"Hello?"
He was home. I felt the butterflies in my stomach. Now this was real on some level, not just a fleeting notion.
"Hi," I stammered. I hadn't thought through this very well. It was an idea or a feeling, not a plan. Now I was scrambling.
"Catherine? How are you?" He sounded pleased, and surprised.
"Good" I replied sounding confused, as if the question had been difficult. It was a bit difficult actually and I was confused but about what I was thinking of doing, not his question.
"I'm about to get off work, do you want to have dinner somewhere?"" I continued after a short but awkward silence. It felt like an hour passed. I tried to sound casual. We'd hung out many times but he had always initiated it and I'd never sensed intent behind any of his invites. That was what made me so nervous. This could blow up in my face in terrifyingly embarrassing fashion.
"I've actually already started cooking, do you want to just come over?" he asked. As always, there was nothing to read into it. He sounded so at ease. It was mildly infuriating.
"Sure, I mean if there's enough. I don't want to impose or anything," I replied, trying to sound indifferent. As the words left my mouth I knew I was failing utterly in that endeavor.
"Not at all, you'll just be having what would have been leftovers tomorrow. Just don't set your expectations too high, it's not like I'm a great cook or anything. If it's awful we can go somewhere."
He had always been pretty self-effacing. Sometimes it came off as a deep, cool confidence, other times insecurity. The end result was that he was nearly impossible for me to read. Today was no different and it was doing nothing to put me at ease.
"Okay, expectations lowered," I quipped. I'd just sounded sort of normal. Good. "I'm leaving soon, I'll see you in about 45 minutes?"
"That's perfect, you may still have time to salvage some of what I might be ruining as we speak."
He sounded distracted and I was annoyed that he wasn't sharing in my discomfort but why should he? He didn't know what I was thinking and I certainly hadn't given him any reason to suspect. All I'd done was called him. People call their friends all the time to make plans. Not this kind of plan though I admitted to myself. I felt my body temperature drop, my nerves were getting worse.
We got off the phone and I sat at my desk staring at my screen. It was nearly 6:30 and almost everyone else had left. It had been a brutal week. I was coordinating the opening of a temporary exhibit at the museum; a job that required the successful timing and manipulation of a thousand moving pieces. Just orchestrating the deliveries and setup had been a nightmare, now we were working on the lecture schedule and opening night. I needed to relax and that was when I'd thought of this the previous night. Thinking about him like this, in a way I'd never really considered, had made me toss and turn all night; I was now working on about three hours of interrupted sleep.
Procrastinating wasn't going to make me less nervous and I certainly wasn't going to be able to concentrate well enough to get anything else at work done so with a deep breath that totally failed to center me, I rose from my desk to head to my car. I was glad that he only lived a few minutes away; it gave me less time to chicken out. I could be about to humiliate myself and ruin a friendship that was valuable to me.
I stepped out of the elevator and realized I was hyper-aware of every detail now. My heels sounded deafening as I walked across the concrete of the parking garage. The walk to my car, not more than a hundred feet, seemed like a journey. Everything in slow motion. Was I was making a huge mistake? Was I just a coward? Maybe and yes but something compelled me to follow through with this.
I started my car and sat there for a moment. I pulled the visor down and looked in the mirror. I'm not a falsely modest person, I look good. I'd never lacked attention from men, if anything I'd downplayed what I had to work with. Today had been tricky. I wanted to make an impression without appearing to care about making an impression. I also had to be entirely professional and office appropriate. I'd chosen a white, silk blouse and knee-length black skirt with black heels. The outfit and my tied back hair made me look like a librarian. A fuckable librarian? I hoped so but it was definitely not over-the-top. I didn't look like I was trying which had been the goal. I smiled at myself in the mirror, not bad.
With one last deep breath I backed out of my space and pulled out of the parking garage. It was only about three miles to his house, plenty of time to make up an excuse and back out. He wouldn't even know anything was up. I could still just go for dinner and leave what seemed like an increasingly ill advised idea as just a passing thought. I continued running through the different scenarios in my head until I was parked in front of his house. I had no recollection of actually having driven myself there.
