What’s Worse - A Cliché Pick-Up Line or Getting Ghosted? I Got Both From One Guy… but I’m Not Mad

“Hey! You dropped something back there,” A voice said.

I turned around to see a guy on a bike slowly riding up next to me. He sat back on the seat, one arm lazily dangling by his side and the other gently resting on the handlebars. 

“Thank you!” I said. I waved my free hand; the other held my phone to my ear. I called my dad on one of my afternoon walks to the beach. After my divorce, my dad became an unexpected pillar of strength for me. Our growing bond started when I told Dad I was leaving my husband. I had no idea how he would react, especially since I’d expertly projected perfection to cover my pain throughout the whole marriage. Dad said exactly what I needed to hear: “Ya know, baby? He always struck me as kinda cold. And when I think about your mom, I just liked to watch the way she walked. You deserve to be with a man that likes to watch you walk.” 

I looked at the ground behind me. There was nothing there. Then I opened my bag. It didn’t seem like anything was missing.

“It’s right here.” 

I looked up to see the guy’s hand outstretched toward me.

“It’s my number.” He smirked. 

I started laughing at myself for completely falling for his line and his audacity to use something so stupid.

“That was pretty good.” Smiling, I shook my head. “I give you credit for that.” I gave him a wave of dismissal.

“So… can I get your number?”

“Dude! I’m on the phone with my dad right now.” I pointed emphatically to the phone in my hand with Dad on the other end who was very much listening to this entire exchange. “I’m not getting picked up while I’m talking to my dad.” 

“For real, though. Let me get your number.”

This guy’s persistent. “I am on the phone with my dad!”

“So you want me to leave you alone.”

“Yes!” I laughed.

The guy shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and then rode off. A part of me wished I wasn’t on the phone with my dad at that moment.  Damn, he was kinda cute. Come back.  

“We need to talk about how you are when you walk around,” Dad said. Cue up the speech my military officer dad had given me a thousand times.

I groaned. “Ugh, Daaad!” 

A few weeks later, my stir craziness drove me out of my house. I put the leash on my dog, Bari, and roamed the streets of my neighborhood. I flipped my hair this way and that as I tried to make sense of what I was feeling.

Something. Something. What do I even want right now? 

“Hey. You dropped something back there.”

I turned around, and there he was — the pickup line guy. There’s something. “Dude! You already tried this one on me!” I burst out laughing.

Recognition dawned on his face. His head slumped to the side, and he rolled his eyes. He put his hand up to cover his face while he started laughing.

“Do you use this line on so many girls, you can’t even keep us straight?” I teased. “Is this part of your daily routine? Do you go for a bike ride and look for some hot ass to drop lines on? How often does it work?”

He laughed, “More often than you’d think.” 

“How did you even know I was good-looking? You came up from behind both times. What if I was hideous, and you dropped that line?”

“I could tell you were good-looking,” he nonchalantly dismissed my jest. “So, what do you say? Can I get your number?”

I grinned and looked him up and down. He was head to toe an adorable pirate. Black hair and a goatee. Normally, a goatee would make me kinda wanna gag, but somehow, it worked on him. He wore a short-sleeved button-up shirt with the top three buttons casually undone. His tanned, lean chest peeked through his shirt revealing the right amount of chest hair to be manly but not beastly. He was a smidge taller than me — just enough.  His swagger and appearance gave him the air of a pirate returning to port after a long voyage.

Little Johnny Depp looking mother fucker. Huh, didn’t know I was into that. 

“My name’s Eddie, by the way.” He smiled as he typed his number into my phone.

“Nice to meet you.” 

A few days later, we hung out. We covered the basics like age (he was seven years younger than me), Zodiac sign (Scorpio), job (sales), and family (one brother, parents still together). Based on our convo, Eddie seemed perfectly content to spend his days doing his 9-to-5, riding his bike, and hanging out with his family. Something seemed off to me. His life seemed isolated and eclectic, more fitting for an old man, not a young guy. There’s no way I could have expected his explanation. 

“Basically, my goal is to move to India and become a monk,” he explained. He had a way of smirking when he was talking. It made me wonder if he was fucking with me, but he was serious. It didn’t seem like that was a challenging goal to achieve. 

“Why not sell your shit, pack what’s left, book a plane ticket to India, then meditate all day?” 

“I don’t want to disappoint my mom.”

I nodded. The more he revealed about his monk dream, the weirder things got.

“Part of the goal is to be celibate,” he explained.

I blinked rapidly like my brain was trying to figure out a Soduku puzzle with letters instead of numbers. Where the fuck do I go with this? “Why did you come onto me?” 

“I’m on… a break from celibacy. It’s tough, but every time I’m not on the path, I dunno. I feel guilty.” 

“So you’re, like, on a spiritual break? But at some point, you’re gonna get back on your path, and you’re just gonna ghost me and--.”

“No. I wouldn’t do that.”

“Riiight.” 

Nothing about Eddie promised a relationship, but my curiosity got the best of me. What could motivate a beautiful young man to want to live a solitary life of meditation? He was one of the most unusual people I’d ever met, and I was fascinated. Not to mention, I loved having sex with him.

