Settling Up (5 page)

I
ran
my hands over the smooth material of my favorite black work pants (I wasn’t really a skirt girl) as I sat at the table and waited. I had already finished the entire glass of water the waiter had poured for me upon arrival and was now eyeing my not-here-yet date’s glass.

Knowing being caught sipping out of his cup was probably not the first impression I was going for, I sat on my hands for a few moments to eschew the temptation.

I began counting cubes while I looked around. 1…8…27…64…125…216…343… The walls were a fantastic and rustic yellow, there were funky light fixtures on just about every surface save the floor, and the dark wood of the tables and chairs seemed to ground the room down into the matching dark wood floor. The whole while I took in the sights, my nose was having a veritable party with all of the wonderful smells. Garlic, veggies sautéing in butter, bread toasting under broilers, and cheese browning scents floated around me, solidifying that this restaurant had been the right choice.

My fingers tugged at the mustard yellow cardigan I’d worn at Betsy’s urging, wondering if that was the right choice, too. There didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it, however, as I watched the hostess lead Thomas, my date, toward my table. Luckily, this was the twenty-first century and we no longer had to rely on things like, “I’ll be the one holding the red rose.” I knew it was him because he looked just like his profile picture, kind of long faced, dark haired, side swept Humphrey Bogart look.

Actually, as I stood and he smiled at me, he seemed to be even better looking than his profile picture. He was wearing a nice grey button up with black slacks. Our clothing was very complimentary, which gave me reassurance that I (or Betsy, I suppose) had chosen wisely.

“Lauren. Thanks so much for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice.” Thomas stopped in front of me and shook my hand. I couldn’t help but notice his hands were warm, soft, and clean. A very good sign. “I was just so excited that I couldn’t wait.” He smiled a wide and bright smile that made it impossible not to smile back. He was a good few inches taller than me, and even though Betsy reminded me how little that mattered, my heart fluttered happily.

“It’s my pleasure,” I said, nodding and having a seat at his insistence.

“We’re probably breaking all sorts of dating rules. I was worried my eagerness would be off-putting or seem weird.”

I shrugged. “I find weird people are usually the best sort. My sort, it seems.” I sent him a reassuring smile. “And while I am usually quite a rule follower, I don’t think we’ll be fined by the dating police for a single infraction.”

Thomas nodded his head, smiling back. “This is a great place. Thanks for recommending it. I’ve never been here before.” He ran a hand through his brown hair and then picked up the menu sitting in front of him.

Our waiter stopped by with a basket of bread, a greeting, and a list of the specials. “Can I start you out with something to drink?”

I bit my lip as I thought. Making decisions was a bit difficult for me. I tended to second guess myself up until the last second, and then wonder if I’d made the right choice. At that moment, I was looking at a good thirty different wine choices. I had no idea what I wanted.
Would it be weird if I pulled a notepad out of my purse and made a list?
Yes, probably. Ugh. I looked up at Thomas to see if he looked more decided than I felt. Luckily, his eyes seemed to light up as he saw something on the menu.

“Oh! Côtes du Rhône.” He met my gaze. “Would you mind splitting a bottle?” His eyebrows furrowed slightly. “Not that I’m trying to order for you; I hate it when guys do that. It’s just a great bottle, if you don’t have anything else in mind.” He put a hand out as if to stop any feelings of pressure.

I shook my head. “Not at all. That sounds great. I was having a tough time deciding anyway.”

The waiter nodded, writing down our order and then heading off to fetch the bottle.

I reached for a slice of the bread but my hand collided with Thomas’s as he seemed to have the same idea. We laughed and he motioned for me to get my piece first. I pulled a section off the warm, crusty loaf and spread some butter on it with my knife.

The yeasty smell wafted into my nose as I crunched down on the slice, salty and creamy butter curling all around it. How did bread manage to make everything so much better? I mean, even a not-so-comfortable first date seemed so much easier now that we were both chomping away on our respective pieces.

Thomas winked at me from across the table and from behind his slice of bread. I feigned a smile, not loving the winking, but guessing he had to be just as nervous as I was and so was probably not making the most sound decisions.

