Where did you meet Nick? Where was your first date?
Nick and I met when he started working at the grocery store where I worked. He was 17 and I was 18, and I really do remember the first time I saw him. He was wearing khaki pants, a white button down, and a tie. I myself was wearing an attractive blue and white striped polyester cashier's smock, but he swears he remembers the moment he first saw me and was instantly intrigued.
The truth is, we didn't start dating for a couple of years. He actually only worked there for a few months, but during that time we grew to be good friends. I have sweet memories of hanging out with him on my break while he played a new Metallica song for me, and we used to rock out every time he worked, listening to music in the computer room where it was my job to cash out the cashiers at the end of their shifts.
After he moved on to another job, several months went by without me seeing him. Then one night he showed up at the store with a few of his friends. I remember just how he looked, sitting on the tailgate of his blue Chevy Blazer, wearing a plaid shirt, a pair of shorts, and a worn out ETSU cap, and I remember just how delighted I was to see him. I had recently lost some weight, and he told me how good I looked and enveloped me in a big hug.
From that point it seemed like we ended up in the same group a lot. One night a mutual friend invited me along on a group camping trip. It was less an actual camping trip than an all night ramble that took 15 or 20 of us all over the area, from a random field where we all just hung out together to a search for a haunted house to a group swim in the lake. Getting out of the lake, Nick and I huddled together in a towel, and it felt so good to have him wrap his arms around me. Sitting together in a friend's Jeep in the field, he told me he and some friends were planning on going to the mountains to swim in a few hours and asked me if I wanted to come with him. I said yes, and so our group trip turned into our first date.
By the time we headed to the mountains I had been awake for around 30 hours, so the whole trip had something of a dream like quality to it. It's kind of funny - Kate went with us on that trip, but it was years before I remembered that detail. One thing that I've always remembered seems really insignificant, but it stuck out to me - We were listening to a CD we both liked, and I wanted to listen to a particular song, and he wanted to listen to a different one. At this point in my life I was pretty used to attention from guys, and I was also pretty used to getting my way. He was very polite about it, but he refused to skip the song he wanted to listen to to listen to mine first. I pouted a little bit, but truthfully it impressed me that he wasn't putting up with my crap.
Within a few weeks we were spending hours on the phone, and one night he asked me to officially start dating. Frankly he caught me off guard. It had only been within the last year or so that I had really blossomed and started attracting a lot of attention from guys. Unfortunately a lot of those guys were less interested in my personality and more interested in my newly slender body. Truthfully the confidence that gave me was shallow, and at the core I was still a deeply insecure girl. I automatically distrusted anyone who showed an apparent interest in me for me, unable to really believe that I was worth it if there was no fooling around involved. But I really cared for Nick (and in fact had already started falling in love although I couldn't see it then), so I agreed to start dating.
It was only about a week later, during a hot and heavy makeout session in a friend's basement that I knew I had to break up with him. I was so afraid that the precious thing we had was headed toward something cheap and meaningless, something unworthy of us and that would end up hurting him, and the thought terrified me. Breaking up with him was the hardest thing I'd ever done, but I really thought I was protecting him.
That was at the end of summer. He was awfully hurt, and he withdrew from me. I missed him terribly, but I tried to move on, and I dated another guy for a little while. As it turned out though, Nick and I just couldn't quit each other. Nick was the first person who had ever kissed me with anything other than pure lust, and those kisses were food for my soul. We found ourselves stealing moments alone when we could, and that Christmas we kissed passionately under the mistletoe while his roommates stared with unabashed glee. It all seems terribly innocent now, but we were both virgins, (and I was determined to remain one until marriage), and the urgency in our embraces was heady and dangerous stuff to me.
By the beginning of the year the tension of the situation had run me ragged. During some of our many hours long phone conversations, I somehow found myself sharing my fascination with the idea of being spanked, and on New Year's Eve he gave me my first grown up spanking. This added another layer of seduction to it for me and left me reeling with how vulnerable I was with the need for him. I wanted him unbearably, but I just couldn't resign myself to the thought that I could be good for him. I believed myself to be too wild (ha!), and I just knew that I would hurt him if we started dating again. January 22, 1998, things came to a head for me. On my lunch break, I stopped to see our closest mutual friend - I'll call him Brad. I told him that I was going to have to pull away from Nick, that I felt like I was leading him along and that he couldn't handle our friendship any more. Brad's response absolutely knocked me flat. He told me straight out that I was the one that couldn't handle the friendship, that Nick knew just what he wanted, and I was the one who was scared.
When I left his house (by the way, this is the same house I that I mentioned we'd like to buy), I was very irritated with him, but he'd given me a lot to think about. The rest of the night I prayed that God would show me how to let him down easy. What He showed me instead was how very devastated I would be if I never got to be close to Nick again, never got to hold or kiss him again. And I thought about every other guy I'd ever been interested in, and it was abruptly clear to me how very little it would affect me if I never saw any of them again.
Late that night, Brad came in to buy cigarettes. Bursting with joy at the knowledge that this was really it, I'd finally realized who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, I asked him where Nick was. Back in those days we spent almost every night at the Waffle House down the road, and he was there eating. I asked Brad if he could tell him to come down and see me. Brad was clearly hesitant, convinced I was about to break his heart, but he agreed to pass along my message.
Almost as soon as he left, my manager came out and told me she didn't need me for the last hour of my shift and I could leave, an incredibly rare occurrence. She didn't have to tell me twice, and I bounced out the door and into my car, headed toward Waffle House and my destiny. Brad saw me walk in, and it was with a look of alarm that he watched me take Nick's hand and ask him to join me outside.
Once we were outside I literally pushed Nick up against the wall and demanded "You know what?" "What?" he asked, looking a little alarmed himself. "This not being able to keep our hands off each other stuff is going to have to stop!" "Um, okay, I - " "Because" I interrupted him "I'm not going to be able to control myself around you if we're going to be dating!" At that point my tongue was down his throat, and when I pulled back he looked like someone had just told him he'd won a lottery he didn't know he had a ticket for. When we walked back inside holding hands and grinning like idiots, Brad looked like you could have knocked him over with a feather.
It only took us another 6 weeks to get engaged, and 5 months and 4 days after that fateful night we walked down the aisle. This June we will celebrate 15 years of marriage.
Anyway, I know that was really long and drawn out and encompassed a little more than just our first date, but it was fun to reminisce. :)
Thanks, Anonymous! I'm still open to questions!
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