Must Love Dogs

I go to the offleash park most every weekend. Generally on Saturday mornings, after I've returned home from my watersport practice that begins at an ungodly and horrific hour, have had my coffee, and manage to apply some lipgloss in case the park's demographic doesn't consist, as per its usual, entirely of 50-something lesbians and/or small children who always insist on talking to me.

Today, I never quite made it.

The 26 Year Old and I have navigated the waters of the Weekend Sleepover before. Everyone's familiar with the concept: a boy sleeps over and when dawn breaks, there's no job to get to or meetings you're late for. You have nothing, whether you like it or not, but time.

The very first instance of the weekend sleepover, it was summer and we'd just started dating. I returned home from practice, in a rather unbecoming state, and to my surprise, J's brooding sexiness was lazed casually in a wide beam of sunshine upon my front porch, reading a book and eating string cheese.

Only a 25 year old would have stuck around.

(Or a 26 year old.)

This morning, I walked in the door to see J lounging sleepily on my couch, thumbing through a different book this time, one he'd plucked from my shelf last night before we entered the making out portion of the evening. Dropping my damp clothes to the floor, I made a b-line for the shower, knowing that the sooner I no longer smelled of lake water, the sooner I'd be nestled in that soft yet slightly prickly spot where a boy's jawline meets his neck, with one particular boy's long, slender arms wrapped tightly and warmly around me.

We stayed like that for a good long while.

And then we spent the next four hours doing something we never got around to the first time we dated. Because we were never quite ready.

We ran errands.

And then I made him grilled cheese.
And then he laid on my couch, reading, while I unloaded the dishwasher. And did laundry. And took out the garbage.

And it was really, really nice.

So, while I still think about M3 incessantly and the two of us continue to freefall into a careless yet entirely deliberate something-that-could-easily-turn-out-to-be-nothing, today I realized that J could be more than just a temporary distraction. Maybe.

T-minus seven days until The One With The Girlfriend's girlfriend comes home.