New York, New York, The Soapy Version

See!? I promised you an early Soap Opera Sunday and HERE IT IS! Woo hoo!!
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I wish I could say my last experience with New York was as awesome as all the others, however, I was not so lucky.

The day after Christmas Rhonda and I were going to visit another friend of ours who had moved to New York to be closer to her fiance, and Richard was going to join us there on the 30^th of December, which was the day before my 21^st birthday. Our friends lived in Stamford, about half an hour outside of the city and there were going to be five of us crammed in their tiny apartment but we were so excited to be there that we didn't care. The first few days before Richard arrived were glorious. We shopped and ate delicious food and played in the city to our hearts content. I was so excited for Richard to join us and to let my friends get to know who he really was. Alas, this was not to be.

Richard's arrival really shook things up. He immediately (though accidentally) insulted our host and hostess and must have been on edge because he was being SO annoying. He turned up his normal attitude and just rubbed everyone, including me, the wrong way. I couldn't believe this was the same man. He seemed insecure and rude and pushy and NOT the Richard of the past month. To top it all off, he seemed to be avoiding me. He spent a lot of time outside talking on his cell phone. Now, granted, he was a total mama's boy who had never traveled this far from his home and family (at least without one of them present.) so I was trying to cut him some slack. Then, the other shoe that I'd been watching for, dropped.

On his first night there, just the two of us were up late, ringing in my birthday with a funny conversation and then it all of a sudden got serious and Richard said "I'm not sure we should date exclusively anymore. It's just too much too soon."

Record scratching, ears ringing, que the tears. I. WAS. DEVASTATED. Luckily we were in the dark, so Richard couldn't see the tears pouring down my face. I don't even remember how the rest of the conversation went. All I could think about was that my entire week was ruined. Did I send him home? Did I keep him in New York and try to convince him that we SHOULD date exclusively? And ON MY BIRTHDAY? HE DUMPS ME ON MY BIRTHDAY??? I think I went through all the stages of grieving in about fifteen minutes.

Then, after he had just dumped me, on my birthday, on a trip to New York, for the first time in over a month, he tried to make out with me.

Being the stupid, idiotic, retarded, just dumped birthday girl that I was . . . I let him.

I also decided to let him stay in New York. Because I'm dumb. Really dumb.

I woke up the next morning feeling like a total idiot and then tried to secretly explain to my girlfriends what had happened the night before. I spent the day in a fog, trying to be happy and have a good time. We were going to spend New Year's in Times Square watching the ball drop. This was just after September 11^th and security was CRAZY, but we found an ingenious way to get all the way to the center of Times Square at 11:30 so we didn't have to wait for hours in the freezing cold. I was so excited to be IN Times Square for New Year's Eve and all Richard could do was complain about how cold it was. As we counted down to midnight, and everyone around us were kissing in the New Year, I looked expectantly at Richard for a midnight kiss, and he LOOKED THE OTHER WAY.

The next morning we had rented a car to drive the two hours to my Dad's house in Pennsylvania. Originally, I had planned on Richard and my Dad meeting, falling in love and the wedding going forward. Now I had a very bad feeling about what would happen when Richard met my Dad. Very, very, very bad. And as horrible as I imagined it, I'm pretty sure what really happened was worse.