I took a few minutes to lock away the scene that had just played out, something in my chest jumped at the fleeting memory of it. Taking a few deep breaths and grinning to the bored and unhappy bouncer I reentered the club.
A side of me hoped to see her again inside. Some passing glances to share or perhaps just to view her dancing, the way she would sway. There was a tinge of disgust in myself for wanting to see her as part of the writing mass but I found that I could quickly come to peace with that. Sadly my vigilant hunt yielded no game. Only the simple prey scampering and hiding here and there were found.
The evening ended with Hank texting my phone, the vibrations being the first thing I felt in that latter half of the evening aside from the pounding on my eardrums. “Outside now” it read. The crowd was thinning and didn’t offer me much resistance as I weaved my way out. Hank was pulled up on the side of the road, the passenger door facing me and his smirk filling the window.
“Have fun?” he asked as I climbed in.
Fastening my seatbelt and quickly looking up to let him catch the glint that I was trying to show in my eye. “Indeed.”
His smirk faded quickly. “You actually met someone.”
I was too happy to care how flat he said it or how concerned his face had shifted into.
“You met a girl you,” he searched the air for a word, “enjoyed?”
“Is that so hard to believe?” my smile could have been wider but that would be physiologically improbable.
“It's not that,” He was interrupted by a tap on the window. A meaty bouncer with a shaved head, how typical, was giving him the “get the fuck out of here” look. He shifted into gear and started off. “You met a girl you wanted to bang, talk shit with or laugh after sex with.”
“Surprising, I’d think you would’ve just called it fucked or fucking.” He was beginning to irritate me so I snapped back a little harder than I should have.
“First of all, shove it up your ass. Secondly, the definition of what you want is very important here.” The jovial look he typically had on his face would have been acceptable but that he was coming down on me the way my mother or father would was really burning my patience. On top of it all, the fact that he was doing so after I spent so long watching him please his hedonistic side night after night without my disapproval for his decisions.
“I met a girl and had a miserable time having my ears beaten to a shadow of their former selves.”
“You just don’t get it.”
“You just wanted to enjoy watching me fail night after night and go crawling back to Rebecca.”
“See you’re almost right. I just wanted you going back to her in the end cause she seems good for you. Or am I wrong?”
“You’re not but what does that have to do with meeting a girl.”
“Depends on if you want to fuck her or not.” He cussed with extra emphasis, splashing me with his spit on the hard k.
“Because I might cheat on Rebecca with this new girl?” Not that I hadn’t imagined it. I’m just too much of a coward to act on any of it.
“Almost, if it was just sex it could easily never have happened. If you were dumb enough to actually like her and deal with it the wrong way you’d be committing emotional adultery.”
The orange street lights blinked past the car, each one bathing us in its glow for moments before shadows climbed over our faces escaping the following bulb’s light. Most of the night was gone and with it went the majority of motorists. We drove alone on the streets, our car’s lonely pilgrimage down roads that would be filled with anxious and desperate drivers within several hours.
The words clung to my mind. They were not foreign to me though that they streamed from Hank’s mouth was a bit of wonder. It had occurred to me that I would or did feel this way about the girl but no one know how anything is going to transpire.
I sighed and admitted the single detail that would result in my defeat, “I never got a number.”
Hank didn’t laugh. I would thank him for that if he hadn’t made me spoil what had been an interesting evening. “No name either?” The man was being thorough.
“Not a real one.”
The sound of the motor humming filled the air along with the gentle whoosh of each lamppost that we past. I traced the edge of the armrest and kept my sight on the road ahead of us. Had the radio been on this silence would be more bearable.
“Sorry, it just needs to be this way.”
* * * * *
Each day at work I found myself thinking of Rebecca and Seattle Blue alternatively. With each came a different rush of emotion.
Rebecca would fill me with a sense of peace and some aggression. The softness of her smile and the joy of her laugh made me miss her. But these thoughts always ended with scenes from dinner, from each of the glares that she’d given me and then that tearful and determined last image I had of her face. When I thought of her, I considered calling and checking in at least twice before deciding that not enough time had passed.
Seattle made me feel like I was in high school again. That floating feeling you get when someone you have a warm and sudden affection for provides you with a taste of their attention. The added bonus that she was funny and playful, not to mention sexy. At the thought of her being sexy a wave of guilt would rush over me, followed quickly by a rush of excitement for something new and forbidden. I will admit to being a man who has lived little.
So it went that I would spend each day at work thinking of these two girls. But with time passing the prospects of speaking to each again dimmed. Seattle more than Rebecca but each pulled away from me just the same.
By the first weekend after meeting Seattle I received a phone call that I eagerly snatched up in hopes that it would be an unknown number or possibly Rebecca.
Instead it was my father who I hadn’t spoken to since the last argument we’d had and left on bad terms. Rebecca had been there and for all the grief I give her over her family, each time something happens, mine surprises and makes me ashamed for ever pointing a finger.
“Hey dad.” I try to sound as detached as possible.
“Son.” He pauses for a moment and with a deep breath continues, “Things aren’t going well.”
No comments:
Post a Comment