... continued

The next morning when I woke up, I still went over to the guest room because my parents had gone to work. As he held me, we talked about how the decision we made the night before was for the best. I couldn't help feeling that if it were for the best, then maybe we shouldn't be laying in bed together still. We had planned to go to a nearby museum for the day, but we didn't get to it until 3:30 in the afternoon. Mostly we just stayed home and talked.

In the end, we decided to keep trying because we still felt so strongly about each other. He told me that he'd been seeing a therapist, nothing new, something he's done for the past year and a half. What surprised me was how much he told his therapist: everything from the details of his accident, his physical condition, to girls he's been with, and our sex life. The week before he came to visit me in Ctown, he went to see her, and he told her that he was thinking of breaking up with me. She asked him if he thought this was a pattern in his life, because she was there through his last breakup not long before I came along. He said he became very defensive and told her that it wasn't a pattern, that if he and I broke up, it would be completely different from his breakup with Nora.

When his therapist asked him why, he said that he never wanted to be with Nora forever. When he broke up with her, he no longer wanted to be with here. Whereas with me, his wanting to break up with me isn't because he doesn't love me. He does, and doesn't want to ever lose me, but if we can't ever work, then we still have to break up.

I'm glad that our breakup wasn't final, but I can't help having a sinking feeling either. This was how it went with Key. We loved each other but realized that our fundamental differences just were too much, so we tried to break up. We ended up scrapping the breakup because it hurt so much to break up. Except the "let's keep trying" only lasted another few weeks, and we broke up for good. I can't help feeling that this is going to be a repeat with RC. It's too hard to break up, so we try at it a couple of times before we finally succeed because we finally accept that it indeed would not work out between us.

In the meantime, my head is a complete blur. Honestly, I don't think I love RC as much as he does me. I compare my feelings for RC to Key a lot, and no matter how I look at it, stuff just don't add up. I think about how absolutely certain I was about loving Key, how much I meant it when I would tell him "I love you", how I would cry whenever I would see him off at the airport. Somehow, I just don't feel that intensity with RC. I don't know if that's because Key is the first person I truly loved, so all emotions get intensified, or just that I don't feel that strongly about RC.

Amid all of this, Willow came back into the picture. RC left Wednesday morning. I had promised to burn a CD for Willow with a particular movie on it, but I hadn't gotten around to it before RC came into town. I wanted to call Willow Wednesday after RC left to see if he'd be up for drinks after work, and so I can give him the CD. In the end, I chickened out, didn't do it, but Willow emailed me on Thursday,

"hey I hope your bf had a good time in ctown. any plans for rest of the week?"

I bit the cue and asked him if he wanted to meet up later on Thursday, especially since I still owe him the movie. He emailed back (from work) asking if I want to get dinner, but I told my parents I'd eat at home that night, so we settled on "drinks or something", and that I would call him after dinner.

When I called him after dinner, he had an idea to go see Babel because he remembered that I had mentioned it during one of our conversations as a movie that I wanted to see. It was only playing in this one theater about 20 minutes away, so we agreed to meet up for coffee first before going to the movie. When we met up, he teased me about how I must love to drive because why else would I insist on driving my own car instead of having him pick me up from home? So I rode with him from the coffee place to the movie theater 20 minutes away.

It turns out that Babel's won't start playing until this Saturday, so we saw another movie that was playing there instead. The theater's not all that popular, so we ended up being the only ones at the movie, a private showing. During the course of the movie, we moved in closer and closer to each other, and by the end of the movie, he had an arm around me. I wasn't sure what to do. I wanted his arms on my shoulder, but I didn't want to acknowledge the arm around my shoulder ... it was a mad struggle in my own mind. I kept trying to imagine RC, to see his face, so that I would feel guilty about what I was doing. At the same time, I kept wondering what Willow was trying to do, if he's going to try anything else, and just what the heck was I doing anyway?

After the movie, neither one of us acknowledged his arm around my shoulder; we both got up and left. He drove under the speed limit the whole way back (I thought it was to prolong the drive, but maybe I'm reading too much into things). When we got back to the coffee shop where my car was parked, I handed him the CD and practically jumped out of the car. I wanted to stay in the car, to pause like it was the end of a first or second date, to see what he would say or do. I didn't jump out of the car because that's what I wanted to do; I jumped out of the car because that's what I thought the right thing to do was. As I fumbled through my purse, looking for my car keys, I glanced over at him: he had one arm on the wheel and his head down with a blank expression on his face. Again, maybe I'm reading too much into what wasn't there, but I thought he looked like someone who knew he had just lost his chance.

I think back to all the thoughts running through my head last night ... I really wanted to be with Willow. The attraction is still most definitely there. I remember wanting to inch closer to catch more of the smell of his cologne. I remember admiring his shirt and how good it looked on him. I remember wanting to lean into him when he had his arm around my shoulder. But I would then reality check myself ... even had I been single, maybe we would have gotten a bit farther than arm around the shoulder, but would we be able to have done much else in way of having a relationship? It would start long-distance with no chance for change. I need to stay in Boston for at least another two or three years; I doubt he would move. Where would that leave us anyway? A phantom relationship conducted over email and phone and IM?

*sigh*

Where does this leave RC and me? I just talked to him on the phone, and he says he thinks about how close he came to losing me, and that really scares him. I wanted to reassure him, but I didn't want to outright lie. I told him I loved him, but I wasn't even sure myself how I felt when I said that. I said it with a lump in my throat.

I told my good friend YY that I don't think RC and I will last much longer. That makes me so sad because he is such a good guy. But I can't stay with him if my heart isn't 100% into our relationship. At the same time, RC has a set of exams at the end of January that really determines his future. I don't want to screw with anything before then because I don't want to distract him from studying.

Even my mom told me that I should wait until his exams are over before I bring up anything about my parents not being able to accept him (yup, that's an issue too, still). I personally think that's her softening after having met him and spent some time with him and realized how absolutely wonderful he is. But in the end, if my feelings don't change, I think things have to end. It's just a matter of when.