Baby, you can drive my car

Welcome to May, peeps! To bring in the week, we've got a two-part guest post courtesy of Toyota Girl.

(Part two will be posted in a couple of days. The suspense!)

Enjoy!

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I guess I should thank that other guy for cancelling our date. Or maybe that kid I saw the week before for getting me sick and missing work that Tuesday afternoon. Or my own laziness for letting me procrastinate a couple months before finally getting my oil changed. In any case, about 2 months ago I found myself in the Toyota dealership, waiting for an oil AND filter change thanks to an unfortunate run-in with a mouse. The TV was on The Food Network, I had putzed around on my iPod Touch already, and I didn’t feel like reading the book I had brought. The “freshly baked” cookies that Toyota supplies in order to make you feel better about spending $250 on car maintenance were staring at me from across the room. My swollen tonsils were throbbing and protesting (I told them the sugar would help).

When he walked in I thought “that guy looks kinda young” followed immediately by “and his head is really round… but he’s cute”. He smiled when I half-smiled, and sat down one seat away. He pulled out a book that looked moderately intelligent, and he laughed when I said if Rachel Ray used the words “Green Goddess dressing” one more time I might shoot someone.
I was bored, okay? And not a whole lot had been going on in my life. Heck, someone had cancelled a date without even meeting because “He wasn’t ready yet”. Whatever. So I started talking to him about his book. And so it began.

We ended up talking for almost an hour while waiting for our cars, and then relocated to a local bar for some food. Somehow I managed to choke down a couple bites of pizza without crying. I texted my friend in the bathroom “I’m horribly sick, just spent $250 on car issues including a mouse/filter disaster, and think I just ended up on a date”. [Side note to guys: Yes, when we go to the bathroom there’s a good chance we’re texting a friend to give an update.] When dinner was done (he paid) we exchanged phone numbers. I think his words were “At this point, I think it would be extremely remiss of me to NOT ask for your number”. Better yet, he called.

As my viral illness progressed that week, and so did our dates—a nice Mexican restaurant, drinks at a wine bar, dinner with some friends of his. And that was all by Saturday. On our first real date we both wanted to kiss the other. We said so in his car sitting in the driveway. But my cough was still gross. On our second date we thought, well, we’ve waited this long….maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow. On the third…. He said screw it, virus be damned. I’ll leave the rest of the details of that night out; suffice to say that 2 days later I got a text from him: “you got me sick”.

As HIS viral illness progressed we got to know each other better. Dinners out, dinners in, sleepovers, hikes, movies. I taught him about how food doesn’t have to come out of the freezer, and he taught me about kung fu movies. We met each other’s friends, did each other favors. I finally had someone to DO something with! And for once I had the time to enjoy it. It had been 4 years since I last had what could be considered any sort of boyfriend, and I’d forgotten what it was like to have an automatic partner in crime. I’d forgotten a LOT of the perks of a relationship (*wink*). Things were looking up… We even took a picture together when we were out last weekend. It’s really cute.

But…

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Tune in later this week for the conclusion to this post!