A guy I liked had come back from his mission. I went out with him a few times during the summer while I was home from college. It went really well, but I was off to BYU and he lived in MD. He never called me, and he seemed affronted when I called him once, so I didn't call him again. But he wrote me some letters and I wrote back. He knew I was dating other people at college.

I was sort of dating for food that semester ("sort of" because I didn't go out with someone if I knew there was no possibility of it going anywhere) (but I admit there were a couple of guys that I probably wouldn't have given a chance if a meal hadn't been involved). One of the guys that took me out to eat was Smack. Soon I was starting to wonder if there might be a future for us. By November, I wasn't dating anyone but him--even though we weren't an exclusive couple and Smack knew about this other guy.

Thanksgiving was coming up, and I had some huge papers and studying to do, so I planned to hole up in my apartment the entire weekend. A couple of days before the holiday, the returned missionary called me and said his parents were sending him out to Provo for Thanksgiving so he could see his family and see me, too. He also said he needed a ride from the airport, and he asked if I could pick him up (hindsight--I should've realized he had family that could pick him up).

I immediately told Smack about the situation. Smack offered to let me use his car to pick up the other guy. I felt really weird about it, but I didn't know what else to do, so I said that was really kind of him and I promised to return his car at a certain time.

The day came. Smack drove up to my apartment and left his car with me. I drove up to the airport and picked up the guy and took him to where he was staying in Provo. Then I drove back to my apartment and met Smack to give him his car back. Smack said he'd see me Monday, and he drove away.

So now I'm waiting for the guy to show up so we could go to dinner, but he's taking a lot longer than he said he would. Just then the doorbell rings. I open the door, and Smack is standing there. He comes in and closes the door, and I see the emotion on his face. He doesn't say anything, but he gives me a huge hug and doesn't let go. My roommates are standing there staring. The doorbell rings.

Smack whispers into my ear, "I'll go out the back." He lets me go and hurries out the back door. My roommates open the front door, and the guy walks in and says, "Hi!" very cheerfully.

It turned out the guy didn't want to eat dinner. When I took him to play pool, he was ashamed of me wearing my thrift-store winter coat (a retro 60's piece that I loved and that also happened to be extremely warm). He wanted to know what else I had planned for us to do that weekend, and he said he was up for it, but I got the feeling that he was disappointed in me and wasn't really interested. I had Thanksgiving dinner with his family, who were all great people. But I was relieved when he went home. (He wrote me a couple of letters after that, saying he didn't know what went wrong that weekend, but he hoped we could do some stuff together when I was home for Christmas. I basically said I didn't think it would work or something--I don't really remember.)

When I saw Smack's sister a day or two later, she was really cold to me for hurting her little brother like that.