“So, Lauren. Your profile said you’re a professor?”

Gotta love those dating sites. We already knew what the other did for a living, so there were no weird surprises there either.

I nodded. “Yep. Statistics. And you work pretty closely with numbers, too.” I smiled.

He laughed. “Numbers and I go way back.”

A fellow number-lover. Yes. Someone who might finally understand me and my inability to comprehend humans in all of their crazy complexity. Numbers just were. They were black and white, this or that. Safe.

My cheeks heated up as I looked over at Thomas, so glad Betsy had forced this date on me.

“What do you do when you’re not working on people’s finances?” I asked, sipping at the last bits of my water and pushing the glass to the edge of the table, hoping for a refill.

Thomas’s eyes lit up, much like they had when he’d recognized the wine he liked on the menu.

“House music.”

I almost choked on bread crumbs still lodged in my throat. Or maybe those were my expectations. “Excuse me?”

“I’m a DJ on the side.” He smiled. “For now, that is. I would love to do it for a living, but the music world isn’t known for being very lucrative for people who are just starting out.”

“A DJ.” I repeated the word as I thought, and focused really really hard on not letting my face look bitchy like Betsy said I had the tendency to. I couldn’t help the fact that my list was buzzing in my head, reminding me that this definitely changed things. A sinking feeling in my stomach returned as my conversation with Betsy earlier became louder than the list. I really didn’t want to come off as judge-y or better-than-you. Plus, I was a professor with a Blackjack problem. It wasn’t like I was winning any awards for “most normal” either.

“That’s fun,” I said, finally.

Even though I could put aside the oddness of his hobby, I could not forget the extent to which I hated club music. Actually, the only music I truly loved was more of the classical or big band genre (remember that I grew up with old people). I cleared my throat. I suppose there were such things as headphones.

As if he could read my thoughts and found it necessary to prove me wrong immediately, Thomas pulled out his phone and started to poke his fingertip at the screen.

“I just finished this sick transition last night.” He concentrated on the screen.

My neck started to get red. Did he just use the word “sick”? Wasn’t he in his thirties? Oh no. Why was that phone out? He wasn’t going to —

Music began to blare from the speakers. I ducked instinctively as the sound waves hit me, and peered from side to side as other people looked over at us, brows furrowed in distaste. His loud, synthetic, high-pitched noise felt like it stabbed into every nook and cranny of the small restaurant, completely drowning out the lovely strings music that’d been playing throughout the place. I ducked down even more. My neck was on fire. It must’ve been the color of a fully cooked lobster at that point.

I thought it couldn’t get any worse. That was until he started to dance. First it was only his head, pumping forward with the beat. Then it migrated down to his shoulders. And then it bled into his arms and he began to direct it at me.

“This is the part.” His tongue poked out from his mouth as he danced at me (yes,
at
me like an assault).

The music faded into a new, but still alarmingly similar, song. Thomas’s dancing reach some sort of climax of intensity and he stopped — no — slowed, moving his arms so they were pointing at me. I felt compelled to wave a hand in front of his face, to see if he was really aware of what he was seeing, but I was too busy tucking myself down into my seat, cringing, peering warily at the other patrons. I really doubt I was giving off “I like this, please continue” vibes.

Luckily, our waiter came by with our wine. His face was pinched.

“Sir, would you please refrain from playing your personal music in this establishment. It is affecting our other customers’ experience.”

Thomas looked up out of his trance. “Oh, sure, dude. Totally.”

Dude? Totally? Where was the man that knew fancy French wines and worked with numbers? I hated to box people into stereotypes, but this seemed contradictory as hell. Now that the club music wasn’t bumping, no longer seemed to stab angrily at my eardrums, I felt my rational thought processes return. Okay. Maybe he was going through some sort of fractional life crisis. Thinking he needed to be a DJ could definitely be a phase, one he’d stumbled into to make an ex girlfriend or wife upset.

After the waiter poured our wine (thank you, Jesus) and took our orders (knowing I had delicious pasta on the way made everything better), I felt the words dislodge and flow out.

