#45 THE SUPER HOT SECOND PERSON I MET AT STARBUCKS: THE FINAL PART

A fantasy man who came along at the right and wrong time

Check out the first two posts I wrote about Noah, the really hot second guy I met at Starbucks who was like this hot, wise, interesting semi-pen pal: posts #43 and #44. It’s hard to describe but he meant a lot to me even if he wasn’t on my timeline and wouldn’t be the person for me. (I think we are both where we are meant to be).

A long while after our initial messages, I messaged him again.

42 days later, 31 January 2012

We first messaged in early December and mid-December and then I messaged again when it was practically February.

Elaine: I haven't forgotten you. I've just been really busy with being in England for a month and getting back into the swing of things here. Will reply soon.

Hope you've been well. :D

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5ish months later, 5 July 2012

Noah was travelling in Paris and somehow we’d talked about both loving the film Amelie so he sent me a picture of the cafe from the film. My older sister, Jae, introduced the film to me and I have loved it ever since.

Hello from Paris, and here is the "surprise" to send you. Sorry for the delay in getting this over to you. Attached are 3 pics of me thinking about you when I was in Cafe 2 Des Moulins. First is the menu of "Amelie", – before I had made the connection. Pic 2 is my view from the cafe, and pic 3 is a very cute french bulldog who was very sweet. How perfect, a French bulldog in the cafe, in France :-)

Very flatly I seemed only to reply: “What a lovely surprise! Thank you :)” Even though I was delighted to hear from him.

The actual photos emailed to me by Noah.

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1ish months later, 26 August 2012

About a month after Noah’s Paris message but 7 months from the messaging saying I hadn’t forgotten him...I really hadn’t forgotten him but life gets busy doesn’t it?

I re-read these "old" beginnings of a correspondence that we had. Perhaps we should re-start. 

How often do you see your dad? You talk about him in an almost nostalgic way. It's interesting about the writer who wrote you a letter about your father when he was young. I often think I need to take the time to listen to stories from my mum and dad and grandparents because I'll never know them enough, never know all I will ever want to know, and, eventually, time will cease. 

That’s how it is for everyone isn’t it, sadly. So much to know about people. So many complexities from their little preferences and routines each day (how they take their coffee, what time, what biscuits they like) to more complex and emotional moments – first kisses, first heartbreak, fond memories, sparkling moments, triumphs, failures, and all the emotional weight around each time period.

I should probably go to bed. I spent the evening doing much-needed up-keep grooming activities. I love how exciting my life is right now. Instead or partying or doing anything remotely interesting I spend Saturday night doing my eyebrows and whitening my teeth. And, also, instead of staying up because I'm having some fascinating intellectual conversation with a friend, I just finished watching The Nanny Diaries which actually made me reflect on this 18-29 something stage of life in which many child-women struggle to grow up and emerge into the world. I read an article about it recently. Not that I would coin myself that. But it does seem adequately to describe (can't split the infinitive!) this stage of life. More people go to grad school, swim their way through the deep end to find careers – barely emerging after their 20s – and marry and settle down later, so it's a period of great exploration, but great uncertainty. I think if I had a career as, say, that whole book rep job thing that I want then I'd not so much mind the whole other thing. I mean I have a boyfriend who lives x amount of thousands of miles away who's looking at grad schools in Sweden, so, suffice to say, as much as I maybe hoped we'd work out, I guess we're not. It's telling that I never ever ever figure into anything he wants in his future. Which is kinda sad for me. It's not nice to be the one that's not – whatever – enough for his future. His loss? Perhaps. Maybe our relationship lacks the je'ne sais quois? Well, I thought it was a nice relationship, but perhaps I should aim for more?

Now I'm just rambling as one is want to do at 3.59 am. Oh why am I still up? I have an exciting day ahead of me tomorrow – gym, creating a syllabus, laundry (in mass quantities) as I read and plan lessons for next week and the next, cleaning my room, cleaning my car, packing for NY on Thursday, and preparing to go to my mundane legal assistant job. I don't really dislike the job so much as I am just very busy and tired and teaching isn't a leave it at the office job and I have so much preparation for each hour I'm in the classroom. Not to mention all of those papers that came in this weekend 70! 70 papers to grade. Oh my! Those won't get done for a fortnight. 

