How I Met Your Mother Part 2

In case you missed it, here is Part 1. We now return you to the program, already in progress.

Last we heard, our hero Kris had just left the damsel Melissa at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. I was feeling pretty good, having just completed a nice, deep conversation with a beautiful woman, I didn't stick my foot in my mouth, and I got a hug. You could say I floated onto the plane.

Those of you who know me know that I have issues. I need a lot of reinforcement when it comes to relationships. So even though the conversation went nice and yes, I got the hug, I wasn't absolutely sure how Melissa felt, and so again, I did nothing. I know, I can hear the collective sigh of everyone reading. Looking back on it, I can't believe it either. But that's who I am. I was essentially waiting for her to make a move. I didn't have to wait long.

Within a few days, I was told that if we are indeed going to try and get to know each other better, I need to call and email Melissa also, and not just let her do all of it. Ok, that's a pretty good sign. Time to get off my ass.

And got off my ass I did. We started slowly, but very soon we were emailing every day, and talking on the phone almost every night from when I got home from work until I went to sleep. Literally hours and hours were spent getting to know each other. We talked about everything. What happened that day at work, our childhood, our families, everything. You'd think spending hours on the phone, we'd eventually run out of stuff to talk about. Didn't happen.

One day, Melissa was trying to explain the "Movie of her life", and said it would probably take an entire weekend of us alone to tell me all of it. I said I'd love to hear it and asked "Your state or mine?" After we both decided that I wasn't kidding, we started planning a stopover in New Jersey on her upcoming trip to Italy. She was going there for two weeks, so the plan was to have her fly to NJ for a weekend, from NJ to Italy, and spend another weekend here on her way back to Arkansas. I started looking for hotels in the area. (while it would be cheaper to stay in Casa Anchovies, I wasn't going to lay that on the table just yet… We had only known each other for about a week. (btw, Anchovies is what Microsoft suggests for Dankovits when you spell check. Stupid Microsoft.))

Six weeks go by. The more we talk, the closer we get. The closer we get, the more feelings I have for Melissa. I was extremely surprised at the speed at which it was happening. We often talked about the butterflies we had in our stomachs. One day I was trying to explain what kind of butterflies I had, and I sent her this in an email: "A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness." I thought I was being cute and romantic (and safe) by telling her I had butterflies of love without actually telling her that. Little did I know she made a beeline for her dictionary and figured it out with one guess. So much for being safe…

Also little did I know that she didn't feel the same for me. Butterflies yes, but of a deep, tender, ineffable blah blah blah, no. Of course, I only didn't know that for less than two weeks, because by the first of October, she was telling me she loved me too. Yay!

The weekend arrived. We decided that for obvious reasons, having Melissa stay a hotel would be pretty stupid. I was extremely nervous waiting for her at the airport. Recall, I haven't seen her since the beginning of August. It's now October. The only contact we've had was through email and countless hours on the phone. Countless hours in which I fell in love with her. I was nervous. I was excited. I kept checking the arrivals board to try and make her flight move faster.

Finally I saw her. Even more beautiful than I remembered. She began running toward me, much like people in an 80's romantic movie, along the beach in slow motion, with some slow, sexy soundtrack playing in the background. Ok, not exactly like that, because I wasn't running anywhere in slowmo or real-time, or the TSA security officers would have tackled me, ruining the weekend.

So I'm standing there, everything in my sight is dim save for Melissa, who is running toward me (in slowmo), and stay tuned for Part 3!