I get really frustrated when people don't say what they mean. It shouldn't be so hard for people to just be upfront about what they want, but, as a writer, I understand the need to be creative through word use. A lot of the time I'll re-write a sentence thinking "well, this is to the point...but it could sound so much more EXOTIC and EXCITING! I MUST EMBELLISH THE TRUTH!" But there's a fine line between embellishment and lying, so it might be best to just refrain from saying what you don't mean.
Once upon a time, at one of my earlier jobs, there was a girl I worked closely with, and while we developed a good working relationship, it never came to anything more than that. We grew to be facebook friends, but I'm not sure that either of us ever so much as posted on one another's profiles, so I don't think that I made nearly as big an impression on her as I would have wanted to.
During her tenure at our workplace, Erica and I became something of a tag-team, as I rarely had the chance to work with anyone else (not that I would have wanted to). It became quite clear to our other co-workers that I had a bit of a crush on her, but Erica was either oblivious to that fact or chose to ignore the fact.
I didn't expect anything to happen between us for a myriad of reasons -- we lacked a relationship outside of work, she had a boyfriend, and, like most of the other women described in this blog, she was crazy out of my league -- so I knew my crush on her was headed nowhere, but I still looked forward to working with her, and, on the odd occasion that I was stuck with someone else for the day, it was a disappointment.
A lot of our time together was spent in the absence of anything to do and would spend our time talking to one another. To be honest, I thought that she was kind of...dumb...but it didn't much matter because she was just so damn pretty. What made things satisfying for me was that I could make her laugh quite easily, so she always seemed about as happy to be working with me as I did to be working with her. It's probably that aspect of our relationship that turned me into that guy that creates an imaginary love out of nothing.
I wish I could say that I wasn't the kind of person that would go around thinking that a simple friendship with someone was anything more than that, but that would be a complete lie. A lot of the time, when my shift with Erica was over, I would go home and just think about how much fun we had had during our day, and then wonder if she was thinking the same. And then I would conclude that she must be thinking the same, because it was just so much fun!
My thoughts would continue on in this pattern for the next few months, and I would keep needing to tell myself that I was imagining things and there wasn't anything really there. And then came that day that I made an ass of myself. More so that usual, I mean.
We were partway through our shift, and our manager had come up to Erica complaining about something. He had gone off on her telling her that she needed to work a little harder and focus on what she was doing, and it was really the sort of conversation that you would have wanted to have in private and not in front of your peers, but...what can you do? When our manager had finally left, Erica fell completely silent. I knew that I had to say something to break the tension or just sit in the awkward silence and wait for the other shoe to drop, so I made an offhanded comment about something crawling up our manager's ass, and it had been so unexpected that Erica burst out laughing and had to look away as she had started to cry a little.
When she finally composed herself, she said "oh, god, I love you so much!" and that's when I apparently had some sort of psychotic break. I think what I said, breathlessly, was "ohmygodthat'samazingIloveyoutoo!"
As soon as it was out of my mouth I remembered that I was completely insane. My mouth dropped open and I started mouthing a silent stutter as my mind worked to think of anything to save what I had just said. Her laughter died down slowly and turned into that awkward fake-chuckle that people do when they're really uncomfortable, and she quickly excused herself from the conversation.
We worked in silence for the rest of our shift, and we had apparently come to an unspoken understanding that we would just never mention the situation again. The next time we worked together it was business as usual, and I tried extra hard to be more hilarious than usual just to distance myself from the faux-pas from before.
It wasn't all that surprising to me that we didn't work with one another for much longer than that.
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