“Do you want to split the bill,” L asked.
Fiddlesticks was on the verge of rowdy. The bar filled with other hopefuls roaming Greenwich Village.
“I got it,” I said, sliding the tab to my side of the table.
She smiled. So did I.
Freshly single now only a couple of weeks, I understood this part of the night very well; a familiar occurrence I could flip through countless times in my mind’s highlight real. It’s all I knew. Quick. Right away. No time wasted at all.
I paid. We left.
“Thanks so much,” L exclaimed.
She put her hand on my shoulder and I followed her out onto Greenwich Avenue. The sidewalk was congested with puddles. The clouds teased more rain. August was all but a memory, and my second year of grad school was knocking on fall’s door.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
I placed my hand on her bicep and gracefully spun her. She faced me, and I leaned in.
“Let’s take things slow,” L whispered with her forehead grazing mine. Her hand pressed against my chest, and slightly pushed against my sternum.
It was my first date, with someone different, in two years. I did what I thought I was supposed to do. I wasn’t ready, though. She knew it. I didn’t.
“Let’s take things slow,” she repeated.
◊♦◊
I could never tell if we were actually walking together or if we did all we could to be near each other for a little longer.
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L and I were friends for a while. We met my first semester of grad school in a seminar I’m not sure I remember the name of. Temptation lured in the distance between us during class; two and a half hours of fidgeting, clicking pens, and the ultimate back-and-forth adult game of tag. She often wore a similar pair of jeans, a light, fading shade of blue that nearly molded the outline of her ass into a shape of utter perfection. An apple. An upside down heart.
Although most days, she showed up to class with her makeup wiped off, and replaced with a brush of fatigue. Her complexion was the color of a melting snowman; damp with the inevitable stress that plagued her under the sun fighting the winter. Her eyes, a dark ominous brown matching the tangled web above, frequently closed for minutes at a time, before they slowly opened from the dream taking her away from the stuffy classroom and the life she wasn’t sure she wanted. I caught her each time, and waited until she woke.
My head turned to her and not to our professor discussing Richard Wright’s Black Boy. Sometimes she looked directly at me, embarrassed, but already comfortable in such a short time. Other times she pretended like nothing happened, and darted towards the front of the classroom. She nodded her head, agreeing with the professor’s words she hadn’t heard. But every time, no matter the outcome, she fought a smile. Closed mouth, but enough to redden her pale cheeks.
We often left class together, typically in a hurry of silence, as our subways back to Penn Station and Hoboken refused to wait any longer. I could never tell if we were actually walking together or if we did all we could to be near each other for a little longer.
“See you next week,” L always exclaimed with a nervous giggle and a quick flinch of a hand wave. She turned left on Sixth Avenue.
“See you,” I always said, hesitant, wishing I didn’t have turn right.
I had a girlfriend.
I often believed I wasn’t even allowed to look, as if every other woman on this planet turned into a gorilla that junk-punched me every time I did. I remember talking to my best friend who was also in a relationship, and he looked at me with this blank stare I’ll never forget.
“What do you think they do?” he said. “Never look?”
I honestly wasn’t used to being in a relationship. My eyes never stopped wandering into the world of promiscuity when I was single. But as a boyfriend, I thought it was forbidden. I quickly realized that’s what keeps us all, not just men, sane. L represented something that had been missing from my current relationship.
My second semester of grad school arrived and we again had seminar together. Cheating had never sprinted, or jogged, in the track of my mind, despite how often I wasn’t faithful to all the girls I dated prior to this first real relationship. But in walked the jeans and the fatigue, the matted hair and that hidden smile, and forget it.
It also didn’t help that we started going out together after class.
◊♦◊
Things don’t only happen when they’re supposed to. There really is such a thing as ready and not ready.
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I sat on a stool next to the jukebox in Treehouse; another bar on Greenwich Avenue. Class just finished, one of the last of second semester, and our temptation stirred with the beers we held in our hands. We gathered in a group of students, and I stared at L’s back. The jukebox paused before another Notorious B.I.G. song interrupted another silence that existed between L and I. She wore a jean jacket, faded, like the jeans my eyes couldn’t get enough of. With the dead rapper’s words loud and enticing, I shimmied my chair up an inch. L took a step backward. I shimmied closer. L backpedaled again. I shifted my legs from the front of the chair to the side, and opened them just enough.
The bar, distracting with its abundant patrons, helped conceal the awkwardness, the tension, the confusion.
It was the first time I considered cheating on my long-term girlfriend. Looking back now, the thought was normal. Then, in that moment, I was committing a crime. But this night was filled with foreshadow. And not only because I’d be single a couple months following.
No matter how slow we took things, we would constantly be on the run, trying to catch a different train.
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Things don’t only happen when they’re supposed to. There really is such a thing as ready and not ready. Our first date at Fiddlesticks months later, and this night at Treehouse, began the restructuring of my definition of dating. Fuck what you know. Each day will surprise you differently. I realized that the relationship I was in wasn’t end-all-be-all. That I would be okay without it if, and when, all we refused to acknowledge finally caught up to us. I realized that just because you’re single doesn’t mean you have to date. That when you try to replace someone with someone else, they’ll always be a replacement.
L bounced slightly from the music. Her back occasionally rubbed against my chest. I drank anxiously. She didn’t turn once, and it wasn’t until the subways called and she turned to say “see you next week,” that I saw her face, and understood, no matter how slow we took things, we would constantly be on the run, trying to catch a different train.
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