my own stupidity

Irish actually called me last night. I grabbed my phone like it was gold, flipped it open immediately, but then tried to sound calm and collected when I said, "hello". He called to say hi, to see how things were going, and to wish me a good trip if he doesn't see me before I leave on Thursday. I quickly interjected that I want to see him before I leave, and he floundered around a little, "oh, okay, I was just assuming you didn't want to be bothered because of your thesis proposal."

So we set up lunch for today, to meet at 11:40am. All sounded well, and I started rehearsing lines in my head as to what I would to say to him (I'm sorry I've been a bad friend; RC and I are together; I'm really sorry, etc. etc). Except I overslept my alarm and woke up at 12:02pm today. Yeah, take that for irony. I grabbed my phone in alarm and called, trying to sound as groggy as I could, "Irish, I am so so sorry; I totally slept through my alarm and just woke up." Ugh, how much lamer can I be???

He said "oh, don't worry about it. I ran into another friend, so we're having lunch here; you're welcome to join us if you want." So I put on some clothes, ran downstairs, grabbed my bike and went. Once I got there, his friend was actually just leaving, so I thought to myself, "Okay, at least I can still talk to Irish one-on-one."

Except he didnt seem to want to talk about anything substantive. I managed to squeeze in one sentence of "I don't want to dismiss what you emailed about, so I just want to make sure to say in person that I'm really sorry." He totally non-chalantly said, "Oh, don't worry about it. I was just upset that weekend. Apology accepted, but you didn't have to apologize."

Case closed, and he totally changed the subject to something trivial before I could say anything else, and he had a class to run to in 5 minutes, so I couldn't say anything else. I really wanted to tell him about RC, just to set the record straight, and to finally be mature and confront the situation with Irish and me always teetering on this fine line between friendship and dating and telling him that I choose friendship only. He's probably figured that by now, but I felt like it would only be right if I were to actually say it to him in person. I didn't get to say that. In fact, our whole conversation seemed strained; I'm not really sure what would even happen with our friendship.

I've been keeping RC in the loop through all this saga with Irish: from the whole feeling really really terrible about having been a bad friend to starting to feel annoyed that Irish was being so immature to the whole sleeping through half of our lunch date today. RC recently voiced the opinion that he thought Irish was going a bit overboard in his unwillingness to call me or talk to me, and that he's being too passive aggressive.

It's nice to know that RC is on my side of things (though my side's the only one he's heard). At the same time though, I can't help but feel guilty that I haven't given him the full story on Irish. All I've told him is that Irish and I are good friends. RC's picked up on the fact that he thinks Irish may resent him for taking up a lot of my time, and the words on the tip of my tongue that I never dare say are, "Yeah, that and because Irish wishes he were in your shoes being the one dating me."

I've come so close so many times in coming clean on the whole thing with RC, going into the whole fiasco of Irish and I going back and forth between friendship and something more, but I would always hold my tongue at the last minute. I want to tell RC the full story, but at this stage, I feel that it's wiser if he weren't in the know, especially since he works so closely with Irish in the same lab. I don't want to add to the awkwardness of his lab situation by making him aware of the full complexity.

Is that the right decision? I hope so. Maybe some months down the road, I'll fill RC in on the loop. But right now, things are so fresh that this part of the story may be better left unsaid.