Aside from the crap weather I smuggled through customs, it was a most perfect weekend back.
Working at the bar, Friday night was a packed moneymaker of a night.
Drinking at the Press Room, Saturday night marked the first occasion I didn't flinch when the boy was introduced (via a third party) as my boyfriend.
After dropping off some books and catching up with the broken bar boss (she had a bike accident last week), I go for a four mile run to the beach before I collect my prize: bottomless mimosas with Costa Rica Sam, the girl with the perpetual boyfriend, she who has been hurt so thoroughly and so originally and so constantly and still throws herself back into the game as though nothing bad has ever happened in the history of the world (and they call me sunshine), who is trying to coach me through my bizarre disinclination with the whole boyfriend/girlfriend terminology.
"It's not that I don't like labels," I say after she suggests as much. "I just have such a bad association with boyfriends." Aaron was not exactly ideal: he destroyed my confidence, my friendships, my bank account. He did teach me how to cook, which is why I'm so purpose-based in my relationships now.
Sam assures me, as many others have, that every relationship is different, I learned lessons, I'm a different person, the boy's a good one, etc, etc. I still can't shake the feeling that something's wrong, but she's got my laughing hysterically (to the detriment of the pitiable foreign couple nursing a hangover two tables over) after describing the unbelievably bad sex she had the night before I can get to the bottom of it.
"He wouldn't stop kissing me, even after I clamped my mouth shut. It was suffocating! I'd purse my lips and he'd, like, force his tongue in, and I'd keep my teeth clenched and he'd be frenching my gums." I completely reevaluate all the sex I've had in my life and decide that, compared to this, none of it was ever bad.
We go to play a game or two of pool at Old King's Road and I get home hoping the boy will still be passed out in my bed, but I've been gone for hours and he's left to help his sister run errands. I spend the last few hours of my vacation reading the Nick Hornby book I picked up at the library and eating the far superior British chocolate bars I've brought home. I'd be deliriously happy if I could feel anything at all.