Around the same sort of time I started a 14 month relationship with someone very special to me (I haven’t yet talked about him on this blog!) I started messaging with this one person. We got on really well, had some great conversations. After about six weeks of fairly intense conversations, we decided to meet up. Only he had to cancel last minute. And we rescheduled for the next day …and he was a no show.

It was with a lot of regret that I ended up blocking him on Whatsapp and unmatching with him on Tinder. Because standing me up? Not cool. Fast forward about 18 months and I’ve joined this other site. And in the first week of me joining, I get a message from him. I’m using a different location, a different name, different pictures he’s never seen and …he recognises me from just my lips.

His message where he writes to me fairly confident that he’s got the right person almost two years after we last messaged last just made me laugh so much that I gave him another chance. His reason for standing me up made sense for who he was and he was very contrite. It felt quite easy to pick up where we had left off.

And we started going for walks. Every time I met him I felt like I just constantly smiled and laughed. I remember once we were having a conversation about science fiction and I like, danced around in excitement because he’d said something that I’d long thought but I’d never heard anyone else say. And I think that was the thing with him. Everything just felt so easy and comfortable. And I pretty much thought despite that we’d connected on Tinder initially and on another sex site that everything was platonic between us. Just two people who enjoy each other’s company and have some shared interests.

It was on our second walk when he started giving me this look like ‘aren’t you adorable?’ as I was babbling about something. When I stopped and said ‘what?’ He leaned in and then sort of stopped like, if you don’t want to be kissed you should say or pull away. So of course I start spilling words out – What are we doing? I didn’t think we were kissing friends? Are we really doing this? And he smiled, and said ‘Let’s see how it goes’ and leaned in for the sweetest, softest kiss ever. And I hadn’t expected there to be such electricity between us.

I have eyes, so I obviously knew he was very good looking. His dark hair in this almost messy wave, with really big brown eyes. A very expressive, open face. But I was seeing it in a brand new light after he kissed me. And I pretty much got in my car after that and drove off in a bit of a daze. Because of the reciprosexual thing, I hadn’t ever considered any sort of possibility of anything more with him. Until that kiss.

When I got home though? I thought about it. A lot. I think a lot about anyone that so easily makes me happy. So we arranged for plans again soon. Another walk in a pretty place halfway between where we both lived. And …it was pretty much like the other walks, we walked and as we did we talked about my dog, or the food he liked to cook, about holidays we’d been on before, more book talk. And I almost forgot that we’d had that one great kiss the last time we’d seen each other.

One of the things that we did talk about was about our friendship. He had said that as much as he loved kissing me and no matter how much he wanted to strip me out of my dress, one of the things he’d miss too much was if the sex stuff broke what we had as friends. That he really enjoyed talking about everything with me and he wanted that to continue. I agreed.

But we got back to our cars and it’s like the reminder that we both needed to leave spurred us into a very hot make out session. So hot that I had to pull him into the backseat of my car where we pawed at each other and kissed. And again, that’s where it ended. We both drove off and I went home to have more vaguely sexy thoughts about this sexy man and his soft hair and strong arms.

I was getting a bit frustrated by this pattern we were in so I went into planning mode. The next time we met, there would be more time. There would be some …satisfaction for all this sexual energy. And it happened. It felt pretty weird to lose some of our clothes. To have the opportunity to touch each other in places we hadn’t before. The sex was different than I’d expected. Varying at times between soft and gentle into this almost reckless abandon. But it felt like all of it fit with how we were.

I remember afterwards I said something like oh god, I hope I wasn’t too loud. And he said ‘shhh, you were perfect’ as he pulled me into his chest for a cuddle and we just stayed like that for ages as he stroked my back. There’s something so …necessary for me about that after sex cuddle and some reassurance. And he knew what I needed in that moment.

We met up another time after that for another walk and chat. But soon after that he went through a patch of difficulty in his life where he was signed off from work for an extended period of time. What he was going through was pretty rough and while I did send messages for awhile that said ‘I’m still here and I care about you’ in different ways, I’m not sure if he ever saw or read them. It’s been about a year and I never heard from him again.