The Suburban Hippie Momma: How We Met, The Finale

Aria + Derek (parto dos)
last installment in Grace's super fun linkup

Okay, where did we leave off? Oh yeah we broke up, I was sad, moving on, blah blah blah.

Derek graduated from college at the end of the summer of 2009 and moved back to Tucson. He started working at Starbucks again, which just so happened to be in the same plaza as the restaurant that I was working at. I didn't know this until one day...

I was working and the kitchen manager made a trip to Starbucks for coffee (duh). She came back and told me that one of the guys working there asked if I was working that day. At first I was creeped out because I didn't think I knew anyone that worked at Starbucks. She described what the guy looked like and -no offense to young white dudes everywhere- I told her that sounded like any other white guy on the street. I asked her if she caught his name, and she said she didn't. Sigh. Curiosity overcame me so on my break I trotted over to see who this guy was- oh hey, Derek. We chatted for a bit and caught up with each other. When I left I wasn't sure how I felt; it was weird seeing him, and a part of me missed him, but at that point I had worked hard to settle my feelings and had moved on.

At the end of the summer I moved out of my parents' house into an apartment that I would share with my aunt when she moved out from Boston. I moved in about a month before she moved to Tucson, so I was able to have the apartment to myself and have friends over at my leisure. One night after work I invited Kelcey and Curtis (married by this time) and another friend over for a game night. I had stopped in at Starbucks for coffee that morning and saw Derek so in the spirit of being friends I invited him to join us. Seriously, I was not feeling anything anymore.

Derek came over to hang out with all of us that night and we all had a great time. I think we played Battle of the Sexes, but it was an old version that I had found at a thrift store so it was kind of a lame game. Eventually everyone had to go home, on his way out the door Derek said to me "we should hang out sometime"to which I just replied "sure that'd be great". Apparently by "hang out", he meant a date. I had no idea. Throughout the rest of the week Derek kept texting me just to say hi and see how my day was going and that's when I caught on that maybe something more was going through his head. I consulted my friend from work, Jessica (who is crazy adorable and I think really needs to pick up blogging again, but you know I'm probably just being selfish) because like I mentioned before I was kind of illiterate when it came to guys getting girls attention. Jessica was sweet enough to translate what Derek's text meant and that's when I started to get a little nervous. I wasn't sure if I wanted to get back into a relationship that hadn't worked out the first time, but I also felt like we didn't really try hard enough the first time around. Derek texted to ask if we could get together and I said yes.

We met up at a gelato place and walked around the plaza until we decided to sit. Up until that point we had just been making small talk but I could tell that Derek was a little nervous but I so did not want to be the one to break the ice to talk about "us". I don't remember how it came about but somehow Derek mustered up the courage to tell me that he felt like he had made a mistake and wanted to get back together. I had to think about it for a bit. I told him that I missed him and I wanted to try again as well, but we needed to lay down some ground rules. We talked and talked for a long time. At the end of the night we parted ways excited but cautious for the future. But not so cautious that we didn't have our first kiss. Hee hee.

Well, that was August of 2009 and I guess the rest is history. Oh sure, we had our squabbles and foibles like any other relationship but we were happy just to spend time together.

We had all kinds of adventures...