E: The Original

          I met E nearly a year ago at a mutual friend's birthday party at Alcazar, a chic restaurant located on rue Mazarine in the hip Saint-Germain-dès-Pres neighborhood. I had spent all day in class and thrown on a black cocktail dress and pumps and rushed my way to the resto as quickly as I could. This was followed by a delicious peach bellini that tasted like candy. Not a bad way to start an evening. 

           Our shamed amie is S, a lovely English woman of Pakistani origins with whom I run on weekends, and we were there with my best american friend in Paris, who also was in my Masters program, B. S and B and I were chatting and waiting for people to arrive when E showed up. 

            I remember few things about that evening, but I do remember E wearing a crisp white button down, jeans, and showing up with his black leather satchel. I remember him thinking I was French because six hours of lecture on abstract theory in a foreign language will do that for your accent and fluency. I remember chatting with him and hitting it off and then having S tell me he was in the midst of ending his relationship with his then GF, so I let it lay. 

            I friended him on Facebook afterward and left it at that. He invited me to his birthday party that December but I already had plans, so I didn't make it. Come February I suggested drinks, but our schedules were so hectic that we didn't end up meeting. 

*  *  * 

             At the end of May, I finished my Master 1 thesis and, very pleased by my grade ( an 18/20, which in the French system is like a 98 percent) posted a Facebook status about it. E commented, suggested we pop champagne, I suggested drinks, and nine months after we'd met, we scheduled a rendez-vous in the same neighborhood for early evening cocktails, or apéro. 

             Damn those Frenchies. 

            We got drinks, he showed me his amazing photography portfolio on his tablet computer, we walked around Paris in the pale but long lasting light of summer's eve, and he eventually walked me to the metro near midnight. He didn't kiss me goodbye, but bise'd me ( you know, the cheek kissing thing they do over here) and suggested I come to his place on Wednesday if I was interested in learning to salsa with him. 

             Wednesday, I went to his place. We danced, and at one point he needed me to give him my hand. ¨Or do I have to ask your dad for that?¨ he teased. ¨ You're not allowed to have my hand,¨ I laughed back. He made rum punch cocktails and dinner and we laughed and talked and I felt like he was someone I could truly fall for seriously. 

              I'm twenty four on the verge of twenty-five, and as the saying goes ¨I'm not that old but I'm not that young,¨.  I have had few serious relationships because I was mature enough to realize I was too immature to have them in college. And to be frank, college dating is a joke. It doesn't exist, at least not at my alma mater: all the guys are gay or taken. And then of those few left that are neither gay nor taken, you have to factor in the engineers who never see daylight and the frat boys every girl with half a brain knows to avoid. 

                But the tide is turning and I have a firm idea of what I need and what I want in someone long term, and it's scary that I'm at ¨that¨ moment in my life where should I find someone, I could settle down. The could is a frightening realm of unknown possibility hanging between want to and can. 

                E and I quickly became an item, but becoming an item in France is tricky, because the French do not have the Define The Relationship (DTR) talk we Americans do, they go off ¨feeling,¨ so it's not like I could come right out and ASK him what we were. I had to wait a while to assume we were together. Then we both took off for the summer, he for travel plans and I for work. 

                We kept in touch all summer, though admittedly being separated from him made me nervous. I expected him to pull an  ¨American boy,¨ and forget about  me as soon as I was out of site. On the contrary, he texted me mere minutes after my first flight of the summer landed to make sure I'd arrived safe. I was not only safe, I was smitten. I couldn't wait to get back to Paris to see him, and I thought about him everyday. 

                 Two months and a severe knee injury on his part later, I went to his apartment in the 6th near the Jardin du Luxembourg and he bise'd me austerely. I texted him after to tell him I had been glad to see him. I suggested a picnic that weekend, and he agreed. We talked for hours under sunlight and over bread and cheese. 

                  Then he dropped a bomb. 

