It was one of those horseshoe-shaped booths, so there was plenty of room. But we were a recovering-alcoholic sandwich: I was the fresh, hot meat pressed in between two slices of aged whitebread. Ryan could feel my body temperature rise as he was sitting next to me. He put his hand on my leg, and said, "Whoa, Peter, you gotta feel this...". Ryan rubbed my leg up and down, getting closer to my crotch, and Peter watched with excitement. I was hot, and getting hotter.
Bruce called me on my phone right at that moment. I didn't answer, of course. It had been a strange week-and-a-half ever since he came up to talk to me on the steps at school on the way to the parking lot.
Bruce was a literature and writing major (like me, before I stopped double-majoring), and he was my age, an older college student - he'd served in the army and entered college after two tours in Iraq. He was Hmong, Mormon. He loved Dante Alighieri, John Milton, death metal, Asian martial arts flicks and his Mitsubishi Eclipse. His dad's first wife and son were killed in a mine field as they escaped China, and then his dad met his mom after settling down in a Hmong community in Merced. He has 9 brothers and sisters. I wasn't sure if that was because they were Hmong, or because they were Mormon.
It was the last week of January 2013 and the semester had just started. It was the first time we'd spoken - I didn't recognize him at first. He told me we were in the same American Lit class the semester before. He made me laugh when I told him I was a VPA major ("What is that?" he asked. "Visual...Pterodactyl...Alligator?") so I offered him a ride to his car, since he had parked at the shopping center across the street. He asked for my number, we exchanged, and I called him on my way home and we set up a coffee date for the next day.
The next day he told me he had had a crush on me the whole prior semester: "You were the only person in the entire class who, when you talked, didn't use the word 'like'. I was very impressed." I started spending a lot of time with him over the next few days, spending the night and whatnot. He was really into me. Thought I was beautiful, smart, funny, and melted when I sang to him inside Panera Bread. I had him show me how to hold the arcade gun when we played Time Crisis 4 after seeing a cheesy vampire movie at the theater, and I think that's where he really fell in love, hard.
But I soon noticed that Bruce was very immature. He was willing to not fuck me, so that was nice, but he had a really annoying attitude. He kind of acted like a little boy most of the time, and was very judgmental and high-and-mighty, like his shit didn't stink. It just really got on my nerves, and no matter how much he liked me, I really just couldn't stand the guy. Plus I could tell how tiny his penis was when he dry-humped me from the spooning position. So I just wasn't all that into him.
After I ignored his call at Denny's it gave me a chance to vent to Peter and Ryan about him and talk about how I wanted to get rid of him but didn't know how. I'm not sure if that was what prompted Ryan to suggest he and I go to a hotel room and him carrying me out of the restaurant over his shoulder to his car (and Peter asking if he could come watch, though we declined), or if the latter were completely unrelated to Bruce's phone call.
And it didn't work, anyway. I told Bruce on the phone the next day, but he 'forgave' me, since we hadn't "defined the relationship". So, I found some other guy to make my boyfriend (#22) - since obviously the one-night stand didn't do the trick (I'd wanted Ryan for the boyfriend thing, but he wasn't interested).
