"I.....I don't know. What...what am I doing up here?" Piz said, and leaned over, putting his face in his hands.
"What do you want from me?" She asked. "It can go either way, but I just want this to be clear."
What followed was a blur of emotion. He pulled on his shoe and kept saying he had to "get out of there" and "couldn't think." He mostly said he was scared.
"What are you afraid of? We need to sort this out, once and for all. If you don't want this, then that's fine. I want to be your friend, even if that is all there is, if that is all you can handle.
"I just....I can't. I can't be in a relationship right now."
She quietly noticed that it had gone from "can't be in a serious relationship" right now to "can't be in a relationship" period. Clearly he didn't know what was going on in his own head right now.
"It's not you, you are so wonderful, amazing, I could just...ugh I could look into your eyes forever. I just can't do it, I can't be in a relationship right now."
"Okay," she said quietly, "Then answer this for me. Why are you on the dating site every day?"
He looked down at his hands. "So that's what this is about."
"It's part of what upsets me, yes. We agreed to be exclusively dating. That's what we were doing. It was great. Then you started pulling away, being distant. Clearly it wasn't what you wanted anymore. So I gave you a pass, I ended it. That's fine. But when you continue to be on the site looking at other woman, it's basically like saying I'm not good enough. That you will always be looking out for something better."
"That's not what it's like at all!" Then he proceeded to basically tell her that it was exactly like that. He was awkward, he was still saying he was scared. He told her that when he first got together with his ex, she made him stop talking to girls that were his friends, and delete his dating profile right away. Because he liked her so much he did it, but he felt like this time around he had to do things on his own terms.
"Okay, but then that isn't being exclusive, which I asked you several times before we had sex if those terms were okay. You agreed to those terms. So okay, new situation, new rules. I'm willing to compromise a little bit. You can keep your profile up. I'm done talking about it. We can either keep dating exclusively and having sex, or dating casually and not having sex. I wouldn't want you up in my apartment again. Or, we can just be friends."
"I'll have to think about it. What are you doing on Sunday?"
"Sunday I don't have any plans, but you don't have to answer by then. You can take your time."
She got his pan roast out of her fridge, and he hugged her and kissed her on the forehead before he left.
"Hey, please just text me that you got home okay?" She asked.
"I will." He said.
She waited an hour before texting him first. "Did you get home okay?"
No answer. 15 minutes later she texted again "Okay...I hope you did. I've got to be up early so I'm going to sleep now. Feel free to contact me when you are ready."
The weekend passed without a single message. She was afraid that she might be in a situation where she would be ghosted.
