When I mentioned that I was going on a date, my coworker changed toward me. He wasn't rude. He just became reserved, which was strange after months of talking, texting, and flirting. At the time, I didn't understand what that date sounded like to him.
I was 21 when I started the job, and he was 22. We clicked almost immediately. Work gave us plenty of chances to talk, but our conversations didn't stay there. We texted afterward and spent time together outside work a couple of times. He hosted get-togethers at his place, and I went to a house party with him once.
I liked him. What I couldn't work out was whether the easy connection meant the same thing to both of us. We flirted every day, but neither of us actually said we found the other attractive. I could recognize the flirting without knowing whether he wanted it to go any further.
There was also a moment that seemed to settle the question. While we were hanging out away from work, I moved closer to him and he moved away. I took that as a sign that he wasn't interested. Whatever the reason was on his side, the message I received was fairly clear.
Then there was the job itself. Technically, I was above him, though I didn't have much authority. That still made the prospect of getting it wrong more uncomfortable. I really loved working there. I didn't want to make a move, discover I'd misread everything, and have that awkwardness waiting for me at work.
So nothing happened. We kept flirting, and I kept wondering if he was simply friendly. When I mentioned going on a date with someone else, I wasn't announcing the end of something between us. As far as I knew, there wasn't anything official to end.
His reserve lasted long enough for me to notice the difference. After about a month, we got back to something closer to our old rhythm, but it didn't feel quite the same. The conversations had returned without entirely bringing back what we'd had before.
He moved away for the summer. We stayed in touch while he was gone and even spoke on the phone once, but things didn't develop beyond that. Before leaving, he'd been seeing another woman. By the time he came back and started working with me again, they were officially together.
I met her. She was really nice. That made the situation feel even more awkward: I liked her, too. She also looked a lot like me. That resemblance was hard to ignore when I already knew how much I liked him, but it didn't tell me what he had thought about us.
Another coworker eventually supplied the part I'd been missing: he had apparently thought we were getting to know each other romantically and heading toward a relationship before I went on that date. Hearing that changed how I understood his sudden distance. I'd read his moving away as a lack of interest; he'd apparently read our flirting as something that was going somewhere.
He'd never told me that. He hadn't made a move, and I'd been afraid of making the wrong one. Now he was back at work with a girlfriend I'd met and liked, and I was finding out, through someone else, that the man I'd wanted had apparently wanted me too.
