Chapter 11: Darren*
Disclaimer: a multitude of events/details have been left out of this chapter, both for increased anonymity of myself and the gentleman in question, as well as I started writing this two months after this all happened, so apologies.
Darren* is actually someone that I work with at one of my jobs, of which I have three. Upon starting my position there and meeting him, I was immediately attracted. He is from a Scandinavian country originally and just comes with that natural Scandinavian good looks. He acted a little immature, in a way that is just everything is sexual, a natural flirt. For a few months, I had an innocent little crush on him, purely infatuation.
Often we would say hi in passing and he was always really helpful when it came to patients. He got along with everyone and despite his lewdness, I really enjoyed working with him. There were multiple times that we would walk and talk in the hall, he would express embarrassment to me over him having acne, and would openly announce that he was switching what side he was on because he didn’t want me to see it. I, in my thinking he was out of my league and I was secured in the friend/coworker zone, would be super transparent, and as well complain about my acne, and described in detail the acne patches I would use.
All seemed platonic until one day out of the blue he just leaned in close to me and asked me if he could have my Snapchat. I immediately was like oh yeah of course! From there, we talked throughout the days daily for about a week.
I let him and my coworker in MRI know that I’m gonna bring in food on the weekend since I got a huge crockpot meal from my Home Chef meal kit boxes and wanted to share the love. When really, although I did do that, I was on purpose making sure I did it on a day Darren* was working. I made sure to wear an outfit that would get his attention without trying too hard: well-fitting yoga pants and a tank top. I arrive and I call their department to let them know I’m here with food. Darren* answers the phone and there’s video chat so I also see him. I say “hey I’m here! Chicken tacos in the break room.” He says “Are they hard or soft?” in the innuendo way he does. What he doesn’t know, is he’s met his match since I’m also kind of a perv. I respond “what do you think?” seductively and with a wink. He laughs and just goes “oh alright.” I say “Nah but seriously they’re soft tacos.” He says “my favorite! We’ll be over soon.” The cavalry arrives and everyone eats their food and thanks me. I’m not really getting the quality time I was hoping for but I’m still happy. Finally, everyone starts to kinda make their way out until it’s just Darren* and I. We just chat. This is when somehow or another I find out he has a tattoo in a more rated R area. I laugh. He asks me about my outfit and if I am going to the gym. I say no that I was just trying to be comfortable but still look good enough to be outside of my house. He says he should probably get back to work and will snap me later.
Late that night, I ask him more about his tattoos, and I tell him about mine. I send him photos of a couple of my PG tattoos, he sends me his PG tattoos (yes this does imply we both have rated R tattoos). I think this is a moment that is kind of exposing but could also just be innocent as well.
The next week, we again worked together, and he would come by, a little more than usual, saying hi to me and chatting before returning to work. The last time he stops by before he leaves for the day, he gives me a hug. Now, this hug wasn’t like a normal hug, it was super awkward, incredibly on my part.
You see, I did not expect this to happen and I was sitting down so he approached me for the hug while I was sitting. In attempts to make this less horrible, which backfired, I decided to begin standing up during the hug. Not only did I do this, no that would be still not horrible, but I then put my arms around him diagonally. Yes, that cringy one arm on the shoulder/neck and the other around the waist. At this moment I am well aware of what terrible state I am in, but am surprised and pleased that regardless of how awkward I have positioned myself that he is still holding onto me. He is in fact at this moment squeezing me tightly, comfortably.
Somehow this embrace lasts for probably a good twenty seconds. I’m sure I am red in the face but he says bye talk to you later and leaves. Immediately, I Snapchat him and say “I’m so sorry that was such an awkward hug. I need a do-over please.” His response is something along the lines of, “It’s all good I live for the cringe” with a laughing face emoji. Otherwise, we continue to talk as we were.
I offer him my number, thinking like we are getting along well and are maybe at that point. He says that he actually prefers Snapchat, as his cell service isn’t very good with his provider (which I shall not name), so he communicates a lot more with Snapchat anyway. We somewhere too in this time say we’re going to hang out on Saturday, and I’ll cook him some food.
Oh and now is your first preview of me being sneaky and retrieving Snapchat screenshots via taking pics of my phone screen. Step One, send a thirst trap.
Step Two: He responds to the thirst trap. I remember also saying something after that, despite not having it in the screenshot, where I say, “Is that why you don’t wear a dress to work?” Which is what he is responding to in the third photo.
