I think about this often.

At this bar that I worked at there was this unequivocally beautiful manager/bartender. Not only was she gorgeous, she had a wonderful sense of humor and the most charming personality; she was beyond perfection. Unfortunately, everybody fought desperately for her attention.

Over time we became very close work friends. We would get off work grab a few drinks, smoke a few cigarettes and go our separate ways.

After a very messy breakup I get in shape and drop 60 pounds. As a result I am no longer that quiet chubby cook but the surprisingly level headed guy in a universe of macho-man-children who happens to have cleaned up nicely. Quickly, these after-hours meetups start to manifest into something a bit different. They would last longer, there is less work discussion and much more substance to our conversations. We discussed our daily anxiety, her dreams of owning her own restaurant, my fears of wanting to go back to school, classical music and how we both have never been to, but always wanted to go see an opera. On several occasions, the after partly moved to my apartment and we found ourselves drinking and smoking cigarettes until the sun would rise, crashing our now two person party.

I was really starting to fall for this women. It was a completely new experience for me. I looked forward to seeing her, hearing her voice, being able to know she walked in from the sound of her infectious cackle. When she would site next to me at our weekly managers meeting I would get the butterflies. We would try, but often fail, to hide our laughter at the ridiculous religious rhetoric that the owner would preach during those meetings.

One evening, after work, she drinks far too much and informs me that she has been date raped. It was obviously how severely this traumatic event had effected her. That was very hard for me to process. It changed absolutely nothing about how I felt about her, but it was obviously caused her a lot of stress and anxiety.

At the end of the night we are walking to our cars and she is no shape to drive. She couldn't even open her car door without dropping her keys. I offer to drive her and her car home and tell her that my roommate can pick me up from her apartment and she agrees.

Once we get back to her apartment she invites me in for a drink. I have my drink and she seems like she sobering up a bit and she tells me that I can stay the night so I don't have to trouble my roommate. We start making out which had become usual for us at the time. She then asks if I had any condoms. I did, but heavy on my mind was the fact that this women who I was very fond of had recently informed me that she raped troubled her greatly. Also, she was so drunk that I had to drive her home. I declined and told her how I felt and that I did not want to do this while she was that intoxicated. She was very upset.

The next morning I explained how much I liked her, and that nothing changed this. I wanted us to take things slow and develop a strong and mature relationship.

tl;dr Fell for a beautiful co-worker. She gets mega-tanked and informs me of her recent sexual assault. I decline later invitation for sex-time because of her obviously intoxication and that she still had many unresolved problems from the rape.