May 2, 2014
On this night at The Gathering, the college students were teaming up to play Just Dance on the projector screen. I, who tend to be a “behind the scenes” kind of person, was annoyed when some of the guys began teasing me and telling me that they had signed me up to be on their teams. My annoyance greatly increased when Derek came up at the end of the night and told me that he had signed me up to be on his team. Poor Derek didn’t know about the earlier teasing but I let him have it anyway. I firmly told him that I was NOT on his team and I was NOT staying late that night. I thought he would leave me alone after that so it took me by surprise when he didn’t. Derek continued to talk to me and was so gentle and sweet as he asked about how my week had been and how work was going. I was really confused as to why he still wanted to talk to me after I was such a brat. I started to question why Derek was always making attempts to talk to me and why he wasn’t pushed away by anything I said or did.
May 9, 2014
This was the evening of Mystery Night, an annual city-wide scavenger hunt with various themed stations hosted by the youth ministry at church. This year, I had dressed up as Anna to participate in a Frozen themed station and Derek, in full body spandex, was a speed skater. I later learned that Derek thought I was cute with the fake freckles I put on my face using eyeliner. I thought he shouldn’t ever be seen in public covered in spandex but was intrigued that he seemed to have no shame. At the conclusion of the night, Derek asked me if I would be going to Denny’s – an annual tradition for the youth staff members at the conclusion of the event. I told him, “No” since I had worked an 18 hour day two days prior. I was going to go home and go to sleep. Derek was bummed that I wasn’t going but after I left, he began to tell some of his guy friends that he was starting to like me.
May 23, 2014
Derek and I both ended up attending the wedding of our mutual friends. I didn’t know this at the time, but Derek had talked to them prior to the wedding to see if he could get a plus one to invite me. The groom had told him that I had already been invited and would be attending. Derek was excited about this and came up to me at church the Sunday prior to the wedding to ask me if I was attending (even though he already knew the answer). He got really excited when I told him I was and he asked me if I was going to be the flower girl. I thought he was really clueless for asking that and replied full of attitude and sass, “No! The flower girl is like 5 years old!”
The evening of the wedding, I arrived with my roommate Courtney who was also attending. Court and I were “coincidentally” placed at the same table as Derek. I remember Courtney and I were a little upset because we thought we had been placed at the singles table and didn’t understand why the rest of our friends were all seated together. Derek was genuinely excited when he discovered that we were seated at the same table. He sat right next to me and talked to me the entire night. I felt awkward because I was sitting between Court and Derek and each time Court tried to talk to Derek he completely ignored her and went right back to talking to me! I knew Courtney was annoyed but Derek seemed clueless – it was really awkward. Derek continued to share stories about his life and asked me questions about mine. At one point, he got so nervous he ended up spilling water all over the table and almost all over me.
He tried to be smooth and asked me if we could take a picture together in the photo booth, not one, but two times. I didn’t understand why we would need a picture together since we were simply acquaintances but I didn’t know how to tell him that, so, naturally, I changed the subject.
When it was time for dinner, Derek tried to serve me by offering to carry my plate. Since I didn’t know what his intentions were, I told him I could do it myself (according to my mother, I’ve been saying that since I was three – yikes. . . ).
Shortly after dinner, the sun went down and it got pretty chilly. Court and I didn’t bring jackets so we decided to head home. Derek wasn’t around when we left and since we weren’t really friends, I didn’t seek him out to say goodbye. I learned later that he was bummed about that.
After the wedding, I had many people at church ask about Derek and me and they would tell me that he liked me. Since he hadn’t actually told me that though, I refused to believe it. My response to people who said such things was that I needed to go off of Philippians 4:8 and think on what is true. Maybe I was being too hard on myself but I knew my own heart. Often in the past, I would overthink any form of attention from a guy and turn it into some made up thing in my head about how he must like me since he was talking to me. I didn’t want to be that girl anymore. I was done.
Read Part Four Here