Eddie wasn’t the most inventive or wild of lovers. I didn’t care. His lips were so cute I couldn’t wait for them to be on mine. His dark hair and eyes were so alluring after my ex-husband’s blonde hair and blue eyes I had spent the last decade looking into. Eddie’s muscles were lean and cut; I loved running my hands over them. My absolute favorite thing was the way he breathed during sex. The sound, the energy of his breath was like an ocean wave crashing over my body. I would close my eyes as our bodies moved together and let the sound take me away. With his mouth close to mine, our breaths would combine. I sometimes matched my breathing to his, making the waves feel even bigger. 

After one particularly steamy session, we lay next to each other, slowly letting our breathing calm as the tide of passion washed away. I turned my head towards him.

“I’m so glad you’re not celibate right now,” I said with a grin.

He laughed. “Yeah, me too.”

Eddie was aloof and distant outside the bedroom, much like a house cat. And that’s how I treated him. If you try too hard to give your affection to a cat, they say fuck you and scamper off. But if you go about your business with an “I-don’t-give-a-fuck-if-you-pay-attention-to-me” attitude, the cat will want to come to curl up on your lap. 

I didn’t ask him to hang out, and I didn’t text him first. I waited. Like clockwork, Eddie would text me once a week, usually on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. We would hang out one of the following nights, and then I would do my own thing until the following week. That was our routine for almost three months. We only missed one week and that was because I got COVID-19. 

When we hung out after I was feeling better, he started teasing me. “If you get me sick, you have to be my nurse,” he said. Before now, we’d only joked about my dog’s eating habits.

Always down for playful repartee, I played along. “Well, I’m a better pharmacist than a nurse, but I could try.” I shimmied my shoulders and cocked an eyebrow. “What would you expect your nurse to do?” 

I was surprised when he continued the banter via text. He even made plans for us to hang out again sooner than our normal weekly interval. I was intrigued by this new level of engagement and playfulness. 

A couple hours before we were supposed to hang out, he texted…

"So I’m not feeling that great." 

I felt horrible about the prospect of giving him COVID-19. He wasn’t sure we should hang out, but with gentle coaxing, I convinced him it would be okay. I wanted to check on my patient. I had promised, joke or not, to be his nurse if he got sick. 

“I brought you a couple of things to help you feel better,” I said sheepishly as he opened the door. I brought some of the leftover home remedies I had used when I was sick.

“What? Are you serious?”

“I feel bad you’re not feeling well, and it’s probably because of me.”  I set the bag on his coffee table and pulled out tea, some lemons, honey, and supplements. “These are some things that helped me feel better,” I explained what each remedy was for and how to use it, like I was consulting a patient on their new med. He watched me, a growing smile on his face. As I finished my explanation, his hands cupped my face, and he looked deep into my eyes.

“That was so nice of you. You didn’t have to do that,” he said, and then he kissed me.

That was… unusually intimate of him. “It’s no big deal.” I shrugged. “Let's pick out a movie to watch.” 

Eddie had a different look on his face, one I’d never seen before. He was way more snuggly than he’d ever been. We usually sat on the couch, just about an arm’s distance away. Far enough away from each other that we would only touch if it were intentional. But this night, his arms were around me the whole time. 

Once the movie was over, I started to get up to leave, but he stopped me.

“You don’t have to leave just yet. Stay for a bit.”

“Are you sure? You’re not feeling well. You should get some rest,” I said.

We resumed the cuddling position we had been in throughout the movie. Eddie traced his fingers lightly across my skin and through my hair. He lifted my chin, so I was looking into his eyes.

“Seriously, it was so nice of you to bring me that stuff,” he said. 

“You’re welcome.” I didn’t get what the big deal was. I compared his usual aloofness to his more open affection now, and a realization started to dawn on me slowly…

Does he have feelings for me, and he’s been resisting them?

His life goal was to be a celibate monk, after all. And he had said any time he wasn’t on the path, it made him feel guilty. Sitting on a couch less with a beautiful woman you wanted to fuck would qualify as a conflict of interest for a wanna-be monk. I pondered this new discovery.  I couldn’t help but feel a little vindicated. Ha!

He started kissing me. “I should go. You need to rest,” I whispered softly. He pulled me closer, insisting I stay.

The longer I stayed, the more intense the kissing became. I tried a couple more times to leave. Eventually, we reached a critical decision point, so I sat up quickly. 

“I really should go now,” I said, placing my hand on my chest and taking a deep breath to steady myself. He nodded in agreement, his chest and breath moving as rapidly as mine. 

He walked me the couple blocks home like he did whenever I came over. We held hands, commented on how beautiful the stars were, and exchanged shy little smiles. When we got to my driveway, he pulled me into his arms to kiss me goodbye. I don’t know how long we stood making out, pressing our bodies into each other. 

“You either need to leave right now or come upstairs with me,” I whispered. 

“I know,” he kissed me one last time and started to turn away. His hand held onto mine as long as it could before he was too far away to keep hold.

“I’ll talk to you later, okay?” he said before our hands parted.

“Good night.” I smiled. 

I never heard from him again. I assumed he decided it was time to return to his monk path. Even though he technically ghosted me, every time I think about Eddie, I smile. I wonder if he’ll ever make it to India. I wonder if it will be everything he thought it would be. I wonder, once he’s there if he’ll have a moment where he’s struggling to focus on his meditation, breath rising and falling, reminding him of temptation. I wonder if that temptation looks like me walking down the street.

I’d like to think so.