It's official

Last night Heather came over for beers, pizza and Monday Night Football. She hates football, but she’s a fan of beer and pizza and decided that two out of three ain’t bad. She worked until 9, which gave me a little time to study! and take care of some stuff outside. The weather was gorgeous yesterday, so I took the opportunity to rake some leaves and sweep off the patio downstairs. This weekend my roommates are helping me take out the dock, something that should have been done a month ago. I think we’re the only house left on the lake with the dock still in, so we’re going to wet suit up and take care of it on Saturday morning.

Heather showed up about 9:30 and we ate and drank and watched football…during commercial breaks on CSI. She’s crafty, that one. I finally gave up the football dream and we watched the news and Letterman. Then during a commercial Heather turned to me and said there was something she needed to talk to me about.

I panicked. I don’t know what I was panicking about, but I definitely was. My mind was racing, thinking of anything I could possibly have done that would have pissed her off, and I couldn’t think of anything. I’ve been very careful to not do anything stupid lately so as not to ruin the good thing we have going on. I haven’t been to any strip clubs, haven’t gotten so hammered that I ended up walking into my next door neighbor’s house and passing out on their couch (that really happened), haven’t gotten kicked out of any bars for getting in some guy’s face about playing Nickelback on the jukebox…

“It’s none of my business, and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I was just wondering if you needed someone to talk to about your family stuff.”

I felt like such a jackass at that point. And instead of being all strong and taking the “I am a rock” approach, as I had planned to do, I broke down. Complete, utter, sobbing, big baby breakdown. I told Heather that my mom had breast cancer, that she was going through chemotherapy and radiation and that she was doing well but it sucks. I told her that it’s really scary because even though my mom annoys the hell out of me on a fairly regular basis she’s also pretty damn important to me, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to her. I told Heather that I was sorry I didn’t tell her sooner, but I didn’t know how to bring it up and I didn’t want her to feel sorry for me and I knew she was busy and had her own things going on and I didn’t want to dump on her emotionally. I told her I really liked her and didn’t want to screw anything up by asking too much of her too soon, especially since she isn’t my girlfriend.

She was patient, and just listened to me. She didn’t seem weirded out by the fact that I was crying. In fact, when I told her my mom had cancer, even she teared up a little bit. She went on and on saying all of the supportive things that I totally needed to hear and then she said, “Do you want me to be your girlfriend?”

I paused. Was this some kind of trick question where she would say, "Haha, you big crying loser? See ya!" But I decided to risk it. “Yes,” I said. “I have wanted you to be my girlfriend for a really long time.” Then I added, “I’ve wanted you to be my girlfriend for a long time but I didn’t know if you felt the same way.”

Heather just looked at me. Then she kissed me. Then she said, “Chad, I would love to be your girlfriend.”

So, Heather and I had one of those adult conversations where we talked about our feelings and were all sappy and got all sorts of things figured out. I feel better knowing that I can open up to her.

And now we’re official. So official, in fact, that before we went to bed we both logged into our respective Facebook accounts and changed our relationship status to “In a Relationship with…” It feels great to finally be able to say that. Officially.