The Girl-Next-Door

I have been at Loyola Marymount for almost three full years. During my first two years here, I lived on campus. This past fall I did not receive on campus housing, and my intended roommate backed out on me at the last minute. I was stuck at the end of this past summer with no roommate, and no place to stay. This story definitely gets better.
I used an apartment rental website to find the cheapest apartment available that was still somewhat close to campus. I found a studio apartment about ten minutes away from campus that I immediately fell in love with. Well, fortunately, that wasn’t the only thing I fell in love with. Upon moving into my studio before the beginning of the fall semester, I accidentally hit a car that was always parallel parked in front of my apartment building. I would just give the vehicle a little bit of a love tap and then kindly inch up to leave the car space to exit the parking spot.
One day, a few weeks after the semester began, I came home to grab some lunch in between my 1:00pm class and 4:00pm class. I remember this vividly. I pulled into my normal area in front of my building, and politely love tapped the same car that I had hit at least three times by this point. To my surprise, I heard shouting and yelling coming toward my direction which terrified me. I started to pick up the pace and quickly get into my apartment building lobby. The voice of a tall black man grew louder, “Hey! Stop! I finally caught you! You have been hitting my car for the past three weeks!” he shouted loudly at me. I approached him and apologized then asked if he wanted to exchange information although no real damage had been done to his 2009 Cadillac CTS. He requested my phone number in exchange for whatever damage had been done. He didn’t want my insurance company’s number, instead he only wanted mine. He then followed his request for my digits with a request for a dinner date as well.
I initially declined the dinner offer, however, a few days later I received a text message from him asking to go to dinner again. I figured I had nothing else to do that evening and he did live right next door to my building, so it wouldn’t be terribly inconvenient. I went out with him later that evening and found him more attractive than the first day we interacted with one another. He was quite the charmer and our first dinner date was a success. We laughed and joked about how I would always hit his car and then look left, look right—and rush into my building. Apparently he knew all along who had been hitting his car.
After the first date, I agreed to another lunch date with him. We totally hit it off from that point on. As of October 2010, Mr. Jones and I have officially become an item. He still says, “I guess there really is a girl-next-door”.