March Madness

This chapter provides details about one of the biggest squabbles that J.C. and I have ever gotten into.

By the time March rolled around, we were still "talking." As glad as I was about that...well, as you can probably imagine, I still wanted us to actually be together again. And although I was trying hard not to let it happen, that point in time was one of the occasions on which my patience had begun to wear incredibly thin, and I began to get a little offended and even angry that he was still refusing to get back with me. After all, I kept thinking to myself, if he seriously loves me and wants me around, shouldn't he want to get back into a relationship?

 

On the night of March 14, I texted him and asked yet again about us getting back together. He responded by saying that he just needed more time, and I asked him to flat-out tell me what he wanted me to do, making it clear that if he wanted me to give up, I would do it. After waiting for several nerve-wracking minutes, I received the answer to my question.

 

"Move on."

 

In the days that followed, I tried my absolute hardest to do as he had instructed me to. I texted him a few more times in the immediate aftermath--as in, the first two or three days--but finally, I started forcing myself to just leave him alone, reasoning that there was nothing that I could do that was going to change his mind. However, I never stopped praying that somehow, someday...he would change it on his own and come back into my life.

 

We went for about two weeks without seeing or speaking to each other. Then, while I was at work on a Thursday afternoon, he randomly texted me out of the blue and asked me how I had been. I said that I had been fine--I was lying, of course--and asked him the same question. We talked off and on for a few hours throughout the rest of the evening.

 

The following Tuesday night, we spoke once again. Unlike the previous conversation, this one was not a very positive one at all. I'll make a long story short and just say that the day before, I had been hanging out with Daniel--whom I had actually "talked" to before I met J.C. and who had introduced me to Fuller--even though I knew that J.C. had never liked me being around him (back when we were actually dating, Daniel had made up rumors on more than one occasion that J.C. was cheating on me with a multitude of other girls, and aside from that, I think it just bugged J.C. for me to be around him knowing that I had come so close to dating him).

 

Daniel, being the incredibly tight-lipped secret-keeper that he was (that description of him was completely sarcastic, by the way), decided to tell J.C. about our encounter, claiming that he didn't feel right keeping quiet about it since he and J.C. were "such good friends." I begged him not to tell, knowing that J.C. would most definitely not be pleased. However, not more than five minutes later, I realized that my efforts to keep him from squealing were in vain.

 

The first text that I received was from Fuller, who had apparently received a text from Daniel containing the news as well. "Keep me out of it," he texted, "but just giving you a heads-up. Daniel ran his mouth."

 

Each text after that came from J.C. It was around 9:30 at that time, and we didn't stop fighting about the situation until 2:00 the next morning (although we did take breaks here and there, as he was working and I was sleeping...or trying to sleep, at least). The conversation ended with him telling me to come over to the apartment before going to class. Earlier in the conversation, he had also denied ever telling me to move on.

 

As I drove to the apartment, I was overwhelmed with nervousness. I feared that J.C. and I were just going to end up continuing the fight where it had left off in the early hours of that morning. We had never fought face-to-face (not in a completely serious, non-joking way, that is), and I definitely wasn't looking forward to the possibility of us doing so on that day (especially since it was going to be our first time to see each other in over two weeks). He was in the shower when I arrived, so I just sat on his bed and waited for him to finish up, praying fervently to God all the while that things were going to be okay.

 

Eventually, he got out of the shower and joined me in his room. As we laid there watching TV and making a little bit of small talk, my nerves were still extremely on-edge. I had no idea how I was supposed to act, what I was supposed to say, or anything like that.

 

Then, out of the blue, he grabbed me and just held me tight. Feeling shocked, as I definitely hadn't been expecting him to do anything of that sort, I embraced him in return and softly told him that I was "so sorry." Instead of providing a verbal response to my statement, he did something that shocked me even more. He kissed me.

 

Oddly enough, the way that we were on that morning was actually the best that we had been since the previous summer. I was, as you can imagine, quite confused as to why he was behaving toward me in that manner after he had been so angry with me the night before. But at the same time, I wasn't about to ask any questions or complain in the slightest. And as I left the apartment and progressed across the highway to school, I silently prayed that things would keep getting even better.