Jen­nifer.

First men­tioned here almost exactly two years ago, run­ning into her this past week threw me for a com­plete loop. I hadn't heard from her at all since that entry was writ­ten, and yet one glance instantly renewed my interest.

To call this unre­quited would prob­a­bly be over­dra­ma­tiz­ing things a bit. Yes, she blew me off, and yes I was mad as hell about it but mostly for the dam­age done to my ego and not much more. I didn't pine; instead I brushed it off and hon­estly hadn't given it much thought since. But I sup­pose that all it takes is a chance encounter to bring some­thing long thought for­got­ten to the fore­front of your mind.

And so: small talk had, num­bers exchanged, plans to make plans laid.

Here is the part where I would nor­mally say, "We'll see what hap­pens," or some other open-ended, non-consequential phrase. How­ever, I just can't seem to ignore the lit­tle itch in the back of my brain that's telling me this could be, well, just right. I have no basis for such a claim and at this point nor do I have any evi­dence to sup­port it. And yet, I can't ignore it.

So then, what do I know? I know that I believe strongly in some form of fate — well, at least to the extent that I believe things hap­pen for a rea­son. But that belief, while rel­e­vant, does noth­ing to sup­press this tin­gle. Jake inti­mated that this could be fated, and well, true or not, I have to admit that I bought into it.

She is already doing bet­ter with follow-up than the last go-around. What's that say­ing about fool-me-twice?

And then there's Sam.

The girl may be a lot of things, but dumb she ain't. I hate to describe it as such because it makes it sound much more harsh than it really is, but I'm becom­ing apa­thetic about her. I really can't think of a bet­ter way to say it — it's just that I'm los­ing interest.

And the sad thing is that it's noth­ing she or I have done wrong, I think. There's no real prob­lem between us. We have a lot of fun together, we have great sex and the whole thing is rel­a­tively low-maintenance.

Maybe that's the prob­lem. Granted, after Megan and espe­cially after Heather, I needed some­thing that A) would be rel­a­tively hassle-free and B) not break my heart. And while I've achieved that with Sam, I feel as though I'm out­grow­ing that. We've talked quite exten­sively about becom­ing more seri­ous and just jump­ing in full-bore.

But that's all it ever is: talk. If some­thing more seri­ous were going to hap­pen between us, we would have taken the steps to get there. But we didn't. Truth­fully, I don't believe she is really that inter­ested in some­thing seri­ous that has to be acknowl­edged. And that's okay, but it's not what I want. It may have taken me over two years, but I think I'm finally ready for some­thing more than that.