by Claire Adams
“Even better! But… that was always my original point. You do you; I do me. What, was my phrasing too hippy-dippy for you? Fucking Christians.”
“Hey!” Dave snapped, growing angry. I knew I had offended him, so I backed off.
“Sorry,” I said.
Dave’s furrowed brow began to relax. “This question may seem ridiculous to you, but have you ever considered actually taking this girl out on a date?”
Before I could say anything, he cut me off, continuing as if he expected an argument. “Just hear me out, all right? You don’t want something serious; that’s fine. Maybe this girl isn’t your ‘ideal girl,’ who knows? But don’t you still believe in treating people fairly? This girl is obviously not someone who just wants to sleep around. I’ve never even met her, and I can tell you that. Why don’t you take her out for a burger, or a movie, or out to a club? Come on, man, don’t be so damn lazy.”
It was because of Dave’s words that I did start to think I may have indeed gotten too ahead of myself with Hannah. I knew what he was saying was true, even the bit about me being lazy. I had convinced myself that it should have been easy. I justified my actions (or inactions) by looking at my body as “work,” and that by keeping it nice and fit, I had done my part.
I had entertained the notion of taking her out on a proper date before then, but it had never cleared past a certain mental point. I became distracted again.
“Trying to think of places to take her?” Dave asked me as if he was reading my mind.
“I don’t know that much about her,” I admitted. “I’m not sure what all she likes and dislikes.”
“Just take her out to eat, then. Learn about her at dinner, and make your next move from there.”
“That’s actually not a bad idea, Dave.”
“I get them every now and then.”
Dave looked back to the motorcycle, and I knew he was about to bring it back to work. I wasn’t ready to go back to work yet.
“I’m really horny, man, I want to get laid so bad,” I said to him without a care.
“Yeah, I can’t help you out with that, man,” said Dave. “I can only tell you to get back to work on the motorcycle unless you’d rather go change that oil.”
“It’s just…” I said, ignoring his work talk. “Jerking off can only take you so far, you know?”
“I wouldn’t know about that, either. I get to have sex with my wife.”
“How is that, by the way?” I prodded.
“None of your business,” he replied. “And really, if you can’t function without sex, then go have sex and come back to work so I’m not stuck picking up your slack.”
“I’m not going to do it,” I said. “I’m not going to give up. I said I was going to seduce her, and I’m not going to stop trying until I get the job done.”
“Speaking of getting the job done—”
“I don’t go after more than one woman at a time, and really, I don’t want to sleep with some other chick. I want her!”
As I heard the words leave my mouth, the worry that I had been feeling during recent nights began to creep back into my psyche. I felt like Hannah was literally making me crazy.
“Well, I say either take the girl out, go out with some other girl, or… figure something else out,” said Dave. “Either way, you need to get back to work. Break’s over.”
I realized that I was going to be left horny and unsatisfied for many more days to come.
I drove my motorcycle down the icy roads, carefully avoiding large collections of snow and debris. My mind was racing trying to figure out the ideal date for Hannah and me.
I had seen her eating all kinds of food around the apartment, so that didn’t help to narrow down for me what kind of food she actually preferred. Dave’s suggestion of burgers wasn’t a bad idea, but sometimes you went on dates with people who ended up being anti-meat. I couldn’t remember if I had ever seen her eat meat before…
I thought maybe a date could wait and instead, I could do as Dave suggested and get to know her a little better. I had enjoyed watching TV with her, even if the part that I enjoyed about the experience wasn’t the movie.
I parked my motorcycle by the Camaro and made my way to Hannah’s. I walked past the mailboxes, carefully trying to avoid being spotted by anyone in the complex who might have recognized me. I had managed to avoid being seen by the landlord or his management team, and I had also mostly avoided other people on the second floor who I used to regularly bump into.
When I got in, I became aware that Hannah wasn’t home yet. I decided to do something I didn’t normally do, and that was to do something that Hannah had done on many nights prior: close myself up in my room. I didn’t come out for the entire rest of the night, despite hearing Hannah walking about. I wondered if she was thinking about me at all.
Chapter Eleven
Hannah
Sawyer was being unnaturally reserved with me for most of our third week together. Monday was odd enough, with him shutting himself up in his room for the entire evening, not leaving once.
The next day was odd, too. After I arrived home from work, rather than going straight for his room like before, he was waiting on the couch with tacos and a movie. We ate our food and actually watched the movie. My attention was still unfocused, and there was still a very palpable tension between us. After the movie, we left the TV on and watched a few shows together. Occasionally we talked, commenting mostly on what we were watching, but every now, and then I was able to get some details about his life out of him.
“I grew up in Milwaukee, but I bolted out of there when I got some good job opportunities,” he told me.
He also told me a little about his parents, but nothing too revealing. He talked about how much he loved Auto Shop in high school and how he always wanted to work with cars. If we spoke about cars, he was sure to mention his ’67 Camaro. If that happened, he was sure to tell me (in detail) all about the work he had put into it and how the years and money spent on it were well worth it. While I didn’t know much about (or cared much about) cars or motorcycles, it was nice to hear him talk about something he was passionate about… even if nearly everything he said about it went over my head.
