In the Fall of 1991 I was trying to get over Michael. I was doing a decent job of it. I had dates all the time. I was single and free and having a ball. About this time I was sent to Atlanta for a week of training for my new job. An old friend from work told me that his best friend's son lived in Atlanta and he thought we should meet up while I was there. I talked to the young man, Kerry a couple of times on the phone before I went. He seemed nice but I could tell he was just doing this out of obligation to his Dad's friend.
Kerry was a cop. He worked for a drug unit in Atlanta and he worked nights. We had agreed to meet in the lounge of the hotel where I was staying. He was to take me out to dinner. I was rooming with a girl from Pennsylvania who was attending the same classes and whom I had immediately liked (and with whom I still have contact). I asked her to walk down with me so she could identify the guy in case I never made it back. Plus, she wanted to see if he was cute. We walked into the lounge and took a seat. When Kerry walked in my roommate said "Oh God, please let that be him". Lucky for me, it was. Kerry was probably the best looking guy I ever dated. He was a bigger, better looking Matt LeBlanc. He was about 6'3, had a mouthful of perfect white teeth, a fantastic body, great hair, and the face of a greek god.
We went to a great restaurant where I ordered a steak and a beer. Kerry was laughing at that because most girls usually order salad and water on a first date. We immediately hit it off. We left the restaurant and went to a comedy club. I laughed so hard I embarrassed myself. I made it back to the hotel room just in time to sleep about two hours then get up and go to class. It was an incredible date.
We saw each other one other time while I was in Atlanta but we immediately decided we would try to get together when he was in town visiting his family. We started talking on the phone quite often, which was expensive back in those days. Now that I had my own house, Kerry stayed with me every time he was in town, and I made a couple more trips back to Atlanta.
My mother loved Kerry. She thought he was so good looking, and he didn't seem to be...well, "bad" in any way. But Kerry was a a risk taker. He had a dangerous job, busting up drug rings in the bad parts of Atlanta, and he liked to drive very, very fast.
But Kerry and I weren't able to be together all the time and a funny thing happened on one of the nights we weren't. My doorbell rang at about 2:00 in the morning one night. I peeked out my bedroom window to see Michael standing on my porch. Of course I let him in. This would be the first of several times this would happen. He didn't want to get back together again, he just wanted to ring my bell whenever he was out late and didn't want to drive all the way back out to his house. Michael would crawl in bed with me and go to sleep. As much as I loved having him close to me again, this was very cruel to me. I still loved Michael very much. I knew we weren't getting back together, but him coming around wasn't giving me time to get over him. Kerry and I weren't officially exclusive but I'm pretty sure he wasn't dating anyone else so I doubt he'd have liked the idea of Michael's late night calls.
I had a lot to work out at that time in my life. Despite my nocturnal visits with Michael, I was starting to screw things up with Kerry by trying to control him and by being jealous of an ex-girlfriend he mentioned from time to time.
I was a loose cannon during that fall and winter. I was all over the map. It was a wonderful time in my life but it was also exhausting and confusing. It was like one of those sitcoms where there's a hallway with a lot of doors and people keep running in one door in fast motion and out the other and they always barely miss each other.
It's very hard to have a long distance relationship. As spring began to spring Kerry was getting sick of my games. Hell, I was getting sick of my games. I was even getting sick of Michael's visits. Something had to give. Then Kitty came home from college for spring break. She told me she wanted to see me and invited me over one evening. She told me her brother was going to be there. I really wanted to see Kitty and I also wanted to talk to her brother. Little did I know I was about to break things off with Kerry, finally find the balls to end things with Michael, and meet my future husband.
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