I met my husband about a decade prior to dating him and didn’t like him at all. He was my best-friend’s new best-friend. Danni and I were together for the high school shenanigans, like lying to my parents about attending church lock-ins when we actually were at rowdy parties, testing our limits with alcohol. When we attended colleges in different states, she replaced our funny group projects that very loosely bothered to follow instructions with Omar singing songs by the Ying Yang Twins directly into her ear during lectures, making her miss important notes. After college, Omar and I ended up around each other infrequently. It was only when in attendance for Danni’s special events like birthday parties and advanced degree graduations. He lived in a different state and after one of his visits to Michigan I requested, “don’t bring him back.” He was moody and silent. He seemed to take himself too seriously and I wondered what she saw in him as a friend. I value humor and since he didn’t make me laugh, I figured I’d get one at his expense.
I asked to borrow his phone and scheduled middle of the night alarms to go off on his cell phone at random times over the following few months. Imagine sleeping peacefully, weeks after someone asked to see your phone, and a wailing electronic sound jars you awake at 3:37am for absolutely no reason. It happens again at 4:28am a week later. And again at 2:17am two days later. And on. And on. You may be reading this and not appreciate how hilarious that is but, I assure you, I cracked myself up. He was a little less amused. Several years later, Omar confessed that the night I asked to see his phone, he hoped I was going to put my phone number in there as a signal for him to call me because I was DTF (if you don’t know what that means, Google it. I bet the first result on your search engine will be the right one). That bit of information only makes my prank funnier to me. Life took us all in different directions and I rarely saw him anymore after that.
Several years and a failed marriage later, we found ourselves back in each other’s orbit. Danni’s grandmother passed away and we all returned to Michigan for the funeral. Grandma loved us all and we were there to pay our respects, but things took an interesting turn. The night before the funeral we hunkered down in her parents’ basement and got ridiculously drunk to chase away the sadness. It was our idea of group therapy. Between six people we drank a gallon of vodka and didn’t soak it up well enough with pizza and chicken wings. I had learned that he’d had a bit of a crush on me when we met all those years ago and nothing had changed.
“She made me promise that I would never hit on you because having her best friends date each other could get weird if it didn’t work out,” he admitted. I immediately remembered a night, years before, where our friend was trying to convince him to stay at her apartment to hang out with us. I remembered her saying, “You talk to him. If you ask him, he’ll stay.” I never really grasped what she meant by that since he didn’t stay when I asked. That might be because I said something along the lines of, “Stop being so fucking stupid and just stay here with us.” I’ve always had a way with words.
As it happened, I planned to take my vagina on a divorce tour and he seemed like just the right person to have angry sex with. Have you ever had a drunk idea but paused to ask for your friends advice, but they’re also too drunk to make appropriate decisions, and you don’t really want advice; you just want someone to validate your outrageous decisions? Either our friend was over her aversion to us hooking up,or she was merely in support of me re-introducing my lady bits to society like a debutante. As soon as the unanimous encouragement came from my friends, I tossed my inhibitions in the trash can and downed another drink. I made my move during a raucous game of Taboo. Instead of just watching over his shoulder with the buzzer, I licked the edge of his ear to distract him while he was trying to give clues. I recall him dropping the clue cards to the table, wrapping me in his strong arms and lifting me into another room, mouth on mine. He literally swept me off my feet! He was so smooth and powerful that it lit a spark in my chest. The next bit is fuzzy but Omar alleges that I said the words, “Fuck me.”
“I DID NOT! I’d never say something that forward!” I insist that I am too much of a lady to ever use those words but I’ll be honest with you; I said that shit. Don’t tell him I finally admitted it. I have a reputation to protect. On the eve of Grandma’s funeral, we got wasted and hooked up in the back room of our best friend’s parents’ basement like horny teenagers. Only we were grown ass adults with professions and children. It was incredibly inappropriate, but sometimes seizing the moment, vag first, ends up giving you exactly what you didn’t know you needed.
Neither of us wanted more. It was supposed to be a one night thing. Then a two night thing. Almost 8 years later, I write this on our fourth wedding anniversary, while lying in bed next to the man I decided I didn’t want to hang out with 15 years ago. The man who never made me laugh is now the main person who can make me smile on my worst days. We’ve had babies together. He’s taken care of me during more than one medical emergency. I indulge his moods as he indulges mine. After all this time, it feels like being together was inevitable. We just needed the right forces to bring us to where we needed to be. Thanks Sean “Diddy” Combs for the Ciroc and thank you Grandma. Because of them, 4 years ago on this day, we had our first dance as husband and wife to “Bitch Betta Have My Money,” surrounded by our loved ones. Thanks Rihanna and Happy Anniversary to Omar.
The Well-Adjusted Adult 