"I'm sorry, um, about all that. Won't happen again." KSL said before he went off to bed. He had finally sobered up and all had seemed well. She was pretty content to never speak of it again.
The next day he tweeted about hangovers in his 30's, which she took as a "I'm going to pretend like it didn't happen." Which confirmed they were not going to have a talk about it. She breathed a sigh of relief and went on with the rest of her day.
It was a false relief. When they met up at home after work, he apologized again. She avoided his eyes and said "I didn't think we were going to talk about that."
But they did start a discussion. About loneliness, regret, and the whys behind it all. Even though she didn't want to talk about it, the conversation was a little healing on both sides.
"So again, I'm sorry, and it won't happen again." He repeated. "You handled that pretty well."
"Okay" she said in a cynical tone.
"You kinda sound like I don't mean it, like you believe it's going to happen again." KSL was quick to respond.
"Listen, every time we've said this to each other, that's it's never going to happen again, something happens. I'm tired of lying about it..to myself and to you."
He again stated that she had "handled it well" and she felt an inner conflict and couldn't help but overthink the statement. How else could she possibly have handled it? Gone along with it? Slept with him? Let it get out of hand and risk that box of feelings she had getting out, only to get wildly slapped down the next day, hell the next few minutes after he sobered up and realized what he had done? No, her heart didn't have any other choice than to do what she did.
He didn't dispute her logic too much in her disbelief that it would happen again. She tried to explain that she felt like she continued to just make it worse with him, and didn't know what to do to make him feel better where it didn't get into inappropriate territory.
Physical touch was a slippery slope. Apparently anything more than a hug was just a fast track to sex. Which, frankly, disappointed her. There were so many things that they could do to help each other night be lonely...but it was going to be impossible to do so. She needed to learn how to un-care.