Anyway, hope you're sleeping sound and tucked away in your house (apartment?) in your quite possibly cosy bed. Do you have a down comforter? My comforter is down and I love it. 

Goodnight and sleep well.

Thinking of you,

Elaine x

Clearly, I was having some quarter-life crisis moment. But I did finally ask about his father.

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5 days later, 31 August 2012

Hey! So sorry for the delay. I've been doing a lot of reading and introspection during this vacation and trying to stay away from the computer...Birthday week has been good, I had a great dinner and retirement party for Dad on Wed, and yesterday I celebrated by going to see Batman by myself in the middle of the day (woo hoo), and I'm catching up with friends this weekend and seeing my Mom.

You're probably off in NY having fun with your boyfriend. I hope you are having fun.

I don't see my Dad as much as I would like to. I talk to him almost once a week and see him, oh I'd say about once a month. I think it's important to have a strong connection with your parents in regards to being as comfortable and genuine as you can be, as close as you can. It's all about having a strong relationship with yourself, you have to have it before you can have a relationship with others. Knowing your family and where you came from is important, to help understand yourself more as well.

Sounds like a nice and exciting Saturday. How often do you talk to your parents? How often do you whiten your teeth? I just had the bright smile procedure done. Can't help you on your questions with the boyfriend thing. What is this article with the Nanny Diaries about growing up and emerging in the world? Would like to see it.

I definitely respect how much preparation goes into teaching and every hour; I totally can see that. It's so much preparation for just that one hour. 

Ha Ha! I live in an apartment. My bed is very comfortable. I do have a down comforter.

Thinking of you too,

xoxoxo

Noah

P.S. Have a blast in NYC and hope it goes well with the BF!

I’m pretty sure he thought I was super sketchy for talking to him/flirting with him and having a boyfriend.

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3 days later, 3 September 2012

Hi there, Mr. Busy! I didn't want you to think I'd forgotten you. And Happy Belated Birthday. (Sorry about that). I hope your huge celebration fest went well. I can't sleep, but I should catch two more hours before waking up around 8.30-9 so I can catch my 12.30 flight out of here. I don't want to miss the flight so better be early and get a taxi in that direction that rush around and worry.

Are you already on vacation? What reading have you done? I just stated Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. It's excellent so far. 

Wow! Really living it up by going to a movie. Alone. Mid-day! :P I hope you enjoyed it. Was it the first time you'd managed to see it?

I hope time with your mum and friends went well. Can't wait to hear how that went. 

Re New York. I was replying to this email in a (maybe annoying) way I have where I just reply underneath the bit that the previous person wrote in, so I change the font colour and make sure I address each paragraph as if they were test questions.

I had a lot of fun. (For 96% of it at least). However, I realized things needed to end and I ended it. It sucks being the girl that he just didn't see a future with, but I do realize it's not so much me; it's that he's self-admittedly "emotionally unavailable" since he's still not over his ex-fiance. Oh well? Sad, but I'll be fine eventually. 

He left to catch his flight about half an hour ago. Goodbyes (especially permanent ones) are tough. As I said, my flight's not until 12.30, but I couldn't get back to sleep. I'm in a nice hotel called the Hudson near the South East corner of central park.

I didn’t have a smartphone so I must have brought my laptop with me. Odd.

Boyfriend (or ex) paid for the hotels but he allowed me to pay for my flights plus a few meals there when I was flat broke and I was in NY to accompany HIM to a wedding where he flirted with the German girls in attendance in front of me (the bride was German marrying an American officer plus there were some Upper East Sider types there too).

He told me he was “proud” of me for paying for myself. He’d already moved to Texas the month before and he didn’t ask me to come so I’m not sure why I hadn’t ended it sooner. If he’d gone without a date, he could’ve flirted without any unpleasantness I’m sure. I broke up with him that night and told him not to contact me – which he didn’t. I guess he had some resolve there. But we also did have some nice bits too. Plus, I got to go to New York and see my friend Edward where we went to dinner at that Wolf of Wall Street place.

