Falling For Casual

Chapter 7

      Remember when I mentioned how I lived with my ex? Well, since she was very present in my life because of our living situation, she began to notice how my feelings for this man started to develop. I won't say this was all circumstantial, her knowing because of close proximity. In all honesty, she would have known regardless if we shared the same living space or not. I wouldn't have had the strength to just up and stop talking to her, cut her out my life cold turkey. The thought of it now gives me hives.

I remember when we first met, a job I was forced to get because of my first failed year of college. Being a college dropout was never something I could've predicted, especially knowing who my mother was. A strict catholic school teacher gave birth to me. And, being the first born and all, she had many unrealistic expectations of who I was supposed to be and how I was meant to live my life. But, being the rebellious and trauma-filled pre-adult I was, I went against the grain in every aspect. I barely passed high school, got expelled from private school, came out as gay. It was all just too much for her to handle, not that she was a saint herself. So, getting word of my 0.0 GPA in a college shouldn't have come as a shock to her, and yet it did. The final decision that would deem her a good parent in the long run? Force me to either try school again, which honestly was too expensive for me to do if I planned to just drink my days away and never attend class like I did the first time around. Or get a job.

I'm sure you guessed which one I went for.

I walked into that dingy, pretentious, less-than-a-restaurant-but-more-than-a-fast-food-joint and saw her standing there with her uniform hat low and her messed up black boots. At the time, I was trying to do everything, and anyone, I could to distract me from my cancerous first love. In college I got with anyone who would give me the time of day, but also who I found slightly attractive. I had to have some kind of morals.

And so, when I eyed Delaney there, with her streak of blonde hair in the front as if she were trying to cosplay Rouge from X-men, I thought to myself 'bingo'.

It wasn't love at first sight. Honestly, far from it. I just wanted someone new and interesting to come along and numb my mind and my heart from all the pain my ex had given me. Plus, she looked like a complete asshole which, at the time, was my type. I craved someone I knew wouldn't get attached. Someone who just wanted to do with me as they pleased and didn't care about my feelings. If it was intentional, the hurt and the carelessness towards me, than I felt like I had control over it, over them. It was far from what my ex put me through because this time I got to choose who and how I would let my feelings get toyed with. I was becoming a masochist without really knowing that's what was happening in the first place.

Once I got her in my sights, I couldn't look away. She turned out to be harder to impress than any other girl I'd had before. Maybe that's what kept me so intrigued. I needed her to want me, and the fact that nothing was working, no tricks I could pull out of anywhere, infuriated me. What was it going to take for her to notice me? To look at me from longer than three damn seconds?

This game of cat and mouse had my skin hot and my brain wired. Every morning I woke up and put on that awful uniform, dragging myself to this place of overwork and underpay, I wondered if today would be the day she actually saw me. And every time I left early or watched her leave with her group of friends —friends I couldn't get to notice me either—it only riled me up more. I wanted to come up with a plan. Something that she wouldn't be able to fight no matter how hard she tried.

I knew plenty of our coworkers had their eyes on her. The competition didn't bother me in the least. I had plenty of experience with weeding out people who stood in my way. What did get under my skin was when one of our coworkers had mentioned the two others she had slept with. My ears stood at attention then, eyes scanning every inch of those two women who were nothing alike. They were even farther away from me. Skin significantly lighter than mine, tattoos painting their skin, hair short and straight, one of them just as short as the strands hanging by her ears.