“I told him we were going to have coffee and asked him if it was a good idea.”
“What did he say?”
“He said yes it was a good idea, absolutely, but that you might write a tumblr about it.”
I blushed, but in the bright sunshine there on the bay’s edge, it was impossible to see any change in the color of my cheeks.
“I’m mortified.”
“No no! He didn’t mean anything bad by it.”
“Still, I’m mortified. Truly.”
*******************
There is something mischievous about him. I noticed it the moment he bounced off the median toward me, as I waited in front of the Ferry Plaza. If there had been a light post — not the fascist one he described sitting to the right of, but an actual light post — he’d have swung off it, Singing In The Rain-style. The bounce was charming and unexpected, and if I’d been at all nervous he’d have disarmed me then and there.
If anyone was a little nervous, my money was on him. Not terribly nervous, but I could see a touch of it around the edge of our initial conversation. It dissipated quickly. The coffee helped, but sitting and talking about love helped more.
We sat in the sun, the Bay Bridge stretching out before us. His face lit up when he talked about her. His eyes were blue with touch of green in them, hidden behind glasses, but when he spoke about her they widened a little, became bluer and greener. We talked a long time about how it had come about, the situation. About feelings and reality and what could and couldn’t happen. I listened and asked. We talked on. He never once looked at his watch.
At first he seemed to want to talk more than to listen, but as the conversation continued we went back and forth. We talked a little about me and what I was going to do, about decisions I had to make. About plans I had. About interactions I ought to see a little differently. He was right. We drank a bottle of rosé from Washington state. Midway through the bottle I saw things about me I’d never understood, looking as I did through his blue eyes. Then I laughed as he paused, eyeing me up and down enjoying the way I ate a sweet potato french fry dipped in sauce.
He was shorter and more handsome than you might have imagined, with broader and stronger hands. He smelled wonderful.
