"Oh!" The surprise is evident in his voice, and it's not that he isn't willing to talk to her about the subject--though his cheeks are already flushing--he's just surprised that she'd want to talk about it with him. He knows Joel had set her up with someone, and the fact that she's just said she doesn't think she's much of a dater makes it easy enough to deduce that it hadn't gone very swimmingly. Still, if it's weird, he supposes it makes him weird because before Joel there had been a grand total of... the one. Senior prom had been the only date he'd gone on before Joel.
He leans his back against the countertop, near to where she's hoisted herself up, and shifts his gaze toward the back where she'd said she wanted the windows to be.
"It's not weird," he finally manages to spit out, wringing his hands nervously in front of him as he looks back at her because he really isn't sure if there's much of a right thing to say here. "Everyone's different when it comes to this sort of thing, look at me. There was one person before Joel, one, and she-- We went to prom together and--" He cuts himself off because he hardly wants to discuss how uncomfortable and awkward and unfulfilling it had been to lose his virginity to Darcy Haines, absolutely nothing like it is now when he and Joel are intimate. "Well, we went to prom and it wasn't difficult to figure out that she didn't really want to be there with me. It took me eleven years to find someone I trusted enough to actually want to be with, and I fell in love with him."
He shrugs because he doesn't really know how to explain it when he's not quite sure how he'd landed in this position in the first place. Joel is an anomaly, to be sure, and their relationship is a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing that he hasn't taken for granted for a second since they'd started seeing each other.
"I just think," he continue, rubbing at the back of his neck, "that it's easy for some people, the ones who don't mind that there are going to be good dates and bad dates because one day, hopefully, someone out there is going to give them the best date every single time. Then there are the ones who aren't necessarily interested in facing the disappointment, who'd rather let their person come to them. And of course, there are people like me, people like Joel, who just... stopped trying. Because at a certain point, I had readily accepted that I was going to be alone for the rest of my life and it wasn't sad, it wasn't tragic, it was just a fact. I got lucky. I got so incredibly lucky."
He rubs his thumb over his left ring finger, smiling softly to himself because he knows what's going to be there soon. They'd picked their rings out, he and Joel, they're going to get married in a couple months, Joel's going to be his husband and it makes his stomach feel like it's doing somersaults. "In any case, I have said far too much without knowing if any of that is actually helpful in any way and I feel a bit foolish, but the bottom line is that you shouldn't put pressure on yourself. There isn't a rule book for this kind of thing, though I think people would like to believe differently."
He pauses, taking half a moment to study her. "What brought this on? I mean, obviously things didn't quite work out with the date Joel set you up on, which is fine, by the way, you're not obligated to end a date with hearts in your eyes."
no subject
He leans his back against the countertop, near to where she's hoisted herself up, and shifts his gaze toward the back where she'd said she wanted the windows to be.
"It's not weird," he finally manages to spit out, wringing his hands nervously in front of him as he looks back at her because he really isn't sure if there's much of a right thing to say here. "Everyone's different when it comes to this sort of thing, look at me. There was one person before Joel, one, and she-- We went to prom together and--" He cuts himself off because he hardly wants to discuss how uncomfortable and awkward and unfulfilling it had been to lose his virginity to Darcy Haines, absolutely nothing like it is now when he and Joel are intimate. "Well, we went to prom and it wasn't difficult to figure out that she didn't really want to be there with me. It took me eleven years to find someone I trusted enough to actually want to be with, and I fell in love with him."
He shrugs because he doesn't really know how to explain it when he's not quite sure how he'd landed in this position in the first place. Joel is an anomaly, to be sure, and their relationship is a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing that he hasn't taken for granted for a second since they'd started seeing each other.
"I just think," he continue, rubbing at the back of his neck, "that it's easy for some people, the ones who don't mind that there are going to be good dates and bad dates because one day, hopefully, someone out there is going to give them the best date every single time. Then there are the ones who aren't necessarily interested in facing the disappointment, who'd rather let their person come to them. And of course, there are people like me, people like Joel, who just... stopped trying. Because at a certain point, I had readily accepted that I was going to be alone for the rest of my life and it wasn't sad, it wasn't tragic, it was just a fact. I got lucky. I got so incredibly lucky."
He rubs his thumb over his left ring finger, smiling softly to himself because he knows what's going to be there soon. They'd picked their rings out, he and Joel, they're going to get married in a couple months, Joel's going to be his husband and it makes his stomach feel like it's doing somersaults. "In any case, I have said far too much without knowing if any of that is actually helpful in any way and I feel a bit foolish, but the bottom line is that you shouldn't put pressure on yourself. There isn't a rule book for this kind of thing, though I think people would like to believe differently."
He pauses, taking half a moment to study her. "What brought this on? I mean, obviously things didn't quite work out with the date Joel set you up on, which is fine, by the way, you're not obligated to end a date with hearts in your eyes."