Our Love Story: Part 20

Preface: If you’ve missed any of the “chapters” of our love story so far, go back & get caught up before continuing below!
Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4 — Part 5 — Part 6 — Part 7 — Part 8 — Part 9 — Part 10 — Part 11 — Part 12 — Part 13 — Part 14 — Part 15 — Part 16 — Part 17 — Part 18 — Part 19

My lovely little 2-door red car – the one that had literally been dropped onto my driveway as an answered prayer – had been hit where it was parked outside of my apartment. The damage wasn’t horrendous, but in my eyes, someone had totaled it. I just stood there in shock: what in the world happened?

I called my Dad (because who else does one call in these situations?) and after describing what it looked like (these were before the days of simply sending a photo or FaceTiming – we both still had flip-phones) he gave me instructions on what to do.

So, I hung up with him & called my car insurance. I’ll never forget how wonderfully State Farm treated me – a scared, tearful college kid, living large & working a dream job at Walt Disney World, but facing her very first “adult” problem, all by herself. Within a few hours, a tow-truck was there, hauling my little red car away to be fixed.

To this day, I still have no idea what happened. My best guess is that someone attempted to pull into the spot beside me (probably in the wee hours of the morning) and didn’t quite fit into the space, so they hit my car. Were they coming home from a super late shift in one of the parks & exhausted? Or were they out partying & coming home super late and a bit intoxicated? Either option was completely viable.

So, here I was – less than one month into my adventure in Florida and I was without a car. It took about a week to make the necessary repairs & get my car back to me, and in that time, I learned just how valuable my car actually was. Most of the college kids who come to Walt Disney World for a College Program Internship do not have cars. Most rely on the bus transportation system that Disney offers to get around & go shopping, get to the parks, and go to work. The bus system at Disney is unlike anything – it’s vast with so many people to get to so many places. It’s so complicated – with three separate housing complexes, 4 major parks plus 2 waterparks, countless hotels, shops, and “back-end” stops – the bus routes took up a whole book. And in that week of having to navigate those bus routes, I learned just how grateful I was that I had my car!

By the beginning of February, I had my car back. And there was a big day on the horizon: Valentine’s Day. Somehow, my roommates and I (all 6 of us) secured the evening off of work. (How we managed that, I still have no idea.) “Galentine’s Day” wasn’t actually a thing yet (that episode of Parks & Rec wouldn’t air until the following year – we were officially a whole year ahead of our time), but we all decided to dress up & go out. To Ihop. For all you can eat pancakes.

It was such a fun night – we all dressed up like we were going on fancy dinner dates & took ourselves out for endless pancakes. We talked smack the whole way there: “I’m going to eat at least 5 helpings of pancakes!” “No, I’ll eat at least 6!” “I’ll beat you all & eat 10 plates of pancakes!” And then laughed the whole way home at how little we all actually ate (turns out, Ihop pancakes are way more filling than we had planned).

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

As much fun as we had, I could still feel everyone’s eyes on me. I had a boyfriend back home – and this was a big deal. It was a “test” and everyone was watching.

There’s just one problem: my boyfriend back home had made it clear that he hated Valentine’s Day. He’d ramble on and on about how it is a made up holiday, created by Hallmark to sell more cards, and how he hated being “forced” by society to do something special on that one day. That didn’t mean that I wasn’t secretly hoping I’d receive some special package in the mail. Because I totally was. And other people were watching too – my roommates, a few of my co-workers, and specifically, a guy who lived down the hall, on the opposite side of our apartment building. He & his roommates had moved in at the same time we had, so we had met them & traded food & household items back & forth (the old “do you have an egg I can borrow?” and “hey, we have an extra broom, would you like it?”) It was pretty obvious that he had a crush on me, but I made it abundantly clear to him that I had a boyfriend – end of story.

