The thing with the L-word

Irish has a thing for this girl at work.

She's a girl I really like, too, which means I hate myself even more for feeling personally rejected/jealous/confused (because shouldn't he not be over [fiancée] enough for this yet?). So he wanted to go get coffee after work yesterday, to talk about that, his inability to interact with women, and my & Lui's plan to better our relationship.

[Side note: in a previous IM conversation regarding Irish's inability to interact with women, I'd made a joke along the lines of, "And what the hell am I?" His response: "You're [fiancée]... kinda." It wasn't the first time he remarked on how much I'm like her reincarnated. I feel that this is probably not healthy.]

And because I wanted to make yesterday afternoon as spectacularly torturous as possible - first a bikini wax, then this coffee date to discuss things I'd rather ignore - I went.

It turned out not to be that bad, with him concluding that he shouldn't date people at work anyway because it could get awkward (although I did have to listen to some sappy bullshit about what a great smile this coworker has), with him more or less listening to me when I suggested he wasn't ready to date yet because if he was, the idea wouldn't freak him out quite so much, and, as mentioned in my previous post, with him telling me I'm going to be ok. So I felt like I was three for three, and as I no longer had the desire to ask him whether he's really just a pathological liar, we fell back into joking around like we usually do.

It bears mentioning that, a few weeks ago, Irish and I both came up with Top Five lists of people we work with, based on looks alone, and have given each other shit ever since about who we each find more attractive than each other. (This is friend behavior, right?) So yesterday we finally decided to revise the lists - or create new lists - to factor in personality. He went first, because there are only 22 women at our work and more than half are old enough to be his mother. And I came in an undecided first-or-second, sharing, of course, with the girl he's crushing on.

Then he had the task of naming all of the 40-plus males working in the store, so that I could narrow them down to about 10 maybes, and then refuse to make an actual list. It was a few minutes later, and we were talking about something else, when I finally rattled off, "You, Erik, Drew, Garth, Tristan." He got all excited ("I made number one?!" - I never did tell him whether or not he was even on my looks-only list, only ever joking with him that maybe on a good day, he could be number five), and then admitted that I was his number one, too, since he knows me better and spends more time with me than with the other girl. So I guess we were both stupidly pleased then. We agreed not to tell Lui that if we were going to date anyone from work, it would be each other. Later, when he hugged me goodbye, he called me "my number one".

But that's not the point of this story. The point is that as we were getting up to leave, we were making fun of each other or something, and - I wish I could remember what was going on, but - he said something along the lines of, "As much as I love you," or, "I still love you," or it may have just been "I love you", but with that casual, berating undertone that you use when you're testing that word for the first time. He probably thought nothing of it.

"I'm sorry, what?" I honestly hadn't quite heard, and was honestly taken aback. He repeated the playful dig exactly, and this time I definitely heard the L-word.

Imagine the character of Ursula (Phoebe's sister) on Friends. "...Okay."