Then I replied to Noah’s bit about “knowing your family” is important.

I like this assessment! I agree. Where does your father live?

I talk to my Mum almost daily (several times a day). We're very close (at least on the phone). I tell her everything. She's very supportive of whatever I decide to do and doesn't really interfere with decisions I make. My Dad rings me about once a week to once a fortnight. He lives in England and we write back and forth. I send him a lot of postcards because he collects them. Whenever I go away, I pick up a stack of postcards and then I buy a book of stamps and I try and jot something down on most days, but I haven't been so good about that lately. I still have to find some postcards here. I haven't really had time to look at touristy-type shops.

My Dad collected postcards all his life. If only he was still around to collect them. I wrote this post (and the next seven) before my Father died.

Um, I'd love to have a "bright smile" but I just whiten my teeth when I feel they need it. My teeth could be whiter, but c'est la vie. 

As far as the article goes about the 18-30 woman/child dichotomy, sadly, I read it in my friend Anna's Cosmo. It was just a blurb, but the concept was interesting. I think it was relating it to some modern televisions shows and trying to connect it with the scope of how this is problematic in society. 

Then a reply to the teaching prep bit.

Yes, sadly, I agree. Too much to do for an hour of classroom time. Unfortunately, I like the teaching in the classroom part; it's just all the other bits that I do not like. 

Thinking of you before I take another morning nap.

Hope you're sleeping well.

Take care,

Elaine xxx

I think this flirtation was my way of protecting my heart from a “boyfriend” who wasn’t all that into me despite practically living together for a year. Plus, also Noah was hot and lived a million miles away! My ex was never going to be invested in me so I had this something to give me hope that I could be wanted even if I faced someone who didn’t want me and didn’t see a future with me.

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I think Noah and I texted back and forth a few times, exchanged some photos where he looked breathtaking (body of a God and all that) and his apartment looked striking, and I planned to go and see him but then he emailed me in October 2012 saying he’d met someone and wanted to pursue it and not to visit.

(His body was surprisingly better than Hemsworth’s.)

I said thanks for letting me know and that I understood (which I did). I mean who wants to be that one girl who flies into town and the new girlfriend is all like “who is this” and it’s not like I was really just “some friend.”

I’m not (surprisingly) going to reproduce the rest of the correspondence because, well, it’s already becoming a novel but he said:

“I've always had high hopes for you and I, and you are incredibly sexy...but she lives here in town and something special might have happened between us. It's soon. I don't know for certain yet. But I would hate to have you book a flight and get disappointed.”

I totally got it and I told him I was used to dating people who lived no more than fifteen minutes away. I’d said that I’d really just assumed it would’ve been a fun fling-type situation and he said that we were on the same page but he’d have contemplated long distance with me. We had some friendly “about our life” back and forths with the same frequency as before. Sometimes a reply every few days, sometimes a little longer.

I told him about meeting my first husband in October 2012.

“Just as I thought I'd cool things off with the new guy, I decided that I liked him, so things are going surprisingly well. Also, it looks as if my ex got the blonde he was always looking for; he pretty much told me his ex fiance was the girl of his dreams and everything he wanted and how he'd preferred blondes, etc, and I always wondered why he'd even dated me in the first place since I was never his type. He didn't like big boobs. Didn't like my body type. Liked my personality and enjoyed my company, but I ‘wasted’ my potential. Okay, I sound like I'm ranting. Basically, the new guy is the antithesis of all that. He treats me like gold; it's rather refreshing.”

I’d written to Noah at first that I always rushed into relationships so I was trying to take this one slower (because of the heartbreak from Captain Thor) and the new guy (my ex-husband) seemed to want things to go faster than I’d wanted. He said he understood the sentiment as things didn’t work out with the girl he was dating.

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February 2013

He sent me a Happy Valentine’s Day email. Just those words and a “hope you’re doing great.” We then exchanged a few emails. He told me about who he was dating. I told him about who I was dating and some thoughts on life, hopes, dreams, etc. The usual.

