I didn’t know. I’d never had to do that.
“What kind of plans did you have with your ex?” I asked.
She sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. Just the general ones. Plans to get married, have kids, live in a nice house with the white picket fence, I guess.”
“Huh… from what you said about having a scheduled, mundane life the other day, I would’ve guessed the settled, white picket fence life wasn’t for you.”
She gave me a crooked smile. “Yeah, I could see how you’d think that. It doesn’t seem like the kind of lifestyle you’d choose if you’re spontaneous, but… I don’t know. The one thing I’m not spontaneous about is my relationships, I guess. I like to feel unbound by a steady life, just not in my relationships, in which I really like to be steady. I like the constant, regular support you get from being with someone you really care about. I always settle down in my relationships, I don’t know.”
I actually liked to hear this, and not just because I was fantasizing about us being in a steady, settled relationship… though I was. But I liked that she was multi-faceted. She was a mystery to me, hard to figure out, and that only made me more intrigued.
“That makes sense, actually,” I told her. “You can’t be free spirited all the time, right? You need something to ground you to the real world.”
“Exactly,” she agreed. “That’s exactly what I want from my relationships. I want them to ground me. And I also just really want kids. I can’t explain that desire, I guess. I just always have, I suppose it’s biology.”
“Well, and kids are spontaneous, too.”
She laughed. “Right? The funny thing is when people are making their settled, scheduled lives, they add kids into the mix, but they’re anything but. They’re like chaos in a small body.”
“I did a lot of babysitting of my younger cousins when I was a teen, so I can really attest to the fact that that’s true.”
She glanced over at me. “So you do or don’t like kids?”
“I do,” I told her. “I wasn’t really a fan of being forced to babysit or anything, but I really do like kids.”
“And do you like steady, grounded relationships?” she questioned.
“I imagine so,” I said accidentally.
“Imagine so?” she asked.
Dammit, this was something I really would have preferred to keep to myself for a while. I didn’t like the idea of seeming naïve or inexperienced to Kaitlyn. Though I couldn’t lie about it now.
“I actually haven’t had any relationships,” I admitted to her.
“Oh!” I could tell she was trying not to seem surprised by this fact. Trying to make her face as normal as possible.
“I know, it’s weird,” I said, as we got to the cafeteria doors. I held them open for both of us. “Someone at my age never dating? You don’t see that often.”
“Not really,” she admitted, “especially not with girls as cute as you. I can’t imagine you ever finding it hard to meet people who were interested in you.”
I blushed. “I mean, I’ve been hit on before. It’s not like people have been uninterested, but… I don’t know. Nobody has really caught my eye, you know?”
“Ahh…” she said softly. “So you’re the picky one?”
I laughed. “Yeah, I guess so.” I liked having this spin on it. That I was too picky for dating. Not that I was just some inexperienced, naïve dork who nobody had ever wanted to date.
“If I’d known you’d had such high standards, I might not have asked for your number,” she teased. “Wouldn’t want to waste my time or anything.”
She was definitely half flirting, half trying to get a read for whether or not I actually liked her.
I looked up at her as I scanned my meal card twice, once for myself and once for her. “You’re not wasting your time,” I told her honestly.
She gave a cocky smile and nod and then went to grab us some trays.
I got the broccoli cheddar soup I’d been craving with a side salad, and she grabbed some pasta that was on the buffet line before we took our seats.
Because I’d never done it before, I didn’t really understand the whole dating thing. I knew it came with a lot of rules