The stress of hiding my relationship with Carter from everyone around me must have really been getting to me. After the fantastic night we spent together the night before, people would probably think I should have felt great and woken up happy. Instead, having such an amazing night with him had only made me feel more on edge and anxious.
It was twisting my stomach and making me feel like I was going to get sick. I hated the hiding and the secrets. I hated feeling like something that had gone from being fun because it was our little secret had turned into something to be ashamed of. Or at least that he was ashamed of it.
Not talking to our friends about us was supposed to be temporary. It was a protective move to make it so that we could get to know each other in this new context and feel out what it would be like to take the leap from just being friends to dating without having other people trying to interject themselves.
That should have worked out in our favor. After the first couple of weeks, we should have realized things were good between us, and that we wanted to move forward, which meant we needed to start involving the people around us. In such a real way, we were a family. If Carter and I were going to have a relationship and build a life around each other, the rest of the group had to know and be a part of it.
But that time hadn’t come. He kept pushing it back. He kept saying he wasn’t ready or that he just wanted to have me to himself. I wanted that to be flattering. I wanted to feel special and like he just wanted us to exist in our own bubble that was set aside just for us. And for a while, I was able to feel that way. It had gotten more and more challenging to feel that way as the feeling of being special faded and was replaced with one of being compartmentalized.
Maybe Carter just didn’t want to talk to anybody about us because he only wanted to pay that kind of attention to me and have the responsibilities of a relationship when he felt like it rather than all the time. Maybe he just didn’t want to live up to what people would expect of us as a couple and would rather just have the fun.
And maybe he thought our friends wouldn’t think we were good together.
The thought of that only made me feel sicker. Things had been going so well between us again. After our fight and feeling like maybe things weren’t going to work out for us, I was feeling so strong and smitten again. When we were alone together, I was enraptured by Carter. He was amazing and made me feel precious and desired. It was only when there were other people around that I started questioning what was really going on with him.
That was seeming to chip away at my health and well-being now. The anxiety and stress were making me feel sick. And even though I thought I’d slept when I got home from Carter’s the night before, I was still tired. I wanted to just pull the blankets up over me, pretend the world didn’t exist, and spend the rest of the day being a slug.
Unfortunately, I had things to do around the house and a few errands to run. A cookout was scheduled to cap off the day. This time it was Harleigh and Brett who were having us all over to their cabin. Getting together this way just about every week was a fun way to make sure we all stayed connected and didn’t go too long without hanging out together.
That might have sounded strange considering we were so close and several of us worked together, but there was something different about just getting together in our time off and spending time relaxing and having fun. During the cookouts, we didn’t have to think about orders or office work or connecting with clients and vendors. We could just eat delicious food, listen to music, and watch the little ones play.
And sometimes the not so little ones. The guys were known to occasionally break into a spontaneous game of touch football or break out the cornhole boards pretty much every time one of these cookouts happened. It was like a gathering just wasn’t complete unless it included a competitive element.
At least it acted as further entertainment to us girls. We were used to going out together or meeting up at one of their homes for lunch or just a quick visit a few times a week, but it was another dynamic to have everybody together at once. It further reinforced the feeling that we were a big family.