Laura
I haven’t ever wanted to get out of a date faster than tonight, and I haven’t ever had one last longer after I was ready to be done with it. It was an unpleasant mixture, and one that I don’t intend to repeat if I have any choice in the matter going forward. In fact, if this is what I’m left with for the local dating scene, maybe it would be wiser of me to just stop trying altogether. I hear that nunneries are lovely this time of year.
I took a breath before I left the car, because there’s going to be a lot of potential for a whole separate can of worms to open up when I get inside. What was I going to do if Charlie was still up, for example? He’d be ready to get a whipping. But she wasn’t supposed to do that. Everyone said so, and she knew it, and most of the time she had the self-control not to.
But then again, it wouldn’t just be Charlie’s fault, would it? After all, there were two people in that house, and one of them was supposed to be the adult. In spite of the fact that he was probably the one more suitable, Charlie wasn’t the adult of the two of them.
“I’m not going to get mad,” I said to myself out loud. “No matter what I find. What’s done is done, and I don’t have to worry about it. I just have to worry about correcting it. It’s my own fault anyways.”
I pushed myself out of the car and stand up. My legs were sore and my face was hot and I stumbled a little as I came all the way up. I didn’t think I’d drank that much, but between that and standing up so suddenly, maybe I wasn’t as good as I thought that I was.
There was one thing that immediately stood out to me. The bright yellow pizza box sticking out of the recycling bin was new. Charlie might actually be learning.
I took a deep breath and checked my phone for the time. I said eight thirty, but it’s well past nine, almost to ten o’clock and I was just getting home. Well, I’d make all my apologies and then move on.
The door was locked when I got up to it. I started to fuss with my keys when it opened. Dave had a can of soda in his hands, a can that certainly wasn’t in the house when I left.
“Hey,” he said. He looked a little tired. And now that he was tired, he did a much poorer job pretending not to notice my body.
“How did things go?”
“They went fine. He’s been asleep since eight thirty.”
I stepped inside, past him, and slipped my shoes off. He stood off to the side and let me take my time, which I was thankful for. I wish there were more men who were willing to back off a little, and let me take things at my own pace. Then again, the times that I’ve met men like that, they lacked a certain something in other areas.
I didn’t need someone with me in the bedroom. I’m able to get by with a few nights a month of keeping myself entertained, and otherwise not thinking about it. But if I was going to date then it was going to go into the bedroom, too. Eventually. And I wasn’t interested in having to drag someone into it like they were doing me a favor.
“How was he?”
“He was great,” Dave answered again. He took a sip from the can. It sounded empty.
I pressed the door open, and peered inside. The light spilled into the room in a thin narrow strip, but I could see that Charlie was down. Whether he was asleep or not was a matter that I didn’t want to think about. There were a thousand problems that people had to deal with; the idea that a boy would be sitting in the dark doing nothing but not being asleep was the least of my worries.
“Yeah?”
“You raised him pretty good.”
I turned and looked at him. Did he know? Had he guessed? I didn’t want to think about it.
“Thanks.”
“You look good. I hope you had a good time.”
“I didn’t,” I said. “You got any of that pizza left?”
“In the fridge,” Dave answered. “Just two slices, though.”
“Two is enough. God. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough, and he just wouldn’t let me get away.”
“I don’t know who would,” Dave offered.
I stared at him. What was that supposed to mean? I could understand what he probably meant by it, but it was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard him say. If he wouldn’t let me go, then why, eight years ago, had he done just that?
“I’m glad you think so,” I said instead. “But sometimes that’s what you want.”
“I understand that, trust me.” Dave’s face had darkened a little bit. I pulled the plate out, a pair of slightly-cold pizza slices placed side by side on it.
“I just wish someone would come along who wasn’t a complete waste of my time.”
Dave shifted his weight awkwardly. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but it’s probably something that he shouldn’t be. It’s probably something that I shouldn’t be. There were a lot of things I shouldn’t think about Dave. Like how he was in bed after all these years.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Are you seeing anyone? Wherever you’re living?”
“I’m in London right now,” he said vaguely. “And I’m not really seeing anyone.”
“Living there, or just passing through?”
“I’ve got some stuff there, but I probably won’t be staying much longer once I get back.”
“Where are you off to then?”
Dave shrugged. “I don’t know. Wherever.”
“Not back to the army, though?”
He let out a long, low breath. “No, not back to the army. Never back to the army, if I can help it.”
“That bad?”
He shrugged again. “I don’t know. Just not my thing, maybe. I don’t want to live like that any more.”
“You almost sound like you’re thinking about settling down.”
I saw his lips twitch, as if there were something he weren’t saying. “I don’t know. Maybe. If I found someplace.”
“What kind of place?”
I watched him think about it. Or at least, I watched him stare impassively at my wall, while his lips pursed themselves awkwardly as if he were mimicking speech without ever opening his lips.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “Someplace that felt right.”
I knew better than to say anything at all. I knew better, and I’d rehearsed this whole conversation in my head a hundred times. But I had finished most of a bottle by myself, and I wasn’t exactly in my right mind, and I’d stand by that in court.
“How does it feel here?”
“Different,” he said.
“What’s so different about it? Not that much has changed.”
“Everything’s changed.”
“Like what?”
I don’t know what answer I expected, but the way that he looked at me had me thinking that I could guess one of the possibilities, and I didn’t want to have to tell myself that he wasn’t going to say it. I wanted to believe that he was going to, and I let myself.
“You’ve changed.”
I shivered, even though it wasn’t cold. “Oh?”
“You’re more mature, for one thing.”
I barked a harsh laugh. “Yeah, Dave. That’s the problem, apparently. When I was fresh out of high school, guys were lining up, but…” I bit off the sentence before it went somewhere it shouldn’t have. “Well, whatever. I guess I’m used product, now.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Used, huh?”
“Like an old furnace filter,” I said. “Nobody really wants it.”
He seemed to think about how to respond to that. It was the most I’d ever seen him seriously consider something in his entire life, and it was because of an off-hand joke.
“And what if I said that someone did want you?”
“I’d want to see some I.D,” I joked.
“What if I told you that I wanted you?”
I shivered in spite of myself. This was a mistake, a voice in the back of my head screamed. The wine made it scream very quietly, and made ignoring it seem very tempting. So instead of taking the very good advice I gave myself, I made a mistake for the second time in my life.
“Then why don’t you do something about it?”