I’m also still wondering, is he just being a flirt, or is this man interested? Soon I would get my answer.
Now, it is the weekend, Friday night. I mention to him that I’m walking to my friend’s house and I’m going over to drink some wine and eat pasta. I send him Snapchats of my friend on Hinge swiping, and us playing “Tinder March Madness,” a game I saw on Tik Tok and thought was funny. Essentially, you right-swipe on all of the men, no matter what. Give it some time and wait for the matches to roll in. Then there are certain point values that go along with certain dating profile tropes. The person with the most points “wins” each round until the “Ultimate Tinder Guy” is found. Anyway, I send these to him half to be like LOL look at this stupid stuff, half to see if I get a rise out of him/he gets a little bit jealous. He is also with friends, so I don’t necessarily get in-depth answers or quick responses. I do mention to him that I’m leaving my friend’s apartment soon, and will be walking by myself. At this point it is nighttime. We do live in a relatively nice area, but it’s still a little scary to walk by yourself in the dark. I give him a call via Snapchat, he doesn’t answer but I know he’s with his friends, so it’s all good.
I arrive home and almost immediately after I walk through the door, I get a Snapchat call back from him. He asks me if I’m okay and if I got home safely. I am honestly surprised he called me back. I tell him I’m fine. He continues to talk to me on the phone and even puts me on speakerphone. The one part that hurts my soul is he does say that I’m his “friend, Mandy,” but hey, a friend is better than a co-worker. I talk with his friends about gaming, drinking, say I’ll drink some Everclear with them, go really hard. Darren* then says he’s gonna find somewhere more private to talk to me, takes me off speakerphone. We shoot the shit a little more, then he says he had just gone running and is gonna take a shower and will talk to me later. I end the call.
Literally one minute after ending the call, I receive a Snapchat from him. This is a picture Snapchat. It is a photo of him completely naked. Where his package would be is conveniently blocked by the level of the counter in his bathroom. Highly suggestive, though not a complete nude. What is my response? Something along the lines of “oh my!!!!” Any confusion I had was gone. Like alright, this man just sent this photo to you because he is into you. It’s late and I’m going to sleep anyway, so I figure I’ll just message him in the morning to clear things up before we hang out.
Before I can even confront him in the morning, he messages me. I, unfortunately, don’t have a screenshot for this. But he says whereas he isn’t exactly looking for a relationship at this moment, that he wants to see where things go with me and see what happens. I tell him that how I feel is I don’t like to put expectations on anything anyway and that I’m happy to do that and just follow where the vibes go between us. We’ve come to an agreement! With that, he says he is super hungover and is going to take a nap, and will let me know about coming over later. By the early evening, he says he wants to reschedule since he still feels like shit. I’m on call a lot, so we just schedule it tentatively for next Saturday and I see if I can get my call covered another day sooner so we can see each other before then.
I’m able to contact my manager the next day and I let him know I now have Wednesday free for him. I’m on call at our workplace the day I let him know that, and I jokingly tell him he is in charge of calling me in. Of course, I actually do get called in, though it isn’t him that lets me know. I arrive and hang out in the area he works in while I wait for the patient to be ready. He is not there and is off doing other stuff. He comes in and is surprised to see me, which checks out since I did tell him I was coming in, but he hadn’t opened that Snapchat yet. We hug hello, not awkwardly now, and he talks about his hands being cold. Essentially then we are holding hands. While the other coworkers are off tending to patients, we stand close together and chat. My patient arrives, and I ask him to help me move them. I observe him with a patient and he really is a great caregiver, it’s attractive. He helps me then says he’s gonna run back to his department and will be back. When he returns he says he is actually leaving for the night. My patient’s scan is more or less on autopilot, so I position ourselves away from the window that looks into the room. I embrace him and say I’m looking forward to seeing him next time we work together and on Wednesday. I think back and know I probably should have kissed him, but I didn’t, probably the thought of being at work and although no one was there and watching, still felt inappropriate.
I finished my work and returned home. Monday we spoke throughout the day, flirtatious and excited. We worked together Tuesday and when I walked in for the day, I immediately happened upon him in the break room. I sat down next to him and discussed timeframes for our hangout the next day. He is happy and upon another coworker walking in, I briefly say hey and disperse. Darren* comes into my department, as he does often, and is talking with everyone. One of our coworkers mentions to him that they want to talk to him about something. I’m not sure what it is about, but I do get a hit of anxiety wondering if he had told them about me, and it was regarding our relationship. Work goes by and they do go off and talk. Afterward, he is kinda brief in saying goodbye, which makes my anxiety increase.