I'd known Mark for three years. When we'd met I was dating his friend Richard; Mark had become a third wheel for the year that had lasted. He was immediately easy to talk to and when the three of us went out to dinner Mark and I had carried the conversation while Richard mostly focused on when his next drink would arrive. I'd always preferred the nights the three of us went out as opposed to the long evenings with Richard filled with awkward silences and a general failure to connect outside his bedroom. I wish I could claim my relationship with Richard was abnormal but it would be more accurate to describe it as my pattern, good-looking men who I had little in common with.
Mark rarely dated and attempts I'd made to set him up with a couple of my friends had been borderline disasters. The ease he carried himself with when he was out with Richard and I disappeared as soon as another woman was present. I knew he was a good listener, funny and charming but with my friends, he'd used his humor to keep them at a distance to the point where it had been off-putting. The day after the "dates" they'd both asked me if he was serious about anything at all, he'd never asked me a thing about either of them afterward. Richard claimed Mark had "a fear of intimacy" and that he'd been through "some shit with an old girlfriend" but was scant on the details. He may not have known any particulars; Richard was not an inquisitive person and most of the men I'd known didn't talk too deeply to others about whatever was troubling them.
Mark called me about three weeks after my final blowup with Richard and said he "wanted to stay in touch, I told Richard I wanted to reach out to you and he didn't mind." As if I gave a shit what Richard thought, he was balls-deep in a girl who'd attended our weekly beach volleyball games the weekend after we split.
In the two years that had elapsed since then Mark had gone on the occasional date but nothing ever seemed to pan out. He did have an actual girlfriend for a few months but broke it off before I even met her. I asked him what had happened and it turned out they'd gone out to dinner with Richard. She lived out of town and he'd asked her what she'd seen here and she'd replied "Mark's ceiling."
"That's actually kind of funny," I'd laughed wishing I had the brazen confidence to talk to someone I'd just met so openly.
"Not really, you should have seen how they were looking at each other, she was trying to be intriguing," he'd replied. "She was trying way too hard, it was painful."
"Like your non-stop jokes with Kristin and Gina?" I shot back.
"No, in those cases I probably wasn't trying hard enough. Or I was trying too hard to not try hard enough. It was bad but you know that, you were there."
I'd continued my streak of relationships with good-looking men I couldn't have a decent conversation with. The most recent was John, who I'd been seeing for almost three months. I'd done this enough times to know it wasn't going anywhere and I finally ended it last week. I hadn't spoken to Mark since it happened and I was over-thinking how I was going to tell him. I couldn't recall us having spent time together when we were simultaneously single. Now that I thought about it I didn't even know if he was single. I felt a drop of sweat roll down my side from my armpit. I opened the car door and walked up his porch. Clearly things were not going to improve by sitting there stalling.
I rang the bell and heard footsteps approaching. I had officially committed to dinner at least. He opened the door.
"Jesus, I feel underdressed!" He exclaimed looking me over. He was wearing a white t-shirt and jeans.
"I came straight here from work," I replied, trying to sound as if I hadn't spent an hour debating what to wear.
"Men where you work must not accomplish much."
It wasn't the first time he'd complimented my appearance but it was the first time I'd felt the weight of his compliment. I hoped it didn't show but decided he wouldn't have seen it if it had as he'd already turned his back to me and walked back into the house.
"Come on in, food is ready," he called out with his back still to me.
I followed him inside toward the kitchen. He had three burners working; I noticed an already-set table. It had been a long day at work and I'd added to my own stress level thinking about seeing Mark the entire time. When he handed me a glass of wine it was as if he'd read my mind. I took a long sip of what turned out to be a dense red. It tasted expensive.
"What is this? It's really good." I asked as I sat down.
"The quality of the Bordeaux is meant to offset the mediocrity of the food," he said smiling at me as he turned off the burners. "Kick your shoes off, you're not at work anymore. Those can't be comfortable."
They make my legs look great, they're supposed to be sexy you imbecile, I thought to myself.
He noticed my hesitation. "Don't worry I mopped the floor before you got here," he assured me.
I slid my shoes off and took another long sip of the wine. It actually did feel good to get my shoes off, I raised my feet a little and stretched them out to try and loosen my calf muscles. I looked up at Mark and he was definitely noticing my legs now. It was a confidence booster and I needed it.
"Hey, I didn't know you were going to be dressed so nice when I made this," he said while putting chicken tikka masala on my plate. "Do you want to borrow a shirt or something so you don't stain yours?"
