Trivial pursuit — Zara pt. 2
My hopes for building something with Zara had been dashed. My suspicions that it wasn’t working were confirmed when she said there was someone else she had her eye on back in New Zealand. C’est la vie. Maybe I’d been deluding myself because I was so under her spell.
No matter. I followed the classic advice: to get over someone, get under someone else. I downloaded Hinge for the very first time, went on a date a couple of days later, and lined up five more dates over the rest of the week.
Next Tuesday, Zara invited me to join her for Run Club again. I wanted to show that I was not going to pine over her and that I could easily move on. Also… my ego and pride took over a little bit. So as we were jogging to the meeting spot and she asked me how I was, I told her just how fine I was:
“Got a busy week! I have a date tomorrow, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.”
Reeeeal casual.
“Oh,” she muttered.
It got very quiet for the rest of our jog. We had a fine time at the run though, and later said our goodbyes. This time there was no offer from me to come back to my place. No chance of rejection. Just an easy, breezy time together and done with.
But I obviously detected some weirdness in her reaction to my dating. Why would she care, I thought. She literally just ended it with me five days ago. Isn’t this what she wanted? And now what, she’s gonna be upset that I’m moving on after she rejected me? I didn’t owe her anything, I told myself. She ended what we had for some guy living on the other side of the globe. She wasn’t even in anything committed with him! And hey, she’d been with someone before for almost ten years. But somehow she’s hung up on some other guy she met afterward for just a matter of months? The story didn’t make sense to me, but I tried to put it out of my mind.
Except… some part of me was happy she seemed disturbed by it. Not in a cruel way! But in a way that made me think perhaps she didn’t really want to end it with me. Maybe if I was lucky, she would change her mind. But I couldn’t bank on that and had to just go on living my life.
For the next few weeks, I hit it off with two of my five dates and saw them multiple times, while still chatting with Zara every once in a while. Since the pressure was off, I didn’t take the gaps in our conversations as personally as before. We would just see each other whenever it worked, sometimes with just hours’ notice instead of planning some big date.
One day, Zara said she and her sister, Melody, and Melody’s friend, Sean, all wanted to go to a trivia night, and Zara asked if I could come. I was ecstatic to join them. I’d never done a trivia night, for one, and thought I’d be pretty good at it. But mainly, this felt couple-y in some way. Like a double date. I could show Zara a side of me that she hadn’t really seen before.
Zara, Melody and I arrived together first and set up a team table for trivia. We started talking about our jobs for a bit, and Melody said Sean was a teacher. “Just like you! You’re the teacher, right?”
I gave her a confused look.
“No, he’s not a teacher,” Zara interjected and quickly changed the subject.
The teacher? Was this a reference to some other guy that Zara was dating now? Hmm. Well, nothing I could do about that.
Everything returned to a festive atmosphere as Sean arrived. We ordered many rounds of beers throughout the night and came up with a very dirty team name based on Zara and Melody’s last name. Every time the host had to read it out loud it got a reaction from the crowd, which made us all laugh like teenagers.
At her running club, I wasn’t in the “in-group.” I felt at a disadvantage. But in a setting like this, I was so much more comfortable. I felt like I was at my best. Like I was showing Zara this was what dating me could be like. I was making jokes with Sean and Melody, as we all chatted and found more out about each other. Melody and I listened to the same podcasts and geeked out to them. Sean refereed games in my beer hockey league. The conversation flowed so naturally, and I felt I fit in seamlessly.
The trivia categories started to come in and we all started answering questions together. I got to show off little bits of my knowledge as different categories leaned up into my areas of expertise. I tried my best to play along to the game and be social with the group, while throwing as many little moments or looks to Zara as I could. Those moments kept coming, as did the rounds of craft beer. At the last round of drinks, Zara and I just shared a single drink that we passed back and forth, with me flirtatiously stealing glances from her every chance I got.
I was feeling the vibe. We ended up solidly in the middle of the 25-team tournament, but I certainly left thinking I came out on top.
The next day I texted her to say thanks for the invite, and we both said how much fun we had. Then after a beat, she sent:
“Another big week lined up for you?”
