

[Claire]

My gosh. I have goosebumps! Thanks for the stories.....Ponine, I left you a looong note.

:sigh:

I love these stories.