Maternal instincts already...? Nah.

There are times in my life where I really regret how full I've allowed it to get. It seems like I'm always going. There's always something to be done or something due or somewhere to be. I remember fondly the days of summer where it seemed like I had all the time in the world. I guess what this stems from is James dropped into work today. He did it just to say hi. It's amazing how much isn't said with him. It's all in a look, in a glance, in the way he picks his words. In some ways it bothers me. In other ways it makes the little gestures so much more. He's been sick these past few days and I'm surprised that he made the effort. Maybe it was because I hadn't seen him a while but I really wanted to just put my arms around him and hold him. I didn't obviously as we were in the middle of the store and that wouldn't have worked. But you know when you're with someone and you just have this overwhelming desire to kiss them? It was like that. I just wanted to take care of him. It's weird. I'm usually not maternal in that sense. I'd be happy just spending the evening sitting with him watching TV. I guess you learn to appreciate the little things because they end up meaning so much.

Another time, a different outcome

Six months ago I was at work and came across a guy who intrigued me. He was nerdy but in a classy kind of way. You take one look at James and think to yourself 'Man, that guy belongs behind a computer'. Not that that's a bad thing. It just means that I most definitely have a 'type'. Which I'm okay with.

Anyway. Six months ago he comes into the store, talks to me for half an hour, thoroughly impresses me and then leaves. At the end of the day I was thinking about the conversation we'd had but realized that I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know what his name was nor did I have any idea how to get a hold of him. I also realized that I kinda liked him in that 'I want to get to know you better' way. So I was stuck, thought to myself 'well that sucked' and went back to whatever had held my interest prior to the detour. I'd all but forgotten about him until today when we walked in the door of work this afternoon.

I looked at him with the 'you look really familiar' look and he knew me and was surprised I remembered him. We talked on and off for about an hour before James came in and I was called away to solve problems. I came back and James was actually talking to him (big surprise there) and kept talking to him until about 5:30. It turns out Ryan wants a job with us so I took his resume and I'll pass it on.

It's funny. Six months ago it wouldn't have taken a lot to convince me to drop James as my centre of interest and the one person I spent all my time with and think about spending time with someone else. But now that I'm so entangled in the whole 'James' thing and finally have what I want I'm not even interested in looking for anything else but can actually spend time getting to know other people.

one step forward, half a step back

I walked out of 350 early today and thought that, since it was just 2:15 I might as well give James a call and see if he was up for some lunch. Since today was Wednesday I could afford to waste a bit of time. It turned out he had the afternoon off and was at work. I swung by, brought Doug a cup of coffee and had lunch with James. We decided that we would go downtown because I wanted to go shopping and it was on his way home. So we came back to my place, picked up a car, I changed my clothes and we went downtown. Shopping occured, starting with TVs at Future Shop ending up at HMV.

Anyway, that's not the point of the post.

We've somehow fallen into an area of sexual banter. It used to be me making totally inappropriate jokes and James just looking at me funny. Now he's started. For example, we got in an elevator and he said "Hey, what are you doing in here?" My response was "I can make it worth your while" meaning I'd kiss him or something and he said "Even you're not that fast". My jaw almost hit the ground. I wasn't even thinking about that and that is definitely not something James would have said a year ago. There was just a bunch of stuff like that that went on. It's definitely...comfortable. We were talking about a friend of mine who (we think) has a thing for James' older brother. James said that she teases him in almost a mean sense sometimes which he followed up with "unlike us, there's nothing mean about the teasing that happens between us, it's all based on love".

He does a good job but he's still not totally comfortable with the PDAs. Which I guess makes sense. I figure this whole 'girlfriend' thing is still fairly new for him and it's still really unknown territory. I went to kiss him on the escalator today giving him, what I thought to be, sufficient warning but he kinda freaked out about it. He tried to recover by ruffling my hair (something that just made me laugh) but I could tell that he spent the next 20 minutes trying to figure out how to fix it. I guess that's the thing about it, he sees that he screwed up and then tries to fix it. He did fix it. We were waiting for a bus and, when it came, he reached out and pulled me into a tight hug. Definitely a big step for him. He's never been one to initiate any kind of physical contact in the form of a hug. I think a hug is just way too familiar for him. So he's learning.

It's kind of rewarding. I've definitely seen him grow and mature over the past little while. I guess it's nice to see that I'm having some kind of an effect on him. He definitely is cute. Hollie made that point today. We were at work and she said to me and James "he definitely is the better looking of the two brothers". I just laughed and James looked at her. She continued by saying that James' features aren't as well defined as his brother's. I agreed saying that I liked mine and thought that I'd stick with it, which just made James grin.