Part 4- How we got together

I'm going to go off on a little tangent here.  There was just so much going on with Jon and I that led to the feelings we had for one another.

We weren't just roommates; we were best friends.  What started off as an awkward friendship forced by co-habitation turned into the most honest and open friendship.

It all started off when we decided to find a mall in CT.  Both of us were from MA and neither one was very familiar with the area.  It was a random Tuesday night and we were bored beyond our wits.  We weren't used to having nothing to do and no one to go out with.  Going to a school with thirty thousand people will do that to ya.  So we decided to google a mall and got in our car armed with nothing but our notes from mapquest (this was before GPS was so popular and we didn't have a printer).  We braved the scary streets of New Haven to find some entertainment.  What we found out is that New Haven is one big street - Orange street.  No matter where we drove, we always ended up on Orange street.  We turned left, right, and went ahead for miles only to turn again and realize we were back on Orange street.  But that was the beauty of our growing friendship - we really couldn't care less.  We had been driving around for an hour (New Haven was only 10 minutes away from our apartment), talking and laughing the entire time.  We pulled over and asked drunk people for directions (it was Tuesday at 7pm) and turned around at least 5 different times.  We ended up finding a plaza with Bed, Bath, & Beyond and spent an hour running around the store playing with all the stuff.  We weren't interested in any particular purchases - we were just bored and wanted to entertain ourselves.

That was us.  We could spend hours lost or doing nothing at all, but still entertain each other.

After that night, we felt like we could tell each other anything.  We talked about everything from boyfriends and girlfriends to our biggest fears or significant goals.  We could spend hours just lounging on a couch and watching the Simpsons without any exchange or we could go out to a quiet lounge and hold up a conversation without any awkward silence.

In addition to our wonderful two-some, there was Nate.  Nate was our best friend.  We were the "trio".

Nate also worked with us and lived in New Haven.  We spent almost every weekend together (when I wasn't in MA visiting Gianni).  We checked out every bar and found the spots we liked best; we went out to restaurants and watched baseball games together.

Nate had a girlfriend then that lived hours away so he couldn't see her very often.  The three of us, all distracted with our separate love lives, made the perfect "trio".  We weren't bothered by the fact that some of us had girl parts while others had boy parts.  We just hung out, went out, and explored our way through this new state.

The nights when the bars seemed too far away and no one else wanted to go out, the three of us would play quarters in our apartment until we all fell asleep.  Our 2 bedroom apartment almost always slept 3.  Jon and I were both used to having company around and Nate was grateful to hang out instead of going back to his one-room apartment.

So when Jon and I finally kissed outside of BAR that night and realized that things between us were changing, we weren't just endangering our amazing friendship, we were endangering our "trio".