The Ballad of Flaco Joe

Treat yo'self to some popcorn, kids, this is gonna be a saga.

For over a decade, I have had an on/off thing with Flaco.  I've mentioned him dozens of times in dozens of posts, even had a few solely about him.  He is extremely special to me. Despite so many years of hanging out and hooking up, we've never actually attempted to date, for reasons I will get into.
An outsider may look at this and see a textbook FWB relationship, and though I don't totally disagree, it's not exactly like that.  First and foremost, we are actually friends.  We enjoy spending time together.  We laugh and joke. We text at random just to say hi. We go on dates, and he treats me like a boyfriend would, holding my hand and kissing me, whether we're alone or with a group. Sometimes he comes over, and there are no 'benefits', just a night spent together in front of a movie, followed by us curling into each other and falling asleep (those are my favorite times, for very obvious reasons). Despite our 'textbook definition', he has never once treated me with a lack of care and respect. "My god woman', I hear you saying, 'why haven't you put a ring on that yet?' Ha...carry on, little reader.

  I was insanely attracted to him from the first second I met him.  In fact, I believe I posted something once about him being 'so fine he made me sweat', something I still vouch for to this day, because mah gawd. Never in a million years did I think I ever had a shot with him, so when we started messing around, I compartmentalized it, there and then deciding that I would enjoy things for what they were and never expect more than that.  In the beginning he actually intimidated me; I was stupefied that he wanted anything to do with me. Just having him smile at me made me nervous and weak kneed, it was like I was 10 years old again with my first crush on a boy. That feeling made it easier for me, along with my lack of self esteem, to leave things how they were.  It took a long time for me to come out of the shell I put myself in with him, but once I did, we grew closer.  Out went the nerves and in came the inside jokes and date nights. (The weak knees, however, still remain, and may never go away. His crinkly smile really is a killer.)
Even when we were 'off' during  my relationship with The Dreaded Ex, he was still a fixture in my life.  He had uncanny timing; when things went kablooey with the Ex as they often did, Flaco was there to pick up my broken pieces. The night I was alone and got terrible news about a close family member, he was there. At 2am. With his sleeping kids. Just to make sure I didn't spend the night alone and upset.  I've gone on a dozen or so dead end dates over the last few years; by the end of the majority of them, I found myself thinking of him, wishing I was with him instead, even if we hadn't seen or talked for months before. Still, I didn't let my thoughts run wild. The separation between us was my own doing and was for the best.  I figured keeping him at arm's length and only agreeing to see him on a sporadic basis would help me keep my guard up. It worked...until it didn't.

He came over Saturday night, and it was the first time we'd seen each other in a little more than a year.  I have no idea what took us so long- I often wondered if he thought I had something going on with the guy that paroled to my house, and kept his distance out of respect for my imagined relationship. Maybe it was my fault, who knows. Whatever, I digress.
He came by, and I met him on my doorstep. As soon as he was in front of me, it felt like a glitter cannon shot out of my head. My favorite grin was finally there, and so were those bullshit ass weak knees when he moved forward to kiss me hello. ...sigh...
We stayed up for hours just catching up and talking and laughing, and I remembered how much I just like him as a human. We vibed like no time passed since our last time together, naturally falling back into our regular banter. After a few hours, we fell into my bed, he wrapped himself around me, pulled me into his chest, and we slept..

...and at that moment, my decade-long battle was obliterated. Ring the bell, your girl has hit the mat once again, and this time it hit back. 

Falling for him hit me like a battering ram, and I can pinpoint when it happened down to the last dust mote.  Here I was, pressed against his prickly chest, arms wrapped around each other like we would fall off the planet if either of us let go. When light came through the windows, I peeped an eye open to make sure he was actually there and that I wasn't having the world's greatest fever dream, and there he was...beautiful, peaceful, tanned and tattooed, his cheek rested on the top of my head. I breathed in the smell of him, kissing his chest, and looked up...and gone was my defense.  It was like a decade of suppressed feelings banded together and ran me over in that moment, and it made me audibly gasp. Shiiiiit.

He stayed until late morning, and I soaked up every piece of him until then like an addict. When he kissed me goodbye, it was...different. It was more. Like a kiss someone gives you when they don't really want to leave you, including the long, pressed together hug. I poured everything I felt into those last kisses, and will always wonder if he picked up on it. As soon as I reluctantly closed the door after him, I crumpled to the middle of my living room floor in a daze with a smile on my face and a million obscenities being shouted in my head. I'm well and truly fucked, and I know it.

I've been here before, albeit to lesser degrees, and all of my sad aftermaths are posted in the archives, so you can imagine how I'm feeling right about now. Telling him how I feel is a scary fucking thought, and something I likely won't do for a while- just the idea of possibly scaring him away crushes me.  I know, after nearly 13 years, he shouldn't scare away easily and I shouldn't be afraid of scaring him, and if he does freak he's not worth it, and something like this was bound to happen at some point- the logic isn't lost on me.  Still, I have spent a long time not rocking our boat, and some habits are hard to break.  We've glossed over the idea of making things official, but we've made a career of 'letting things fall how they will', and not forcing anything, and I don't intend to start now.  Mostly because I don't want to force him to feel something for me, because I wouldn't be doing  myself any favors anyway. If he is ever going to to love me back, I want it to happen naturally..maybe realize it like I did. 

:Edit: I now realize that this post kinda reads like a schmaltzy romance novel, so you have my apologies for all the gagging. All this yucky love stuff turns me into a sloppy ball of mush. It's a sickness. Carry on.

I don't really have a point for this post other than to just get this stuff off my chest. I'm not acting on anything until I'm certain he won't run for the hills, and may even have a little pitter patter for me too. The romantic in me likes to think that we've both been single for so long for a reason, because we always come back to this.  Maybe he's my long lost person- who knows? Maybe this is the Universe's way of telling us both to stop fucking around already.  Or maybe I'm a complete idiot, fishing in a pond I'm not equipped for. Either way, the damage is done and I'm free falling through this bitch, with every hope that he chooses to catch me, because I sure as hell want him to.

 stay tuned for the next exciting episode of The Ballad of Flaco Joe...