Oops. She was referring to my dumb “big week” brag of dates from before. Well, this was interesting. Was she mad at me? Jealous? Or just letting me know I sounded like an arrogant asshole? I couldn’t help but get my hopes up that maybe she was having second thoughts about not being together.
Either way, I quickly replied that I was sorry. I said I came off like an idiot, and that trivia night with her was way more fun than anything else. I said I did NOT have a busy week lined up, but I was still trying to navigate the right course of hanging out together.
She said she understood, just that it threw her off a bit. We agreed to chat about it the next time we hung out.
A week or so later, we planned a hang-out for Friday. As we texted back and forth deciding what to do and catching up a bit, I noticed she was “heart-ing” half the texts I sent her, and just seemed overall way more receptive to everything I was saying. Slight teasing, flirty jokes. Was I just reading into this everything that I wanted to see?
The whole time though, I was still in the early stages of seeing two other women and both were going pretty well. Out to a gin bar, walking around the Forks, retiring back to her place to watch The Bachelor with one, and out to a cocktail bar, watching a movie, and then heading out to walk her dog with the other. I was only a handful of dates in with each of them, but I was waiting for some sign to tell me it was time to pull the trigger with someone.
Friday finally rolled around and it was time to see Zara. We’d set to meet for 7:00, but at 6:00 she texted that she’d picked up some wine and said, “should I just head over now?”
I told her to come on by.
At this point, I was mainly thinking I had been playing it cool, but she just wasn’t that into me. Maybe she felt a bit territorial since we still saw each other here and there, but there were no deeper feelings than that. I knew I couldn’t compete with some guy in New Zealand she was hung up on anyway, so why bother? I’d just enjoy this for what it was.
She knocked on my door. She did the thing she always did as I opened the door — she laughed her intoxicating laugh. I never really understood why! But since I loved to hear her laugh, I really didn’t care.
She had some wine and dark chocolate. We ordered food and started chatting away, but we quickly moved into serious topics. Topics we hadn’t really touched on before.
Zara started telling me about a book she had read, Maybe You Should Talk To Someone, a memoir about a therapist whose boyfriend breaks up with her so she starts going to therapy, while simultaneously being a relationship therapist giving advice to her clients. We both started to talk about how our decade-long relationships coming to an end each affected us. I told her about the betrayal I felt, how I lacked trust, and how I threw myself into the world of dating as a reaction. She replied how hard it was for her to feel love again. She’d seen some people occasionally, but she hadn’t called anyone her boyfriend since then.
“My heart is black and shriveled now,” she said.
That sounded so sad. I still didn’t understand what had actually happened to her. She didn’t want to talk too directly about it. The way she told it, she and her long-term ex both sort of saw the writing on the wall for their relationship being over. Then, one day, her ex just said it was over. He was now happily with someone else in a committed relationship.
I knew there was more to it, but now was not the time to interrogate her over every detail. Our food hadn’t even come yet. But as she was sitting in my living room, nibbling on chocolate and drinking an Argentinian Malbec that we both found delightfully smooth, I thought she was being more vulnerable and open to me than she ever had before. I listened intently as she talked about how she would go on what she and her friends termed “one-date-wonders” with people afterward, but none of them had any staying power. I mentioned how with a lot of the people I had dated after my breakup, I’d tried to be extra open with them right away. Perhaps it was a way to test how well I could trust them to support me.
“Not me. I put up walls,” Zara said, her eyes getting red and watery. “And I try not to let anyone in.”
It was the first time I’d seen Zara get remotely emotional, but she prevented herself from letting any actual tears drop out. Again, I wanted to push more, but I couldn’t. She moved off the floor and to the couch opposite me to switch the energy up. But we stayed talking about exes, and how we’ve moved on since. Eventually, I saw an opening.
“So what about that guy in New Zealand?” I asked. The guy who she said she was hoping to re-kindle a relationship with, and thus couldn’t be with me.
“There is no guy in New Zealand.”
What? I stared at her.