“So… how did you become interested in the art of disc jockeying?” I cleared my throat so any sarcasm lacing my words might be mistaken as a tickle in my trachea.

Thomas shook his head. “It just came to me, really. I mean, I was playing some music for my friends one night at a dinner party and suddenly everyone got up and started to dance on the table. They said the songs I picked were so good they couldn’t help it.” He chuckled at the memory as if it was real and not completely made up.

Adults dancing on a table? In this Ikea-built generation of fast and cheap furniture, it was highly unlikely anyone’s table would’ve withstood that amount of weight.

“I run with a little bit of a younger crowd. I feel like all the guys my age are so boring. Into stocks and life insurance and where they should look into buying a retirement home.”

There it was. Younger crowd. Oh goodness. How much younger? Plus, the guy he described (the one who liked stocks and retirement, that one) was basically my perfect list guy. I gulped down a mouthful of wine. Thomas held out a hand.

“Oh no, Lauren. Don’t guzzle it like that. This wine is not your standard five dollar variety from Trader Joes. This is sensual French wine that deserves to be sipped, courted, like a lady.” The way he said “lady” made me shiver uncomfortably and wish I wasn’t one.

He reached over the table and tipped my glass away from my lips. Then he held up a finger as he picked up his own glass. He tipped it toward his nose, closing his eyes as he smelt, then swished it around. Finally he let a small trickle of it leak out, sucking it in and moving his tongue; as he did so he sounded way too much like Hannibal Lecter for my liking. I cringed but, again, he didn’t seem to notice, swishing the small amount of liquid around in his cheeks.

“Like that.” He smiled, setting the violated glass down at last.

I’m pretty sure my face resembled that not-impressed-downward-mouth emoji Betsy sent me from time to time when she thought I was being difficult about something. But being difficult was definitely in my nature and Thomas telling me I couldn’t “guzzle” this wine only made me want to that much more.

“Wow, what a beautiful painting.” I pointed behind him.

Thomas turned and I grasped my wine glass, sloshing a huge gulp into my mouth, and placing it back on the table before he turned back around.

“An art critic, huh?” He smiled.

I shrugged, swallowing the delicious wine slowly so he wouldn’t see. Hopefully he wouldn’t notice that my glass was nearly half empty now. Whoops.

He didn’t. Mostly because the next ten minutes were filled with him telling me almost every detail of his childhood (growing up in a broken home with a brother who never treated him with respect, to this day), him continuing to drink his wine in the creepy Silence of the Lambs way (I thought all of that sipping stuff was just supposed to happen at the beginning of drinking, not continue all the way through), all the while, he periodically added a beatboxed bass-line to the classical music playing throughout the restaurant (complete with shoulder moves, head pumping, and eye assault). Not that I was normally a chatty person, but I don’t think I could’ve gotten in a word edgewise if I’d tried.

When my pasta arrived, I almost kissed our older, angry-looking waiter. Instead, I focused on making out with my meal, bent over, full on slurping, just barely holding back yummy noises. After about a minute, I pulled up to take a breather and my eyes met Thomas gazing at me, a smile on his face, his dinner sitting in front of him, untouched.

“Loves art and food. A real woman of the world, you are, Lauren.” He finally looked down at his own plate and began to eat.

I, however, was left with my mouth agape (figuratively, don’t worry, I wasn’t letting my chewed pasta hang out). He’d spent the whole time so far aggressively dancing at me, telling me all about himself, and yet he thought because I was eating and I had noticed a painting (through false pretenses, mind you) that he suddenly knew who I was. Not to mention that I’m pretty sure those two things did not make me a “woman of the world”.

I decided right then that I had been very wrong about Thomas. I focused on my food as it remained the only good, non-baffling thing around. Also, the sooner it was gone, the sooner this whole thing could be over with.

I suddenly got that terrible goosebumps-inducing feeling of someone staring, so I looked up. Yep. Thomas was watching me, again. His jaw clenched slightly and then he reached toward me. I kept my fork poised at the ready, just in case.

“Got a stray hair there.” His fingers pinched at the skin on my cheek as he got hold of a hair and started to pull it toward him.