This was definitely a date.
Though I was entirely underserving of an ounce of her time, attention, or consideration, this woman had apparently devoted the intervening hours since our parting to every measure of ‘getting ready’ known to mankind. Her hair swung in weightlessly cascading tresses, obviously having been done since I last saw her. Something that looked to be the distilled essence of pink jelly beans and whatever makes diamonds sparkle coated her full lips. Sure that eyelashes didn’t spontaneously double in length in an evening, I nearly forgot to appreciate the rest of her undeniably beautiful figure while I let myself get lost in her searching gaze. I did wonder, for a moment only, why anyone would pack the dress that she wore to go out of town for a focused accounting audit; the black number sparkled with a thousand shimmering points woven into the fabric as she turned this way and that in the lobby, trying to spot me. The way it hugged across her lower tummy, in the way that a dress really should, combined with the plunging neckline in a way that almost struck me dead in my seat. I almost wished she wouldn’t spot me; I was nowhere near enough for her, and the view was almost more than I could handle.
She did spot me though, and I responded to the bartender’s offer of a third drink robotically, without turning away from her as recognition lit her eyes. My mouth felt bone dry while I watched her approach.
“Hi again” she said, hardly looking at me, setting her clutch on the bar top and helping herself to a seat. Gone was the embarrassed, guilty woman I’d met earlier. I was familiar with the adage that a woman wearing a matching set of underwear got laid because she had decided to; I could only guess at what was under her dress, but it was painfully obvious that she’d made serious and intentional decisions in coming here looking like that. She pretended to study the cocktail list behind the bar, but a slight curl at the corner of her lips told me that she knew I was staring, and that she liked it. I needed to get a grip.
“You came.” I pointed out.
“Yeah, sorry I was late,” she said, finally deigning to look at me, if only for a moment, “it took a while to get ready”. I imagined that it had.
“Well you look, I mean, just,” I stuttered pathetically. The bartender approached with my drink.
“I know” she said devilishly, before turning her attention to him to order something fruity and blended for herself.
I’ll be honest here, if you promise not to be too hard on me. I almost bolted. I think, in any other universe, in any other possible timeline, I would have run for it. I’m a weak man with small ambitions, okay? I don’t belong in nice-ish hotel bars with women who look the way she did that night. The little man from my dream’s promise replayed itself in my mind though: “you gotta watch those ones, they can be trouble.”
I watched to watch this one.
We moved to some small talk as I milked the twenty eight dollars of alcohol in front of me. I’d eaten too little and the two that I’d guzzled before her arrival threatened to put me off kilter, but I’d be damned if I was going to be anything but wholly present for Allie. She humored me with anecdotes about travelling for work, and some of the nightmares that she’d had to troubleshoot over the years, and goaded me into sharing a little bit about myself, which came more and more easily as the hour passed. It felt more and more like catching up with an old friend than a star-crossed rendezvous between strangers.
“…and then after graduation I moved back to my parents’ place for a bit,” I said, recollecting the timeline of events that had brought me to work in this city, “which helped a bunch until I got the job here.”
She laughed, not cruelly or incredulously, but knowingly. Too knowingly by far, covering her mouth with her hand politely. It was infectious enough to bait me into joining her, if not quite as committedly.
“What? What is it?” I chuckled along with her, “What’s funny about that?”
She managed to stifle her laughter, taking a sip to compose herself briefly.
“That was your parents’ house? That whole time, you told me you lived there with your band!” She fell to chuckling again, but my own mirth faded by half as I tried to puzzle out what she meant. She continued.
“I knew there was no way you bought those sheets!” Her final few giggles subsided as she beheld my vacant expression. It was her turn to register confusion.
“You’ve seen the sheets at my parent’s house” I said rhetorically.
“Well yeah of course I have,” she said, sounding very nearly concerned for my apparent lapse of memory, “I mean, it’s not a big deal or anything. Please don’t think I’m mad! Nobody really puts themselves all the way out there like that. I mean, I told you I was in beauty school because accounting is, like, the least sexy thing in the world.” She trailed off with an expectant look, obviously hoping to head off the slight she thought she’d done to my pride.
In truth, recollection couldn’t have been hitting me harder if it’d been delivered by a freight train driven straight into my forehead. Of course I knew her. Not her face, and not well enough to recognize her body with her clothes on, but I knew her all the same.
Or, I had known her. In the months between finishing school and finally getting my first big boy job, I’d wasted hours and hours online, in chat rooms and social forums, desperately trying to satiate my need for the attentions of anyone who would let me see them naked. Being younger then, and in better shape, I’d even taken to posting myself on Reddit a few times, though I always chickened out and deleted the obscene dick picks and vanity shots of myself before anyone could open them. Propped up by some chemical courage, once upon a time, I’d actually left a post up for a few hours. It didn’t amount to anything much; that particular community was mostly frequented by men who liked the look of other men, but there was one message that I responded to. Just that one. And then they wrote back. And then they did it again. And then she asked for my Snapchat. It was a brief, torrid thing, that ultimately ended in her ghosting me entirely, but there could be no doubt about it.
“AlleyKatt” I whispered.
Seconds dragged us apart while both our minds tried to make sense of our circumstances. It dawned on her that something was amiss with me. Here I was, as far as she was concerned, remembering her for the first time; the obvious fact that I might have known her in some other way this morning didn’t add up for her.
“I thought you knew me?” she said, bordering on sounding hurt. She couldn’t know the truth that I barely accepted myself; there could be no admission of how I really recognized her at all.
“I do. I did!” I scrambled to recover, thanking my lucky stars as her features brightened anew with relief almost immediately. “It’s been a long time; I forgot your username and honestly the chances of it being you were just…well…”
“I know!” she said excitedly, fully back on the same page as me, “When you were there this morning and you recognized me right away like that, I just thought, like, ‘there’s no way he actually recognizes me now, I never even showed him my face’ or anything! I was so nervous what you must think of me, especially after that meeting, and especially with the way things ended kinda…” she trailed off to let me pick up the the train of her thoughts. I’d need to be smart.
“Oh, yeah, totally. Like, obviously I get why you never showed me your face or anything and it really super does not matter how it ended but uhh…” I was reaching again, but she saved me seamlessly.
“Well at least we’re even now,” she said, excitement bubbling in her entire demeanor, “we’ve seen each other’s faces now and you know that I was never in beauty school, and I know that was your mom’s basement, and everything is even. Right?” She needed it to be even.
I might be good with numbers professionally, but there was no way of tallying the score between us now. I offered all that I could.
“Right, yeah, very even” I faked a laugh, trying to reason out my next move. The emotions were complex, to say the least; we’d talked daily for a few months several years ago, only really about sex, and had seen each other naked more times than her entire accounting firm would ever sum up, and the fact that she evidently got bored of me one day didn’t really sting all that badly, but I wouldn’t deny that everything together resolved itself into a deep, yearning need for her, for my AlleyKatt.
“I gotta say,” she mused, unclasping her pocketbook to pay for her drink, “the fact that you recognized me by my tits like seven years later is pretty impressive.” I could work with that.
“Well, I’ve sure seen them enough times, I ought to recognize them.” She liked the joke, and giggled coyly. She carried on before I could express any disappointment that she had evidently settled her tab.
“Have you though?” she asked.
“What? Sorry, pardon?”
“Have you really seen them enough?” Her tone was different then, pitched low. It was the tone you used to say things that words couldn’t. I exhaled, hard. The flirtatious struggle for the upper hand was entirely over.
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