Erica's story, conclusion

"We stayed up talking for two or three hours, just laying there, and we got to talking about how, he's like, 'it's nice that you can just lay here with me and expect that I'm not going to take advantage of you,' probably alluding to how I hated men for a while and they all use you."

"Was that amazing to you, that you could trust him that much?"

"No, it wasn't amazing, it's natural. It was normal to me. Out of anybody I would feel most comfortable doing that with him. Even as just friends, even when we were just friends. And he's like, why do you think that is? And I go: Oh, well, it's 'cuz I love you. And I rolled over."

Less than a year after finally breaking it off forever with Jorge, Erica found herself in bed with Leonard again. Here's how it happened.

The February after Erica's October breakup, Leonard, still Erica's friend, sent her a Valentine's card. ("He said he sent Valentine's cards out to everybody, but he especially picked one for me.") Soon afterward, while visiting from Orlando, he tried to kiss her as they sat on her couch watching TV. Erica reacted with abhorrence; remember, this was when she hated guys. "I saw that as another guy trying to use me," she explains. She browbeat him for it, apologized the next day, and that was the last she saw of Leonard during that visit.

I'm a little surprised when Erica tells me that when she next saw Leonard, in May, she had started dating again. "That was a rebound," she explains. "That was what I needed to get me out of --" "Out of Jorge mode?" I helpfully suggest. "Out of guys-are-jerks mode," she answers. Apparently it worked. On the night that Erica finally saw Leonard again, she greeted him like "a breath of fresh air" and immediately realized that "I think I love him, like for real this time... and that I probably should do something about it." That very night, Erica found in her email inbox what under the circumstances seemed a "miracle:" a breakup note from her then-boyfriend. She was nice, he said, but they didn't click. She wrote back to agree, adding, "...and next time you break up with somebody, I would suggest doing it in person, or at least over the phone." (It later turned out that he felt he had to write down these feelings to make them clear and make sure they got expressed, which Erica says is good as far as it goes, "but then at least read it to me!" The medium of communication matters to Erica; I think of her annoyance at Jorge's texting earlier and the ambiguities that grew out of chain emails with Leonard before that.)

Erica wasted no time in taking advantage of her good luck, cajoling Leonard into a dinner date the very next night. There she dropped the hint: "So I think, like, I'm over Jorge and feeling much better about men again. . . . He's like, oh, that's good. He didn't know exactly where I was going with what I was saying --" "He didn't want to assume too much, I guess," I say, remembering the episode about expectations from earlier. "I guess so, yeah," Erica agrees. Dinner with Leonard gave way to a party at a mutual friend's house, which turned into heavy drinking, which led to Erica throwing up in the toilet as Leonard stood beside her -- "which was amazing to me" -- and at last, their host suggested that Erica, tired and intoxicated, should stay the night. "Also trying to push me and Leonard together," she smiles. They slept in the same bed, which brings us to where we started tonight's installment. No sex, no cuddling, just two longtime friends sharing a night together. Not without some tension, though. Erica said I love you. Leonard said I love you back -- "I don't know if he meant it at that time, but he said it. And I think we went to sleep. We didn't talk about it."

"What needed to be said got said, I guess."

"Yes. Finally. Took all night. Liquid courage."

Leonard kissed her the next morning, under the pretext that he "wanted to test something." He never explained what; probably it doesn't need explaining. He called her the next day, as he was leaving Fort Myers. He said "he's not going to particularly ask me out or anything like that, but just know that he does care about me and blah blah blah, and that," Erica explains, "was him asking me out. That was the beginning of a relationship."

I profess surprise. After all, Leonard had broken the relationship off in the first place because he was moving to Orlando, and he still lived there. I ask when he changed his mind. Erica giggles sincerely, "When he realized that I'm awesome? More awesomer than any other girl?" She continues more seriously: "I think that was one of the requirements when he called me that Sunday and 'asked me out,' we talked about conditions, and --" "Expectations?" I ask, putting words in people's mouths like usual. "Expectations, yeah," Erica nods. "The reason he broke up the first time was that he didn't want to break my heart and have all the complications that a long-distance relationship could have, and that he knows that it's hard more on girls than on guys, and he didn't want to hurt me in that way, but if I could handle it then he would be okay with it too."

"I see, so this time instead of deciding himself to break it off he left it up to you."

"He did!"

And that's how Erica and Leonard started dating again. Both approached the second relationship differently from the first, bringing with them new experiences and perhaps new communication styles. Erica doesn't even remember the conversation that kicked off the first relationship, but the second began with two I love yous and a dialogue about conditions and expectations. There is change here, perhaps growth, and that growth is what makes this part of the story -- even with all the vomiting and negotiations -- more romantic in some ways than the first part. Mr. Darcy's second proposal to Elizabeth was romantic because of how it was different from his first proposal to Elizabeth. Erica's story is broadly similar.

I ask Erica what her expectations of Leonard are going forward. She growls that she expects him "to propose pretty soon," though he wants to wait until they're out of school. (They're each now in their sixth year of college.) She expects to have his kids; he says he wants fifty. And she expects to be able to move around with him. "I like change," she explains. It's a good thing.