So I talked to him last night...

I hadn't talked to this particular tall boy, we'll call him 'T', since around the last time I blogged about him. Avoiding him was unintentional--I didn't return one of his phone calls and chose not to pick it up when he called my cell phone when I was in Denver with my parents a couple weeks ago. Ok, maybe it wasn't completely unintentional--I may have been practicing my separation coping mechanism.

Anyway, he called me last night, leaving one message on my machine at home and one message on my cell phone. He must've believed I was avoiding his phone calls because apparently he called my cell phone three times in a row--thinking it was my home phone and I would tire of the phone ringing and pick it up. I was at three consecutive meetings however and had my phone shut off, so I didn't receive any of these calls. When I got home, I called him back. Why? Let's examine the reasons:
-Judging by the excessive number of phone calls he made last night, he was about to get very angry or very sulky. He is not pleasant to deal with in either of those moods. (Have I mentioned he's moody?)
-I did feel slightly bad for not returning his phone calls.
-I thought there might be an important reason he was so persistent last night.
-We're friends, right? No reason we can't talk.

So we were on the phone for like a hour last night. A short conversation for us compared to our glory days. There wasn't a lot to say. We compared notes over the last couple weeks, I tried not to bore him with too many sorority-based monologues, and there was a little flirty banter during our better moments. But at one point, to make conversation, I was forced to ask about his pets. If that isn't the bottom of the conversation bucket, I don't know what is. I will admit there were moments during the conversation when I remembered why I spent 4+ hours a week on the phone with him.

At one point I called him "sweetie" in that sarcastic/condescending tone familiar to many of you. He told me not to do that because it made him think of an old diner waitress addressing him. (Insert eye roll here.) Then at one point I told him something he said was sexy. Patented long pause that he ended with, "Like a friend." At which point I said, "I was kidding," in a very exasperated tone. I was only half-kidding.

Something came up about our past non-relationships and I said he'd had plenty of chances. He disagreed with me and I started to argue, when he interrupted me to explain he thought I'd meant he'd had plenty of chances to have s*x with me. Where does this stuff come from? He modified the statement to say that the thing about our past non-relationships was that we aren't on the same page about when we've had relationships in the past. That might be the most accurate statement of the evening.

Basically, I'm still frustrated because I want to be more than friends but I'm not willing to tell him that straight out because he'll reject me. And if I'm forced to just be his friend, our relationship is going to continue to be different than it has over the past year--no more long conversations every other day, taking his phone calls when it is inconvenient for me, or flirting and agreeing with him non-stop. He can deal.

P.S. The fact that I didn't pick up a call from him when I was in Denver with my parents clued my mom into the fact that the decision to just be friends wasn't as mutual as I was pretending it was. Although when she found out we were just going to be friends, she freely told me that they didn't think he was good for me and they were relieved that we wouldn't be dating. Apparently when he had dinner with my parents he minimized the activities that I do which fulfill me (GS, sorority, etc.) and didn't impress them otherwise. Interesting.