Wednesday evening came along and with it, the continuation of our new evening rhythm: watching TV together over dinner and carrying on with our small (but effective) talk. It was nice, but at the same time, a little unsettling. He was obviously dialing down the seduction attempts, and I felt mostly convinced that it was part of his new strategy. I told him to step up his game, and seeing as I still wasn’t sure of what that might translate into, I was understandably wary. I hadn’t wanted to get defensive with him, but the uncertainty was something that followed me from the living room into my bedroom each time I would say goodnight to him.
When Thursday rolled in, along with the promise of another night similar to the ones before it, I decided to no longer carry the uncertainty with me. I did not want to come across as self-centered, considering that was often something I labeled him as, but I reminded myself that Sawyer was someone who bragged about being honest. I was initially nervous to test him because I felt like the day would eventually come where I would learn that he was a hypocrite, just like Jared or the others before him.
That night, we were eating pizza, and I put a show about cars in hopes that it would begin a nice series of conversations. Unfortunately, he became so engrossed in the show that it inhibited the usual rate of talk that we had maintained before. Fortunately, though, it was because of the periods of silence, along with my realization that we were nearly at the halfway point of the bet, that I was finally able to address my concerns.
“So, what’s going on here?” I asked him.
“…I thought we were eating pizza and watching TV,” he said, seemingly perplexed by my question.
“Well, come on, this is a little…”
“What?” he asked.
“It’s just out of character for you to be so…” I coul
dn’t find the proper word to describe my feelings, so I stammered for a moment.
“What?” he asked again.
“You’re surprisingly chill,” I answered. “It’s weird.”
“It’s weird to hang out and watch TV with my roommate?” he asked with a hint of offense taken in his voice. “I thought this was good. You’re not comfortable?”
“No, I am comfortable,” I said. “It’s just… like I said, it’s weird—for you.”
He grinned a new grin that I hadn’t seen before. It was neither suggestive nor mischievous. It seemed more… delighted. It put me on edge.
“I thought you wanted me to try a different approach,” he said.
“And I want to know what that approach is,” I said.
He laughed. “That’s not how it works. I’m not just going to tell you the plan. Where the hell’s the fun in that?”
The longer he kept the delight etched on his facial features, the more I wanted to read his thoughts and pick apart whatever ideas he had been crafting.
“I could threaten to kick you out if you don’t tell me,” I said matter-of-factly.
He laughed again. But my threat, no matter how empty it actually was, had done what I was hoping it would. The grin began to fade away and get replaced by worry.
“Are you serious?” he asked.
“Why not?”
He chuckled without the added cockiness. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“All right then,” I said. “Give me a hint at least. Just so I know you at least even have a plan.”
He paused. For a moment, I thought he stopped because he was searching for something to say and hadn’t thought of it yet, but I realized it was because he was searching for the right words. I didn’t want to be presumptuous and ponder on whether I made him nervous or not, but his body language seemed to be that of someone who was walking on thin ice.
“Classy romance,” he finally said.
I didn’t know whether to laugh, scoff, or keep my lips closed. My lack of a response seemed to please him.
“Could I have possibly rendered Miss Hannah speechless?”
“I’m just trying to figure out what you could possibly mean by…”
“Classy romance,” he repeated.
“Right,” I said. “Because, and please don’t take this the wrong way, it’s hard for me to see you as either ‘classy’ or ‘romantic.’ I haven’t seen anything like that from you since you got here.”
“What—hey!”
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “You can be sweet when you want to be. You’re fun and kind, for the most part. I have enjoyed these last few nights with you.”
“Have you?” he asked, eyebrows raised.
“I have. Have you been enjoying hanging out with me?”
“Totally.”
“Well… good.”
“And just because you haven’t seen me act romantic doesn’t mean I’m incapable of it,” he added. “Romance has to be earned; you can’t give it away to just anyone.”
“Right, it’s not like having sex,” I retorted. “You can do that with anyone.”
“Well, not anyone. They need to be hot, at least.”
I chose to withhold any sort of comment. I honestly did think what he said was funny, but I didn’t want to accidentally encourage more of that sort of talk. I didn’t want to move backward after we had made so much progress.
“Have you ever been romantic with a woman before in your life?”
“Of course, I have,” he said, seemingly insulted, before adding, “I’ve slept with a lot of women; don’t worry about the romance part.”
“I don’t mean sex,” I clarified. “I mean actual romance. Do I have to spell out for you what that means, or are you just being a dick to try and piss me off?”
“I never set out to piss you off,” he replied. “You just can’t help yourself. I guess I bring it out in you.”
“You do,” I told him. “Why do you do that to me?”
“I’m not doing anything,” he said. “You can’t blame me for why-ever-the-hell you’re pissed off right now.”
“Just answer my original question.”
“Which was?”
“Do you know the difference between sex and romance?”
“Of course I do,” he said.
