(For Part 1, click Here!)

The the first time I really remember seeing him was on February 14. It seems odd when I think about it. I must have seen him frequently. I knew he had joined the orchestra. I knew he played the French Horn. I must have seen him in the hall often, because we frequented so many of the same places and shared the same group of friends.

I had been pretty busy in the meantime. In January, I started dating a guy we'll call Aragorn (since this is about me after all). Aragorn and I had a good relationship, including trips to the ballet and hanging out after orchestra. We were brought together by our mutual love of music and distaste for boring theory classes.

He told me he was juggling two girls, one of which really wanted to marry him. The other took him to a dance and gave him the worlds worst song dedication (which is not possible to share, since I'm not using his real name). They were best friends, which made for interesting dynamics. He wasn't particularly interested in either of them.

On February 14 I wandered over to the band room to hang out until orchestra started. A group of us sat in front of the room and we all started talking. At some point in the conversation, someone called Greg “Faramir”. I looked at them and said something like “But his name is Greg.”

All of them, including Greg, looked at me with a little confusion mixed in with blank-ness. He said, “No, my name is Faramir.”

“Well, then, is your middle name Greg?”

“No, it's Hastings.” (No, it's not Hastings, don't worry. I had to come up with something. Faramir Hastings? ~snort~)

“But your name is Greg!”

"Um. No. My name is Faramir."

I can only imagine the look on my face. It must have been priceless because everyone else there starting laughing their heads off. Then the questions started. “Why did you think his name was Greg? When did you start calling him Greg? Who's Greg?” And the laughing went on and on. I probably laughed too, but not much. It was taking quite a bit of mental effort to twist Greg into Faramir.

There was also a bit of secret relief. There are too many Greg's in my families past. Two for my little sister and one each for the rest of us. And for the most part, they are not the happiest of memories. He was pretty cute after all.

I needed to run some errands that day and Aragorn wouldn't go with me. I was skipping the dreaded theory class and he felt like he needed to go to class to support the teacher. So Faramir offered himself up as an alternative and I took him up on it. We ran my errands, and all I remember about it was him correcting me time after time so that I would call him his real name. He finally started calling me Wendee whenever I'd call him Greg as my reminder that I was getting it wrong again. It was a fun hour or two and then we went back to school for orchestra and I spent the afternoon after orchestra with Aragorn, and the evening with some other friends. (No Valentines date for me with Aragorn. I think he had some music thing going on.)