Monday, April 18, 2011

The Ascent (Continued)

When Ben asked simply, "So are you coming to San Francisco next week,
or what?", my head overflowed with plenty of reasons why I could not
fly to San Francisco less than one week from that very moment: I can’t
afford it; Being a social worker, what would people say about my
flitting across the country for a party, when most of us can barely
pay off our school loans?!? (Not to mention the environmental impact!
The waste of resources!); I can’t miss a day of my internship, and so
on. After I voiced a number of these concerns to Ben, and he
reassured me the flight would cost only $5 (using his miles to book
the ticket), he finally gave me reason to pause by asking: "How can
you pass up a free trip to see your parents?” OHHHHHH. I’d never been
able to surprise BOTH parents with a visit. Hmmm. Still, I managed to
deftly avoid giving an answer that night. But he had me thinking about
it.

A few days later, Ben was back in San Francisco and I got a text from
him asking if I was coming on Friday or not (we had been texting a
little every day since our all-night conversation in Boston). By this
point, I had mostly come to terms with my previous objections. So the
conversation went like this:

Kim: “Are you going to wear a kilt?”
Ben: “Sure, if I can find one.”
Kim: “Nuh uh. That wasn’t the deal.”
Ben: “Okay, fine. If you come, I will wear a kilt.”
Kim: “Okay, I’m coming”

Sure enough, I flew to San Francisco that Friday and he had borrowed
the kilt from his Scottish co-worker. Apparently, none of the others
on the leadership team held up their end of the bargain. I felt a
little (but only a little) guilty that he was still going to wear one,
and told him as much, but he refused to back out of the bet saying, “I
am a man of my word.” Point for Ben.

Naturally, the kilt was a huge hit at the holiday party.
(Picture coming shortly)

The plan had been that Ben would drive me down to Cupertino to
surprise my parents after the work party. Instead, we ended up
talking at his place again until 6 AM. After I had crashed for a
short nap on his couch, we grabbed an early afternoon “brunch” before
he finally drove me down.

There were definite sparks between us by this point, but I was still
unsure of letting it become more than friendly. Ben, however, made
himself very clear. Before we parted, he declared: “Since we’ve hung
out for 20 something hours straight, I think we can retroactively call
this a date. And we should probably count last weekend as dates, as
well.” Me, being all indecisive and awkward around dating in general
let him know I wasn’t sure I agreed. He reassured me that was fine,
but told me that I should know that the next time we hung out, he was
probably gonna kiss me. Well, okay then. That very clearly set the
stage for our "first official date."

3 comments:

  1. PHOTO NOW!!!!!!!!!!!
    I hope it wasn't a breezy evening...or was maybe ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Love reading your wonderful stories! I remember hearing them from Kim back in 2007. You both make me smile!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Still waiting for the kilt photo!!

    ReplyDelete