The saga with RacquetballGuy continues. What now, exactly? Well, after saying that I didn’t want to be his friend, I decided to try. I did so for three reasons:

1. It seemed foolish to banish him completely since my feelings for him were genuine.
2. We lived on different sides of the Atlantic and so maintaining a platonic friendship would be easy.
3. I wanted answers to questions and those would only come once he decided to open up completely.

So towards the end of April, I decided to reach out to him. Those early conversations were painful, but we eventually fell into a routine and communicated mostly via text message and the scrabble like game Word With Friends. It was all platonic.

Then he disappeared early June; well he stopped being responsive to messages which I found somewhat worrying. When he resurfaced, he confessed that he was dealing with a personal matter.

I was sympathetic, but once again disappointed because real friends are supportive of each other through difficult times and once again, he was being distant and rather secretive.

So I let it be and didn’t hear from him until my birthday in August. Actually he sent me a text message which I ignored as it was so predictable and I just decided that being friends on his terms just wouldn’t work.

And there things stood from August until early December when he texted again to say he would be in London for a week and wanted to see me. The logical part of me knew that agreeing to see him wouldn’t be a good idea as I had just started going on dates again and didn’t want to redirect my energy.

But after reflecting on whether or not to meet up with RacquetballGuy for a few hours, I decided to do so. It was his birthday and he was staying at a posh hotel, so I figure why not have a fancy dinner and hear what he had to say. Plus he had been rather emotional in the follow up phone call to the text message.

Dinner was a bit awkward at first, but the evening ended up being harmonious. I suppose the beautiful view from the hotel, the delicious food and wine all helped. Anyway, the next day, he dropped a bombshell — one that I really didn’t see coming but it helps to explain things fell apart at the beginning of the year.

And perhaps one day I’ll detail here — but for now, I just need to place a marker and reflect on what I’ve learnt. The details would make for a good soap opera or novel, but sadly it is real life.