Forward Thinking

He's never read Jane Austen but won't rush me (geek alert) as I read the entire comic book version of Pride & Prejudice at the book store for two hours. He smiles at my appreciation and slight obsession with Austen and all of her leading ladies, just as I smile at his Pixar animated shorts fetish.

If I didn't love him, then being interested in those niche subjects that he has grown to intently follow over the years, would be painful to stand through and even more torturous to discuss and learn about.

I realized that before him, a 12- minute cartoon with no words may have been Oscar worthy and I still wouldn't have watched it, but because he's so wildly interested in them, I know that I am now seeing each one through his eyes because he's sitting right next to me.

The night he met me out, right before we had our first kiss, he told me:

"I like you. I know we work together and I know there's an age difference. But I don't care. I just want to get to know you."

And if we hadn't been friends for the past five months I may have just written it off to be another line. But I had been dealing with the same back and forth. We had been texting each other and, (what I though then) coincidentally ending up at the same company bar nights for about two months straight. I pushed aside any feelings I had because of the two underlying factors of age and work relation. But later I realized that our relationship began before he met me out that night.

His declaration, though heavily reminded me of Mr. Darcy, affirmed for me that we aren't always aware of a new beginning in our lives until it's right in front of us. We get busy and distracted, things change and start over without our realizing it, all the time.

A potential can become real in one easy moment of truth.

Austen understood two things-

our lack of fully understanding everything about the relationships around us, even though ones we are in, and our need to find different ways to go after what we truly want.

The constant in both truths- the satisfying predictable unpredictability of people.