We exchanged this sentiment in a couple of emails:

Noah: It sucks that we never got the chance to hang out, I thought we would have had fun and I still wonder about that. I realize we've both moved onto relationships, but still...just something I wonder about. I was going through my old email folders and found some of the pics we exchanged, and our conversations. You are very sexy; we would have had fun in Atlanta. I do care for you. Maybe it's just that the timing was off.

Elaine: The timing was very off. I have wondered about it too, but, unfortunately (or fortunately? because we didn't know how well we'd mesh), we're on very permanent, very separate, and very different paths now. I care for you too. You seem like a very lovely person, and I think we would have gotten along. 

The story that didn’t happen…

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17 April 2015

Noah reached out to me again but this time to tell me of his elation at meeting his future wife. 

Here’s a small piece:

[The name of the girl] and I ended shortly after we last talked. I met a new woman, and she is amazing. Things are progressing very well and soon I will be proposing an important question to her :-) Reading below on a lot of the things you said about [your first husband], that is how I feel about her. I could talk on and on about how things have progressed and what I've learned, but I'll leave that for later, if you are still around.

I said I was pleasantly surprised to hear from him after all this time and I didn’t have time to respond just then.

In my posts, I often reproduce the beginnings and endings of things. Beginnings and endings are poignant aren't they? The excitement of the new, the crushing weight of the end.

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24 April 2015

I wrote an email discussing things I was up to and “I am truly happy. And I hope you are too. I think things get better with time” and the “secrets” to a happy marriage about speaking with kindness and so on and not fighting. My ex-husband would leave me by January 2016. So much for knowing “the secrets of happiness.” I often wonder if I was merely delusional. 

We sent a few more emails in April that year. He told me of the elaborate (and oh-so-romantic) way he was going to propose to his now-wife. 

Then, I replied again in June. In August that year, I told him my ex had basically decided to change careers and our life without consulting me and that was a shock. And I told Noah, “We are learning we have completely different priorities in life, or at least we do at this point in life, which is totally heartbreaking. I hope we will get on the same page at some point, and start moving forward again as a pair.” Spoiler: it didn’t work out.

It only got worse from there…

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March 2020 

He messaged again when I’d been with Michael for about four years: “This is your friend [Noah] from a while ago! I just wanted to say congrats on your engagement and marriage! I’m so happy for you! I hope all is going great in your world. So much has changed since we last talked with me and I’m sure you as well…so happy to see you happy with your new man on Facebook! You guys were meant for each other.”

Noah gushed about his marriage and children. I emailed to say our lives had changed again with the pandemic and I was working from home for the foreseeable (I never did go back into an office after that) and our wedding was postponed (which happened to be postponed four times).

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Beautiful endings

That was the last time we talked but I know that for whatever reason Noah, the gorgeous man I met at Starbucks, was put in my path for a reason – as a friend to sound my thoughts and tell my true feelings to and for us to celebrate the joys and happiness in each other’s life, all from that one chance meeting in Starbucks.

Part of me then, before I got married for the first time, hoped we’d bridge barriers and see if we could have been good together, but then I had a long journey to healing (which is only sort of coming to a close now thanks to the wonderful husband that is Michael), so I probably would’ve messed it up anyway. 

I liked what I saw of him, what I knew about him, but in the grand scheme of things that’s very little with the complicated logistics that go into relationships. Anyway, it all worked out for the best as he’s happily married with a gorgeous wife and two beautiful children (the white picket fence life with the boy and the girl) and I have Michael, who is as perfect for me as someone can get, in the ways that truly count.

Pretend that is a cup of tea!

Plus, I’m sure Texas is lovely and all but I never did revise my opinion of it. Maybe one day my company will fly me to the Houston office and I’ll see the merit, but until then…

Next up, my dirtiest encounter (but not in the way you’d think). Also, I promise the next post will actually be short.

Don’t forget to check out the other forty-four posts I’ve written, including the one on why I’m writing this newsletter/blog in the first place – and the odd “present day snippet” of what I’m up to lately.

Have you ever met someone on the wrong timeline to you? Even still, do you feel you ended up where you’re meant to be?