Even though the girl sitting across the tapas-filled table is undeniably stunning, funny, talented, and flirty. I just can’t get into her.
The setting’s perfect too, a Spanish restaurant with the kind of low lighting and small, intimate tables that feel appropriate for whispering secrets to each other. The kind of aromatic food you can feed to each other against a backdrop of Miro and Rego paintings, while lilting Spanish guitar lingers in the background like a warm memory. Candlelit tables and waiters that know when not to interrupt. It’s perfect, and still, I can’t get into her.
She sips her wine, blue eyes, half-veiled by her luxurious, silk-blonde hair, fixed on me all the while, then licks her lips slowly when she takes the glass away from her mouth.
“The wine’s great,” she says in the kind of smoky voice that belongs in a jazz bar, adding, “you’ve got great taste.”
I shrug. “I always pick the best—no matter the cost.”
She bites her tongue gently, leans her head so her hair sways a little, and looks up at me. “Is that so?”
I give her the dimples, the squared eyes, the smoldering stare—but I’m just going through the motions. This girl’s showing enough cleavage for an R-rating, and I’ve no doubt she knew exactly how she wanted this night to end before I even walked through the door.
“Tell me a bit more about your job. It sounds interesting…” I say, attempting to stall for time while I try to figure out why I’ve already checked my watch three times and can’t stop glancing at the exit door.
It’s the wrong question, the equivalent of cold water on the heat of her eyes. I can tell she’s one innuendo away from dragging me into the nearest decorative palm and tearing my clothes off with her teeth—and she has been since the appetizers arrived—but I’m just not into it. If I wasn’t on this date for work, I would have made an excuse to leave already.
She squints at me a little, trying to figure out whether I’m just dumb or teasing, then decides to indulge me anyway.
“Well, like I said, when I got out of Yale I freelanced for a few years before…”
I mentally switch off, more worried about the fact that I’m struggling to get into my flow than whether she’s actually into me. Ordinarily I’d be leaning over the table about now, wondering if the intimate, upscale restaurant is dark enough for me to make a move under the table. I’d have shifted my chair a little to the side, feeding her mussels with one hand while I finger-fucked her with the other.
At the very least I’d have gone to the bathroom to take down some notes on how the date’s going—that’s the whole point of this, after all—but I’m about as interested in the vlog sample I owe my boss as I am in this hot but tediously one-dimensional woman.
“...the work is challenging, but the people are really great, you know?”
It takes a split-second longer than it should for me to realize she’s finished talking. I nod and pretend I’m finishing a mouthful of food to cover my distraction before responding.
“That does sound good. You working on anything interesting at the moment? Is it a good time for architecture in general?”
She gives me another scrutinizing look, a little more lust disappearing from her face, then shrugs and starts talking again.
“Yeah. Well, I’m working on a couple of things.”
“What are they?”
She blinks at me for a second, probably not used to her dates feigning interest in her work. “One of them is a project over by…”
I’d like to believe my lack of sexual, intellectual, and emotional interest is due to the fact that I got hammered before midday, fucked Margo, then woke up in a daze to find her missing and myself late for this date. But the fact is, I woke up with a hard-on stiff enough to lift weights with, and fucking two girls within the space of ten hours wouldn’t even be close to a record for me.
No…as much as I don’t even want to admit it, the reason I’m off my game is because I fucked Margo. Not only that, I fucked a friend, not to mention a co-worker. I broke a cardinal rule, cheated my own self-made laws. Being drunk is no excuse, and the eight years we’ve been friends only makes this more complicated. Unlike a normal one-night stand, I can’t just put it behind me. We sit next to each other every day, we talk about everything, she’s going through a breakup, I actually care about her…
“…but I have enough time to complete it. Anyway, I feel like I’m boring you. Why don’t you tell me something about yourself?”
“Um…” I say, poking at the paella I have no appetite for while I remember where I am, “I’m a writer at TrendBlend, you know that, but I’m currently in talks regarding—”
“No,” she interrupts, smiling, the sultry lip-licking back now, “nothing as boring as work. I wanna know…something more interesting. More personal.”
I’m not sure how to take this, but I do my best to smile back. “Oh yeah? What do you want to know?”
She leans forward, lowering her voice. “I wanna know…what turns you on? I wanna know how to push your buttons, how to make a man like you happy…”
The question catches me off-guard, as does the fact that she reaches over and caresses my fork-holding arm—but I don’t show it. I look at her hand like a bee just landed on me, and take a slow sip of wine while I think, suddenly feeling the tug of some unexplored thought.
“Let’s see,” I say, putting my glass down carefully. “Intelligence, that’s for sure. And I like a girl who has a way with words. Adventurous enough to keep up with me, funny—”
“No,” she says, looking down and laughing a little before looking back up at me, crossing her arms tightly so I get an expensive-seat view of that cleavage, “I meant physically. What makes you hot? What do you look for in a woman?”
Now I get it. She wants me to describe her. But instead of taking the bait, I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. “To be honest…I like legs, nice legs. Long, toned…yeah. Glasses too, they can look real cute on a girl I think. And I like it when girls have that kind of don’t-give-a-fuck attitude, you know what I mean? In the way they move, the way they walk. Messy hair too, like they just rolled out of bed and tied it back…”
It hits me like a ton of bricks, sudden and crushing. I’m describing Margo.
All I had to do was tell this girl what she wants to hear; that I’m most attracted to women with architecture degrees, silky blonde curls, and cleavage you could fall into—but I still can’t resist my mind going back to Margo. Not only that, but thinking of her—visualizing her blindfolded with her lush mouth opened in a breathy moan—is the closest I’ve felt to lust all evening.
“Hey,” I say suddenly, pulling my napkin from my lap and throwing it onto the table like a coach throwing in the towel. “I’m really, seriously, sincerely sorry, but I’ve got to run.”
Her eyes go big and round as I pull out my wallet, put way more than the meal cost on the table, and stand up.
“What?” she says.