I send him a message just again mentioning a timeframe for our next day’s plans. An hour or so after he left he responds saying that he is actually starting to talk to someone and didn’t want to do the next day because he didn’t want to jeopardize that, as he thought if he came over the next day he didn’t know what would happen. His phrasing was “is it okay” if we don’t see each other. So I say something like, “well I wouldn’t want to complicate things, I’m not happy about it but I understand.” He also expressed he was worried about work, though, at this point, I was about to start my new job and had told him about this. He mentions not having a “crystal ball” and that he doesn’t know what will happen in the future, blah blah blah. That we could still be with each other someday.
I am beyond confused. Literally three days before this, he had been the one to initiate things and asked for us to see where things go, wasn’t interested in a relationship, when suddenly now he is, albeit with someone else, and is interested enough to be afraid something romantic would happen if we were alone together, but not enough see where it goes.
In response, I give into a TikTok trend where you ask people what your type is. I did this that night. He did not take kindly to it. His response was kind of like, what is this? I was angry and thought this was a good way to have some self-deprecating humor. Essentially “douchebag,” “extroverted gamer,” “emotionally unavailable,” “guys with girlfriends,” and “Trump supporters,” were mentioned in this. Many of those descriptions which could describe Darren* at that moment.
I was still very hurt days afterward and didn’t know what would happen once we saw each other again at work. Come next workday together, he was starting to be on temperature check duty at the hospital. I did not know he was though, and stumbled upon him as I was going out to say hi to another co-worker I knew was out there. It was very awkward at first but we became more on friendly terms. Toward the end of the night, we were alone back inside for a moment. I asked him some questions about his life and such. As the night went on we did embrace a few times and were very close. It was more confusing but he did still seem into me. We left at the same time and he walked me to my car where we lingered and talked and held each other. I did feel pretty bad, as I would sometimes see his phone, see him talking to this other girl, and sometimes I would just happen to see his messages with her and could tell that he did care for her. And in character, it was on Snapchat, so he may have been completely honest regarding using Snapchat as his primary communication method.
Basically a similar scenario continued on for the next four weeks, each time it becomes more and more difficult/intimate. One week we took a walk around the campus and cuddled in the grass, watching the stars. The bugs made us move, but we had a closeness. We just barely kissed one time. He would grab my hips and touch my body when we were alone. Constantly he would resist, I was just as confused as he wasn’t dating this person. Another night, we are walking together doing rounds through the hospital, when one of his close coworkers casually mentions he’s uncircumcised. Which was just some bizarre information. It was funny to see him embarrassed.
Finally, after four weeks of this “what is going on” scenario, I have him call me. I tell him essentially that if he and this woman are still not exclusive, that we should still give this a shot or at least hang outside of work and see what is truly going on. I reiterate his crystal ball thing. I am truly speaking in our both interests, as we have been playing a dangerous game. He says he will talk to her that night and figure out what is going on, as she has been kind of putting off/delaying that conversation. He says he will let me know what she says and will think about it if they don’t become exclusive, as he admits that he doesn’t see the point of staying with her if she doesn’t want to become official. I follow up the next day, asking how it went. He says it didn’t come up and apologizes, though saying he will soon. A few days after that, I find out that they must have had the conversation, because “Darren* is now in a relationship” appears on my Facebook news feed. I message him in Snapchat and congratulate him. I do truly wish them the best, and take the situation as a lesson learned.
A couple of months later, present-day as I write this, I notice a name that looks familiar on a patient’s chart. Casually I bring it up to my coworker, saying “isn’t that Darren*’s girlfriend?” and it is confirmed. I become infuriated and text my friend immediately, explaining the situation I have just uncovered. This new information does add to my displeasure, as I realize that this guy’s now girlfriend also works here and that it is quite possible that he could have been seeing her on any of those days that we had become so close. This disgusted me. I did see him a couple of days later and casually mentioned to him, “I didn’t know your girlfriend worked here.” He hit me with a “yeah she does.” I felt it important to let him know, I know. I try and remain cordial, but it is extremely difficult when I learn more and more about how scummy he is. Later that day that I let him know, he told me it was “good seeing me” and I literally responded with a vomit noise. Even if things don’t work out with his lady, and I’m still single, that “crystal ball” will not do him any favors.
