First Date

"Hey there handsome, this seat taken?"

Sam looks up to find a young woman breathing rapidly across the table from him. The stray light from the dace floor refracts and glitters in the beads of sweat that grace her forehead. Black, shoulder-length hair frames her cute round face; stray wisps cross her slightly upturned nose and small pert mouth. She must have just gotten off the dance floor. Her brown eyes focus on him accompanied by a friendly grin as she hops lithely into the seat without waiting for a response.

"I'm not exactly handsome" Sam half-smirks. He feels the heat of a slight blush creep onto his face. He can't believe that any woman, let alone one as beautiful as the one in front of him, would attribute handsome to his short, stodgy body, his big ears, or his crooked nose as anything less than a cruel joke.

"Handsome is as handsome does. I'd find any guy handsome if he braved that mob to get me a gin and tonic." She nodded at the bar past the danced floor.

Her widening smile moves him with the force of a hurricane. He completely forgets the relaxation he was seeking. Tonight is no longer a normal Friday night. He gets up and starts to push his way through the skimpily dressed, wildly gyrating, generally intoxicated biomass of college undergraduates able to pass for twenty-one. The loud music driving them consists of a powerfully repetitive baseline and incoherent lyrics. He never really minded this type of music, though he preferred classical scores. A few of the girls look him over and laugh as he forces his way by. The multicolored lights, under the expert control of the DJ, flash randomly across the mob, often into his eyes. He finally pushes his way out the other side of the dance floor to the bar.

Sam waits for six minutes until the bartender takes his order. He realizes how foolish he had been to force his way across and takes the gin and tonic and his new beer back, around the dance floor, and set them down.

"You're cute, at least." She picks up her drink and takes a sip.

He follows with a swallow of his own. "So, what do you do?" he asks.

"I'm in school for social work."

"Makes sense, I'm a charity case." Sam's smirk returns.

"What do you do?" She completely ignores his jibe.

"I'm working on my graduate thesis: that mankind needs to change to renewable fuel or humanity is lost."

"Humanity is already lost; the best we can do is provide it with hospice care."

Thus begins their first debate. Sam entirely forgets that before him sits a lovely woman. His face becomes serious. Their voices, already loud to overcome the music, rise to compete with each other. As their arguments reached something near a climax she suddenly quiets and asks him to get her another drink.

Sam reluctantly rises. He snaps back into reality and smiles nervously at the woman. "Of course," he says and walks back to the bar. By the time he returns with the requested gin and tonic the lady is gone. He lowers and shakes his head with a rueful smile. He didn't even get her name. A napkin beneath his empty beer glass catches his attention. Sam, it reads, call me, 861-3213 - Jess.

He drives his Accord through the Denver streets back to his apartment just off the CU-Denver campus in a trance. The grin doesn't leave his face for the rest of the night. He barely feels the three flights of stairs up to his three-room flat that normally wind him. He glides through the combination kitchen/den to his room. Then he drops into bed.

Sam is fully aware that he is acting like a foolish teenage boy in springtime, but he feels exactly that ecstatic. He has never been on a successful date in his life. His peers had pegged him as a loner from kindergarten so never felt included or confident. The girls who deign to date him never assent to a second encounter. His few close buddies attribute this ineptitude to his lack of confidence. Tonight, though, a beauty approached him, talked with him, and left a number that he knows he will call the next day. What an esteem boost that is. Also, as he thinks back on the night, she shows all the qualities he has ever looked for but never expects to find. She is kind, pretty, and intelligent. He just hopes he can handle the pessimism she had for humanity and that he won't flub his second chance with her.

Morning wakes him with bright light through the window. Sam had forgotten to set his alarm the previous night and he slept far longer then he had intended. He tosses off last night's clothes, after pulling the napkin from his pocket. As he showers he hums a pop love song that usually makes him sick. He coasts through the rest of the day waiting for evening, the appropriate time to call.

His hand shakes with fear and adrenaline as he picks up his hard-line phone and punches in the numbers from the napkin. The phone buzzes out a couple of rings before the other end picks up. After a bit of embarrassed mumbling he asks her to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant. She says yes.