“I mean, he exists,” she said, “but I’m not waiting for him. We dated for six months, and that was that. It’s over.”
My brain very slowly began to process what was happening. Her reason for rejecting me was a lie? Why was she telling me this?
“Like I told you,” she said, “I put up walls.”
I tried to process what I was hearing.
“I saw your profile on Bumble,” she said, before I could get too far.
“Ha, yeah I saw you on Bumble too,” I replied. “There was a photo of you that wasn’t on your Tinder. You look incredible in that one.”
“Which one?” she asked, as she took out her phone and we found the photo together.
“I couldn’t swipe on you,” she said. “I just closed the app.”
“I couldn’t swipe either!” I responded. “It was like I didn’t want to know. I couldn’t take it if it didn’t match.”
She smiled knowingly.
What was going on? I thought she was just here to vent and have a fun night together. Was I actually getting my wish? Was what I wanted to happen actually happening in front of my eyes?
I had to get to it. No more beating around the bush.
“So hearing about me going on five dates that week must have been really shitty,” I said.
She got kind of quieter as she could see the gears turning in my head.
“Yes.”
No way no way no way.
“So would you want me to stop going on dates with other people?”
She looked right at me. She nodded.
Holy shit holy shit holy shit.
“So, should I just turn off all my dating apps and only date you?” I asked.
She let the hint of a smile hit her, though she tried to hold it back. She nodded again.
Oh my god oh my god oh my god.
I leaped onto the couch with her and grabbed her tightly to kiss her. I told her I absolutely wanted to date her and her alone.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think this was going to happen. I knew she was special, but I’d had to mentally move on. A part of me wanted it to work, knew it could work, but I refused to give myself any hope. And now here it was, it had worked out! I was so thrilled. We finally ordered and ate our food, cuddled up on the couch, and put on Groundhog Day with Bill Murray (since it was just after Groundhog Day). We only watched about 10 minutes of it as we just talked about happier things instead and of course, later in the night did some non-talking-related activities as well. Come to think of it, those were actually quite vocal too…
Anyway, it had happened. We were back together. Zara told me the “teacher” business from trivia night was Melody legitimately being confused, which I decided to just accept. Either way, I usually dreaded sending breakup texts to people, but I didn’t even break a sweat sending those texts to the other women I’d been seeing and closing off all my dating apps, so I could focus my attention on Zara. I went online and immediately ordered Maybe You Should Talk To Someone and happily drifted off to sleep.
A few days later, Zara asked me to stay with her at her family cabin an hour or so away for the weekend. Just the two of us. Three days together. I thought this was a very clear sign from her that she wanted things to be more serious this time, and I appreciated the effort. I knew she still had her walls up, but spending time like this together would provide a good chance to break those down.
I’d had a few women in the past play We’re Not Really Strangers with me (a card game where you ask increasingly emotional questions to each other), and thought that might be a good pretense to learn more about one another. I only had a few days before the trip, but I couldn’t find a physical copy in every board game store I called and the online shipping would take way too long. But I still thought it was a really good idea! I scoured the internet and found an unauthorized bootlegged version on a phone app instead, which was good enough for me.
The day of the trip came and it was great. We drove up through the snowy roads with her two cats and let loose at the cabin. We cooked together, drank a lot of craft beer, I made a cocktail, found out she didn’t really like cocktails, and we talked and joked around all night. We played We’re Not Really Strangers a little bit, but the vibe never got too deep. We were just so good at casually talking to each other anyway, that it wasn’t like we needed a game to talk to each other. But still, that limited most of our topics to fun stuff. I had hoped we might delve a little more into why her walls were up so high, or what she was looking for in life. In a relationship. In me.
Either way, we talked all night, and I slowly learned that this cabin, and especially this beach town (VB, as those in the know called it) was really important to her. Her summers were spent here, so many of her friendships were forged here, and she made a million memories here. Teenage house parties seemed like a way of life in these parts and a big part of the fun times she had. It was like there was a whole culture around those who spent their summers in VB.
I felt like I was never really getting the whole picture of Zara. I’d just catch glimpses that I loved and wanted more of. Part of that was because she never really let me in. But I was slowly putting together my collage of her.