                 He'd met someone six months earlier, she was older, had a kid, a significant other, and didn't even live in Europe. But he'd thought more about her all summer than me, had seen her once, would see her again, and he knew it wasn't fair to me. He had felt more passionately about her than me.  He wanted to just be friends.  All I could think was how typically French this was,  how stupid I had been to believe blindly in everything, and how disappointed I felt. 

                  E is 12 years my senior, been through a few relationships where he thought he'd found the one but it didn't work out. He never vocalized it, but I gather my youth and my lack of serious relationship experience scared him. But I prefer dating older, have mostly older friends, and am frankly sick and tired of immature 25 year olds.

                 I was sad but not crushed. I was sad because E is what I will now will consider my first could. Regardless of his nationality, I felt like he was someone who ¨got¨ me in a way: he's a smart as hell engineer with a lightning fast wit, an artistic side, an athlete. Someone I felt I had real long term potential with, felt and still feel completely at ease around, someone I will be friends with regardless.

                  Then came the je t'aime...moi non plus. Twelve hours after dropping this bomb on me, he texted to see how I was doing, wanted to know if I wanted to grab coffee. I told him I was sorry, but I had to work. He tried to grab coffee with me the day after that. I once again was occupied by errands.

                   As soon as I was no longer available and no longer interested, he seemed to pounce. I have seen him since--platonically--but he is the one doing the calling. I have, after being down and out about him, started seeing other people. I learned the hard way--after a seven year story near worthy of giving Carried Bradshaw and Mr. Big's epic saga a rumble--not to wait around for other people, not to be ok with being someone's second choice.

                  E made it clear to me I am and will be his second choice. He is one of those Frenchmen, and they are not a rare breed it seems to me, who are floating through life looking for something they cannot exactly put their finger on, something intangible. They are looking for something that doesn't exist, because what the problem with what they are looking for lies not outside of them, but within them.

                  E is looking for the woman of his dreams, the mother of his children. In France, a man marries a woman because he knows instinctively she will be the mother of his offspring, and for no other reason. E elaborated on this in reference to his last ex, D, who he knew could not be a mother to his kids. I know I will be a good mother when the time comes. I could be a mother right now (what with all this serious mommy training...I've been a hardcore nanny for going on three years now...that's another story) but I do not want to. But I will not be the mother of this man's children.

                 *  *  * 

                   I admitted to my boss, the mother of the two girls I look after, this week what had happened with E. I told her I don't play games and that I made him chose: it was either me or the other woman. She looked across me at the kitchen table and said, ¨ He might be testing you.¨

                    What with all his calling and wanting to see me despite the fact we're no longer together, I do not doubt he's testing me. We sat outside La Pagode, an asian cinema, on the rue Babylone a few afternoons ago. He mentioned that La Pagode was gift from a wealthy businessman to his wife, who then left her husband for his business partner. 

                     ¨ I could never do that,¨ I shook my head. 

                     ¨ How do you know? You've never been put in that position,¨ he replied. 

                     ¨ It's not my character. I am loyal to the death, in fact, sometimes, I am too loyal. I've been too loyal more than once in my life and it's hurt me.¨  

                      He does not know my father left my mother for someone else when I was six and they subsequently divorced. He does not know that I was so loyal to someone else I suffered for seven years waiting for them. He does not know that this type of loyalty is one of the biggest gifts I will ever be able to give to anyone. When I say I do, I will mean it. 

                       ¨You have never been in an on-again off-again relationship,¨ was his retort. 

                      No, no I haven't. I haven't because I believe that if something is on and off again, it's clearly not meant to be. I prefer clean breaks, smooth breaks. If there are problems early on, there will be huge problems the whole way through. 

                       He then muttered something I no longer remember about looking for the One, but it was calculated. Highly. Part of me wanted to scream ¨you idiot.¨ But I too am a calculator, and I never would've mentioned my loyalty were it not to hit him hard in the heart. 

                        Two can play at that game. 

                         Je t'aime...moi non plus.