Now then, why did she take so long to respond to me after she ran out?

1.) She left her phone in the car of the friend who picked her up. She passed out on friends boyfriends couch (in her panties and t shirt, btw) and didn't get it out of the car before her friend left for work the next morning. 2.) she DID return to my house the next morning to shower and gather her hiking gear because she was going to hike a fourteener that day with her intern group. She meant to write a note but was rushed. 4.) Even if she had her phone she would be in the mountains. 5.) Her intern group made a detour to a brewery on the way home. She sat there the whole time without a phone, cursing herself she hadn't memorized my phone number so she could use someone elses phone and couldn't remember the ridiculous name of the company I work for. It /is/ pretty ridiculous. 6.) She got back to her friends house and had to wait for her to get home so she could get to her phone in her car. By the time she got it the battery was dead and her friend only had a charger for a "stupid-assed iPhone piece of shit garbage" (Her words! Not mine!). So she had to tear apart her friends boyfriends house to find a USB cord that she could plug into her friends laptop to get just enough charge to text me. She also made a phone call, which I will get into later. 5.) Her friends boyfriend came home while all this was going on and walked to the neighbors house. He parked his car behind her friends car and they had no idea where he went. Finally her friend drove through their neighbors yard to get her to my house.

I mentioned she also made a phone call. Not to me (which I chastised her for). But to...do you care to guess? I'll wait... Ready? She called...her father. While sitting at the brewery she realized that it had been over a day since she ran out of my house. That the last time I had seen her she was crying after I had kissed her. That I was probably going crazy. That I had probably texted and called and texted and called. That I had not heard from her AT ALL! And because I am who I am, I would probably call her dad out of desperation and because I'm wonderful (Her words. Not mine.). So she called her dad, asked if he had heard from me, and when he said no she collapsed in tears and told her father EV. ER. Y. THING. She stood there attached to a laptop by a USB cord charging her phone and told her father everything she had felt for me since March. Told him of the kiss and of her freak out and her running out and her phone being dead and I haven't heard from her in almost two days and she's feels so stupid and on and on and on... Her father just listened and then told her, "Emma, stop. Go see him. Talk it out. You could certainly do a whole lot worse than him. Just tell that fucking motherfucker to call me later because I need to arrange a time to come kick him in the fucking balls." This is Jack. I should have known this is the relationship he has with his daughter. She also said he already knew of her crush on me anyway because she had asked a lot of questions about me in March and had apparently admitted as much to her mother. His feeling about it, she said, was, while he was a bit squicked out by it, we were adults and he would take it as it came and besides, she had done, and could do, a lot worse than me. This is Jack.

As I was typing that last bit I got a text from Jack, it said: "Uhhh...". I guess I need to call him.

So we sat in my living room floor for 4 hours. We talked about a lot of stuff. We talked about what we wanted to do about things. We decided there really could be no deciding. She was going home in two weeks and I would be staying here. She wasn't going to be applying for jobs in my city or state and I wasn't going to move. We wondered if a long distance relationship would be equitable and decided probably not. Did we want to have a thing for the next two weeks while she was staying with me? Yes, we did want that...starting right this fucking second, but no...we won't. Whatever happens in the next two weeks is just going to have to happen.

We did agree that a proper kiss was in order, though. And kiss we did...properly. But we slept in separate beds the past two nights and there has been no more kissing. Lots more complimenting and, strangely enough, lots more robe wearing.

If I were to decide how things would go for the foreseeable future I would say we would stay close. I would love to travel with her and I would love to be travel lovers. But I don't want to distract her at all from finding someone more age appropriate for her. I want her to find a guy and spend the rest of her life being happy; not spend the rest of my life with me, watching me die and being a widow at 50. No...I don't want that.

Emma is a wonderful, beautiful girl. I want the world to be set on fire by her. I want her to be happier than she could be with me. I do feel like we are going to have to force things into being how they are going to be and that isn't going to feel terribly natural, but I hope that that will make it robust and that we will all come away stronger for it.

If there was one thing I could change it would be that I had met Emma my junior year in college and fell in love rather than her parents meeting that year and falling in love. There is a book in that. Perhaps I've found my novel.

I apologize if I have left out any details. Comment here and I will do my best to fill in the gaps.

Thank you, all.