Often, she seemed very put-together and proper, like when she was laying out a training plan for competing in 50K trail races and hitting all those milestones over the next few months. Next, she was meowing to her cats, and showing me hilariously embarrassing videos of old university projects where she pantomimed lightsaber battles while touting the nutritious value of beans. But she also had this rebellious streak in her that mainly seemed to manifest in her teens (which, duh, why not!) but would pop up now and again as an adult too. And one way it popped out was that this woman could absolutely out-drink me without breaking a sweat. I mean, I am a total lightweight, so this is no great achievement, but still. I’ve drank with a lot of people, and her stamina was just next-level.
The next morning after some much-needed hangover recuperation (though Zara still went for a morning run through the woods for over an hour), we went out for a trek together. She acted as my tour guide all around the beach town, then we went snowshoeing together on the lake. As we got further out there, I could see lots of trucks and huts for ice fishing dotting the horizon.
I remarked how serene it all was, and Zara said, “oh, you should take a picture!”
I took out my phone and kinda motioned to get in close with her, but she grabbed my phone and backed up to take a solo photo of me on the lake. Hmm, it was much like the Palm Springs photo she had sent to me, I thought. Perhaps this is just how Zara liked to take photos. I begrudgingly posed. I’d rather have had a photo of the two of us together.
Regardless, the whole weekend felt great. I was grateful to get time to just be ourselves in each other’s space in a casual, almost domestic way as opposed to a big date where we had to be “on” in some fashion. The weekend was filled with cozy clothes and just chilling together. It felt very comfortable. Like we really enjoyed each other’s company.
We came back Sunday, and Valentine’s Day was Tuesday. I told Zara I totally understood if she wanted to skip Valentine’s Day since we had just spent all this time together. I was pleasantly surprised to hear she was completely down to go out! I quickly booked a romantic dinner at Passero for some fine Italian dishes. Zara asked, “which country’s ambassadors are we representing this time?” and I loved that we had our own little joke to ourselves already. On Valentine’s Day, I picked her up and brought her flowers, which she seemed really touched by as she said no one had ever really bought her flowers before.
The dinner was fantastic but the highlight for me came when as we walked back to my car, the cold, February winds of Winnipeg blasted against us without mercy, and Zara slipped her arm through mine to get close and huddle for warmth. I killed for these moments of closeness and loved every second of that half-minute walk to my car.
We’d later go to Festival du Voyageur together, where I would meet a bunch of her friends for the first time. I was insanely excited for this. One, at the gesture of bringing me more into her world. And two, I knew I could crush it in a setting like this. Meeting her friends. Showing who I was. Proving to her friends that Zara was in good hands with me.
In line for drinks at Festival du Voyageur, we saw that they had a signature craft beer with a special label for the festival. As Zara fashioned herself quite the craft beer connoisseur, we remarked to each other how nice it was for a big event to actually have some local beer rather than just Bud Light, for example. As we got to the front to order, she asked the server what the special beer was like.
“Oh it’s great!” the server said. “It’s just like a Bud Light!”
We burst out laughing and cautiously ordered two.
Soon, I met her friends. We found a table and started talking for a couple of hours. We all laughed tons, and I got to see a whole new side of Zara through her friends, who all seemed fantastic. Everyone got along so well, I remember telling myself “you’re killing it!”
Two of her friends later took me aside and said “you need to keep her in Winnipeg!” afraid they’d lose her to New Zealand again. As if I had the power to do that! But I loved the gesture from them, thinking I could have a hand in swaying her opinion on where to live.
I only got to stay for about three hours as I had a late-night beer league hockey game, but I showered fast and sped back to get the last 30 minutes of the final concert. Partly so I could spend another precious few moments with Zara, awkwardly dancing in a room filled with drunk Boy Golden fans. But mainly so I could drive her, her sister, and her sister’s friends home. I liked to be seen as reliable and dependable.
And Zara put her arms through mine while she rested her head on my shoulder on the cold walk back to the car that night, too.