He arrives at Josephina's Restaurant early and awaits Jess's appearance, his breath fogging in the early autumn air. The small restaurant is nestled between the Lucky Star, a trendy bar not unlike where he had met Jess, and The Market, a café that holds weekly poetry slams. Red-checked tablecloths are spread out over the homey round tables made from real oak. A chalkboard listing the day's specials also proudly proclaims their motto: "Everyone leaves with a doggy bag." The smell of fresh garlic bread wafts out. He anticipated the pleasant basket of warm bread that awaited them with their meal. Jess finally arrives. She looks every bit as lovely in the streetlight as she did in the darkness of the bar.

A waiter seats them at the corner booth to the right of the door. Sam orders chicken parmesan and begins to nibble at the bread. Jess orders ravioli. They both take a glass of the recommended wine. He feels a foot rubbing against his leg and a blush overtakes him again. Her smile grows into a full grin as she watches his face.

"Are you really that innocent?" she giggled.

The blush on his face deepened. He glanced around to see if anyone was looking at him. He finds the other couples and the family or two are far too busy enjoying their dinners to be interested in them. A playful kick from below the table returns his attention to Jess. He nods.

"That's ok," she winks at him, "I'll make sure to take things slow."

He relaxes a bit, seeing that she's trying to seem benign, and lets his smirk appear. "So I am a charity case. I guess that's one step up from a free dinner."

"You're interesting in any case."

"So are you," he says with an honest smile.

The waiter serves their dinners steaming hot in deep bowl plates. He plops them onto the table where they land with solid, weighty thumps. They eat for a bit in silence. Her foot continues playing up and down his leg. This keeps him slightly uncomfortable. She chews each bite of her ravioli thoughtfully, her eyes moving between the dim lamp made from stained glass hanging above the table and his face. Sam grows more pensive as the silence grows longer. Jess seems to become more preoccupied too. He wonders what's going on in her mind. The waiter comes by and refills their water.

She swallows a bite and focuses on him "You're no charity case Sam." Her eyes are narrow and her mouth tight. "You're a chance."

Sam furrows his eyebrows and puts his fork and knife down on his plate.

"You see, I've had a few boyfriends, from high school up to now, senior year of college. They've been popular types, preppies and jocks and the like."

This doesn't surprise Sam at all. From the outset he had been sure this beautiful woman received her fair share of suitors. It also fails to enlighten him on what she is trying to say.

"These relationships always changed from wonderful companionship into spiteful possessiveness, accompanied by insults and petty arguments. The guys were too full of themselves."

Sam clenches his fists, angry at the nameless men who abused Jess so. His cynicism kicks in and checks his emotions. He knows she didn't mean it but a veiled insult hid within her statement. He reacts to that insult with an anger born from his insecurity.

"You went out and looked for someone who was the complete opposite of your former boyfriends," he accuses, "and you found me. You found a fat loner nerd with low self-esteem."

She frowns and withdraws her foot from his leg. "I already told you I didn't talk to you out of pity."

"No, you talked to me because you could manipulate me."

Her hand flashes across the table and connects with his face. The smack resounds above the quiet conversations murmuring in the background. Silence echoes the slap as those conversations stop. The other patrons no longer ignore them politely. Eyes from every direction rivet to their table. Violence has that effect on people. Sam's cheek turns ruddy in the shape of her hand.

She is either ignorant of the attention or purposely ignores it as she raises her voice further. "I wouldn't have given you my number if you were that spineless or a jerk. True, you're foolishly eager to please in some ways, but you also argued with me for the better part of an hour last week and didn't attack me once. That's why I gave you my number."

The restaurant lapses back into silence for a full minute before the general background murmur resumes. People occasionally glance over to see how the situation resolved. Few of them try to be covert in their peeks. Sam reaches up to his face and rubs his smarting cheek, his grey eyes wide. She picks her fork up and resumes eating, her eyes never leaving his. Completely dumbfounded Sam remains silent.

The waiter, hoping he can remove this distraction from the other patrons' evening, drops off the check and a couple of to-go boxes. Sam deposits his Visa in the folder and shovels his leftover chicken into one of the boxes. Jess continues eating until the check is returned, then packs her own food. They leave the restaurant, the focus of attention. She's pointedly cold and silent, walking stiffly and looking away. He escorts her to her beat up Acura and opens the door for her.

As she enters the car he whispers "I'm sorry."

Jess jumps out with surprising quickness and presses her lips to his. She holds the kiss for ten eternal seconds then slides back into her car with a smile on her face. She flickers her break lights as she drives away. Sam staggers back to his own car, affected by the kiss in almost the same manner as the slap. He sits in the driver's seat for a while, bemused, enjoying the lingering tingle on his lips.