"So, I paired up with him and we went off to find some place to do our lines, right?" You sip at the tail end of your second old fashioned, me still nursing my Scotch on the rocks. "And where better than the catwalks!"
"Wait, you dragged the cute boy who'd dated half your friend group to some secluded corner?" I sniff a laugh, "I can't imagine how that turned out, eh?"
"We almost got caught!" Your eyes light up, infecting my own. "He came, like, in my mouth, and I swear I hear someone, like, say something down below and it made my whole spine tingle and I sucked hard and pulled his shirt down and stood up and stepped back and the door fucking. Swung. Open. Right then."
"Who was it? What did you say?" I sip. I used to knock this stuff back, but half a glass and I'm already feeling it. But maybe it's nice to feel it again.
"Well, first, I swallowed." You take a dramatic beat to re-enact it with your drink as I nearly choke on mine. "Then I said my line: ah, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer!"
"Oh then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do. They pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair?" I barely manage to drag from some dusty corner.
"Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake." You cock your head, and I'm happy to see a stunned smile on your face.
"Then move not while my prayer's effect I take?" That one I remember, that's the big cue.
You lick your lips and lean gently towards me expectantly, and I shuffle, missing my mark.
"So, did you kiss him?" I look down as you hide the sinking of your smile.
"Oh, no, that idiot didn't know the fucking line, you kidding me?" You snort and I snuff another laugh. "How about you, ever do anything so daring when you were young?" You raise your eyebrows, "Got any blow jobs in the catwalks?"
"Umm, not that specifically, although it sounds excellent -"
"It was." You whisper softly to the ceiling.
"- but, um, there was this girl Julia that, uh, so, we were at her friend's house on time, and she was trying on dresses or whatever and she was still in one when we left and, oops whoopsie daisy, totally forgot her bra and panties, how'd that happen? Well, I guess we'll just have to go for a walk in the park without them!"
"Oh, yes, common accident, almost forgot to wear anything under this dress earlier!"
"Yes, I'm sure it's really an epidemic of forgetfulness."
"So, did she get railed in this sundress?"
"Umm, I'm not sure it was a sundress? More like a tight brown thing? But, actually, first she got eaten out in her tight brown dress, then she got railed." I nod at you. "Oh, in the park of course."
"Ah, one of the good ones, are you?"
"I do love me some pussy, I cannot lie." I sip. "And that story alone makes Julia easily the hottest girl I've ever dated. Like, without question, regardless of any other measure." I set down my glass and you eye me just shy of angrily, and I'm not sure if you need more explanation or less. Perhaps that was the wrong comment to make...
"So, what do cute guys who love eating pussy do for a living these days?" You roll your empty glass and its melting ice around on its edge.
"Oh, my job is completely fucking pointless. Basically, they pay me an embarrassing amount of money because everyone else on the planet is terrified to break this software I work on, so I'm like the only person they can find, and I can't imagine hating anything more than I hate going to work." I drink rather more of my Scotch than I have been, and continue. "I just don't care about any of it at all and it's so easy and I do nothing for sixty hours a week and it makes my entire fucking life feel wasted, like, I wasted my life doing pointless tasks for more and more money year after year and now I have all the money and I've done nothing, like, can't-sleep-at-night nothing, and, like, you know, the little things that you fill your life with around pointless drudgery, like, my wife, she was, she... like, okay, blowjob on the catwalks, eating pussy in the park, no need to be shy, she wouldn't fuck me anymore. For, like, years. So long I lost count of how many years it'd been. I cried, like, cried myself to sleep. I wanted to die, I asked her, I begged her, she said she didn't want... I thought..."
I catch your wide-eyed look of abject terror.
"Fuck. I didn't..." I blink. Fuck indeed. I sip my watery Scotch. "Look, she just, she just stopped being a safe person to share my innermost thoughts and needs with." I grab your hand and you exhale. "I'm... fuck. I'm really, genuinely sorry for dumping. You didn't even ask about that."
You breath and look at me, then at my hand on yours. Another breath and you shift, moving your other arm. You're about to leave. I can feel it getting dark.
"No, man, I get it." You set your other hand on mine and squeeze. You smile and my heart floats. "Like, really."
I don't know what to say. I can't remember the last time I said anything like that to anyone. And you didn't... I just look at you.
"I, uh, haven't actually been with anyone in a while either." Even your chest betrays your nervousness at this admission, grasping at your words to keep them from escaping. "I used to have my fair share of lovers, but never anything like love, not even, like, puppy love." You shrug, and I sense the same shiver in your shoulders I've felt for years. "Hardly even broken hearts."
"At some point it feels like there's nothing left there to break." And it's my turn to smile and watch your heart float.
You sniffle and blink away wetness, "But, those assholes can get their pussy elsewhere, I'm sure." You shake your head, "No, I mean, I'm sure I made plenty of mistakes along the way, I don't mean..."
"Haven't we all." I sigh, sipping. More Scotch left in there than I care to admit to myself.
"Any real big mistakes?" I, for one, appreciate you trying to pull this conversation away from the dark.
"Not fucking Julia more!" I snort and you laugh, adjusting in your seat, tugging down the hem of your dress as you pull back upright.
"What could pull you away from that?"
"I dunno, I mean, there were lots of girls I slept with in high school, and lots of friends I hung out with, and, like, I spent the last twenty years on my career and my marriage and now those are both emptied out and, like..."
"You want meaning?" You shuffle in your seat again, dipping down with a quiet oops to pick your purse back up off the floor.
"Connection, maybe?" I watch you pop back upright. "Having normal relationships is hard, I guess I wish I could figure out how to do that again? Does that make sense?"
"Like Julia?" You nod and I shrug.