However, when Valentine’s Day came & ended without any special gifts from that boyfriend 1,000 miles away, Brian took it upon himself to do something special for me. So, after we got back from Ihop, he showed up at our apartment door with a box of chocolates & flowers.

Needless to say, fueled by my friends’ comments about how my boyfriend must not really care if he didn’t even send me anything for our first Valentine’s Day, I was pretty mad. I didn’t have to work on February 15th until later in the afternoon, so I spent the entire morning moping around my apartment. By early afternoon, all of my roommates had left to go to work for the day and I was left home alone.

And that’s when Derrick called.

I attempted to play it cool, but deep down I had been festering for over 24 hours over this whole “non-Valentine” thing. Did I know it was stupid? Yes. Did I understand Derrick’s reasoning? Yes. But did I actually care about Valentine’s Day? Yes.

We talked for a little while before I finally, angrily, let him have it. “You didn’t even send me anything for Valentine’s Day!”

“Woah, what do you mean?”

“I keep talking about how you’re this “amazing” boyfriend & telling everyone here how incredible you are, and then you didn’t even do anything for me yesterday. Do you know how that makes me feel?” Big fat hot tears were threatening and I was so glad that my roommates were all gone.

I stood at the window in our living room, looking out over the pool we hadn’t even gone swimming in yet (turns out, January in Florida isn’t exactly “warm”). And he apologized.

“I’m so sorry. Does it make you feel any better if I tell you that I forgot about Valentine’s Day?”

“No.”

“Well, I honestly did. You know I hate Valentine’s, but I wanted to send you something anyways. It’s in the mail – you’ll get it tomorrow. I’m sorry, I meant to get to the post office sooner, but I just forgot & suddenly it was Friday & I knew whatever I sent wouldn’t make it in time.”

I listened, still upset, but understanding. There was silence on the phone for a few moments.

“You know I love you, right?”

That stopped me in my tracks. Another moment of silence, “What?”

“I love you, Kara. I’m sorry I screwed up Valentine’s Day.”

We had been dating for months, spent countless hours talking on the phone, and written tens of thousands of words back & forth over the course of our long-distance relationship. And yet here it was: it had taken a failed Valentine’s Day for those 3 little words to come out.

After another long pause, and some sniffling on my end, I whispered back, “I love you too, Derrick.”

And we laughed. “You know this isn’t the most romantic way to say ‘I love you’, right?”

“I know, I was going to tell you in person, but who knows when that will be.”

I apologized for being all crazy-girl over the whole Valentine’s Day thing – suddenly it seemed so so silly. He apologized again for missing it and reassured me once again that I had a package on it’s way to me.

“Oh, one more thing,” he said before we hung up the phone. “I want to come see you.”

“Well, duh, of course you do! I’m only working at the Happiest Place on the Planet.”

“No, really, I think I might be able to work it out. I want to come see you.”

“Really? Like, really?”

“Yeah, I’m thinking in a few weeks – I still need to look at airplane tickets & see what I could get, but, could we work that out?”

“Umm, YES! Of course! Oh, that would be so much fun!! I can get you into all of the parks for free – we’ll go do all of them – that would be so amazing!”

He laughed again, “Okay, I’ll let you know what I can find out & maybe you can figure out where I can stay? I don’t really have money for a hotel room – maybe I could crash with those guys next door who gave you the chocolate?”

I had completely forgotten about that. What was I going to do with that chocolate Brian had given me? “Maybe – we’ll figure it out! Let me know when you can come & I’ll request those days off.”

We hung up the phone & I went back into my room. The whole Valentine’s Day thing felt so silly now, but still – what was I going to do with the box of chocolates? It felt weird to simply eat them all myself (as I had originally intended – to eat them & wallow in the fact that my boyfriend didn’t care about me at all).

Instead, I walked them back out to our tiny kitchen table & wrote a note to my roommates saying to help themselves.
My boyfriend was going to come visit me!
And I needed to get ready for work.

..Part 21 coming soon!