“Then I want to hear it,” I said. “Describe to me what romance means in your world.”
“Do you want it in more than three paragraphs, or will one good concise paragraph suffice?” he asked bitingly.
“Just answer the damn question, Sawyer.”
He sat up, took a large bite of his pizza, swigged a sip of his soda, and squared his shoulders. I couldn’t tell if he was killing time to think up a good answer, or if this was just part of his “persona.”
“Romance isn’t like sex, because sex is a physical thing, an act,” he said. “Sex can be… kind of whatever you want it to be.”
“So can romance,” I interjected.
“Did you want to hear my answer or not?”
“Sorry, please continue.”
He took another drink from his soda can. “What I was going to say was that romance isn’t something with a means to an end. You do romance because you want to express how much you like the person. Sex is fucking awesome, and I can’t imagine life without it, but once you reach that climax…”
“…you can just move on to the next sexual conquest?” I finished with assumptive air.
“I wasn’t going to put it like that.”
“So, let me ask you,” I said. “When you have sex, do you not feel anything at all? It’s just about being able to cum? To ejaculate in some girl whose standards are so low that she’ll stoop to having sex with men who are going to fuck her like a whore and leave without even the goddamn courtesy of considering how she might feel afterward?”
He wore his flabbergasted expression that was becoming too common for my liking.
“If you think the girls that you sleep with aren’t affected by that kind of shit, then you’re lying to yourself. And before you say a word, yes, of course the girl at the bar told you that ‘it’s all good,’ or ‘I’m not looking for something serious, anyway.’ Or even, ‘sex is just something I like to do for fun, too!’ If you hear shit like that, chances are, they’re lying to you, Sawyer. Do you honestly believe that’s really how most of us think?”
It was hard for me to read him. It didn’t seem like I had hit a nerve like I had been trying to do, but he certainly seemed to be listening and processing what I said.
“I’m not saying all women think alike,” I amended. “But there are some basics. One of them being: if she’s willing to sleep with you for nothing, she’s probably willing to sleep with a lot of other men for nothing, too.”
I had expected him to come back with a line of some kind, but he simply kept looking at me. The more he stared, the more nervous I became.
“Just so you know, just because you’re not talking doesn’t mean that you’re not being annoying,” I said flustered. “I still don’t know what romance means to you.”
“You’re not exactly letting me get a word in,” he remarked.
“You’re not impressing me, Sawyer! I’m not going to be the bad guy when it’s time to toss your shit off—”
He stood up, making an odd gesture with his hands, which I took to mean ‘I’m washing my hands of this.’
“Romance is based on feelings, feelings are fickle, and you shouldn’t go changing your entire way of life based on something as fickle and stupid as feelings,” he said. “Sex is real. It’s physically and psychologically satisfying. And it’s fun. And it isn’t remotely complicated. People make sex complicated. You, Hannah? You’re part of the problem.”
He began walking off toward his room, but I was determined to not let the night end so poorly. I stood up too, not knowing at all how I was going to respond. My mind was spinning after what he just said.
“If you hate romance so much,
how does that factor into your plan?” I asked him.
“You know what? Don’t worry about it,” he said. “If you’re going to be so difficult before we’ve even had a chance to get to the table, then I’m not even going to ask.”
“Wait. Table—what? Ask me what?”
“I was going to ask you out on a date for tomorrow night,” he said. “But, really? I’m not feeling it anymore. Carry on with whatever.”
“Wait, stop,” I said commandingly. “What are you talking about? You weren’t going to ask me on a date.”
“I was before you busted my balls,” he said. “Seriously, forget about it.”
“Ask me on a date, Sawyer,” I said somewhat commandingly.
He sighed. “There’s a Persian place down on State Street,” he said. “Why don’t we go there tomorrow for dinner? Afterwards, we’ll… well, I won’t tell you what we’re going to do after. I have to save something for a surprise, don’t I?”
It was at that moment that Sawyer had indeed, truly, left me speechless.
“And hey, you know my strategy anyway, right?” he continued. “So, you shouldn’t be nervous about any of it. You look like you could use a good time, and I promise if you come with me, you will have a good time.”
I wasn’t sure of how much I believed him, but I didn’t even think about it.
“Okay,” I said, nodding. “Let’s go out tomorrow.”
He smiled, not looking directly into my eyes as he made the rest of the journey back to his bedroom. “Okay. Can’t wait.”
“I’m kind of surprised,” I threw in. “Persian food? I didn’t expect your tastes to be so…cosmopolitan.”
“I’m a pretty adventurous guy, Hannah,” he said. “Believe it or not, women do like me for more than just my body.”
As his door closed, my imagination kicked into overdrive, and I thought to myself, Prove it.
Chapter Twelve
Sawyer
Friday had arrived, and with it, the promise of a delicious evening. I was dressed to impress, and for the first time since moving in with Hannah, I had subtly sprayed myself with Capitan Grande, a cologne that I seldom used, but whenever I did choose to use it, it never failed me. Capitan Grande was always a conversation piece with girls, sometimes even a great opener.