by Frey Ortega
In the span of a week, I figured out just how much my friends cared about my well-being, how much they wanted me to succeed, and how much my heart could grow from all the sweetness they were piling onto me. It’s like they wanted me to get out of my comfort zone and actually live my life, and it started with some changes in the way I lived my day-to-day. They weren’t even bad changes, either. I still had time to do the things I needed to do—like work—in the other hours of the day.
Funny how all of this started with a horrible run at a dating app. I never realized how much that jerk made a change in me, and how fast my life would proceed from that point onward. Maybe taking risks was a good thing after all. Maybe a positive outlook wasn’t just for assholes rubbing it in.
Not all risks, though. Some risks were good. Especially when they could probably lead to something better. This date was probably going to lead to bigger and better things if Joe and I hit it off.
I arrived thirty minutes before the date. Pho Real was apparently one of those fusion restaurants that was definitely catered to a higher class of clientele. I felt underdressed in my hipster checkered shirt and the shorts I wore, but Talia told me I looked adorkable with my new, thick-rimmed glasses. I made an actual effort to look presentable, but comfortable, and it felt odd considering the women around me were wearing dresses and some of the guys were in suits and ties.
I watched waitresses bring out fresh spring rolls, bowls of pho, large helpings of curry and these little flat, crispy-friend pancake-looking things filled with meat, shrimp, and a bunch of different herbs and spices. The smell of cilantro, fish sauce and shrimp wafted into the air whenever one of them passed by, and it made my mouth water. Sometimes, I caught a whiff of something different. Maybe that was the whole fusion thing going on with the restaurant. I didn’t know for certain, but I was sure it made me hungry.
Sitting there, nursing on a glass of iced Vietnamese coffee, I thought back to all of the information on Joe that I could get. We’d had conversations in text messages and through social media since setting the date, so this felt a lot more casual than the first actual date we were supposed to have.
I still felt something in the pit of my stomach at the thought of first dates, but this was with Joe, who was assured, confident, and basically everything that I wasn’t, but he was all of that in an approachable, down-to-earth kind of way.
It was kind of intriguing that he was everything I wanted in a guy in my deepest, darkest desires, and it was kind of serendipitous how he just…appeared in my life. No dating app brought me this much luck before. I couldn’t help but think about that moment, mere days ago, when a message from a complete stranger shattered me like nothing else ever did.
I feel like a wholly different person from then.
“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”
Joe strode in with that same arresting, wide grin on his face as always. He had that flicker of amusement and mischief in his eyes that accentuated just how handsome he actually was. There was a boyish, playful quality to Joe, and I found myself attracted to it. To top it all off, Joe was dressed pristinely in a casual, sleek suit with his top button unbuttoned, revealing just the barest hint of skin underneath—maybe the slightest peek of a little prickle of hair—and the whole ensemble just made him look like he was supposed to be on a catwalk in Paris or Milan instead of hurling himself at other nearly three-hundred-pound men and possibly tackling each other into a concussion.
That was what quarterbacks and football players did, right? I didn’t know for sure.
Maybe I should ask him that next time.
“No, I just got here, actually,” I lied. I’d been seated here for some time now, but I didn’t want to admit that to Joe right this very moment.
Joe breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, good,” he said. “I thought maybe I was actually late and you’d get mad.”
“Why would I be mad?” I said, offering a smile. “I was early. You’re here on time. I guess it was just a mixture of me being excited and anxious for tonight. My grandparents always hammered punctuality into my head, and my mother actually always told me to respect other peoples’ times so that they respected mine in return.”
I paused for a moment, and couldn’t help but furrow my eyebrows a little bit, ruefully. “I don’t mean to babble. I’m sorry.”
Joe chuckled and settled into his seat. “I don’t mind. I think it’s cute, actually.”
I felt a warmth spread across my cheeks. “Thanks, I guess. I still think you need to get your cuteness-meter checked.”
“You know, awkward, nervous, can’t quite meet my eyes sometimes because you’re trying not to look dumb—what’s not to like?” Joe said, fanning himself with his fingers and chuckling. “But seriously. You’re cute. Just take the compliment, sit there, look pretty, and maybe I’ll get lucky tonight.”
I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Is that all? Well, at least now I know how my night’s going to go. No pressure.”
“Well, this date’s more a formality for me than anything,” Joe replied honestly. “I already told you I like you and I want to see where this goes.”
He looked straight into my eyes and quirked the corner of his lips again in one of those mischievous, lopsided grins that made him look five hundred times cuter. I almost felt my heart skip a beat—it was either him, or I had suddenly developed arrhythmia.
I shifted uneasily in my chair. “You say that with such conviction, I worry I might actually disappoint you. What exactly do you see in me, anyway?”
Joe shrugged. “I can feel it when I talk to you.”
“Feel it? What exactly is it?”
“You know. It’s a nameless quality. It’s just this feeling you get when something is right. I guess it’s what the French would call a je ne sais quoi. I can’t quite tell you what it is, exactly, but it’s just this feeling of ease. I feel like I can talk to you about anything, without judgment. The sex was good, too.”
“So I’m on equal footing with your therapist?” I said, raising an eyebrow at him.
Joe laughed. “I mean, I would never do what I did with you with my therapist, but yeah, in some ways, I guess you are. I also find it really cute how you’re always so flustered around me. It makes me want to bully you a little.”
“That’s something a guy wants to hear from a potential partner. You really know how to melt a guy’s heart, Kaminski,” I drawled in my best deadpan tone.
Joe leaned back and raised an eyebrow at me, though he was still smiling. “I’m only saying the truth,” he replied in amusement. “I bet I can guess some of the questions in your head. Is it something like, “why is he paying attention to me? Why is he giving me the time of day?” or maybe something really odd like, “what exactly does he see in me?” Am I close?”
I gave a noncommittal shrug. “I mean, you’re not wrong, in spite of how douche-y you sound right now,” I said. “I don’t know why you’d bring me to such a nice place and take me out to dinner. Hell, I don’t know why you’d even want to date me at all. But I think we’ve pretty much established that I’m a negative person who is too cautious and uses self-deprecating humor as a defense mechanism.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have put it that way at all,” Joe said. “Though you certainly have the self-deprecating thing down pat.”
The waiter, thankfully, came striding toward our table to cut through the awkward tension and took our orders, as well as placing glasses of water in front of both of us. Joe confidently ordered a couple of things—and I ordered some of my things, trying not to seem like a total slob by ordering more than a main entrée, a side dish and a dessert while also subsequently realizing that I was already eating more than a normal human being would—and then we said we’d just split and share some other dishes so that we can get a taste of everything. With a little nod and a smile, the waiter walked away as fast as he came.
“So,” Joe said, being the one to cut through the quiet between us. “You think I’m douche-y?”
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I laughed, and it was a nervous sound. “Sometimes, I think you can come off that way without intending to. Confidence can be a good and bad thing, but sometimes confidence can feel a bit strangling and abrasive.”
“And I get that way, for you?” Joe asked. There was an intensity in his gaze that made me feel like he was watching my every move, and I felt even more unsettled than earlier.
I cleared my throat and shifted a little bit. I didn’t want to seem like I was calling him out, so I said as much. “I don’t want you to think I’m telling you off or anything. Sometimes my brain is caught between finding you really sexy and raising my guard because I don’t do well with people who command attention. It’s just that you do have a tendency to come on strong. Which is both a bad thing and a good thing, and oh my God, I’m babbling again, aren’t I? Sorry about that.”
Joe looked amused. There was a twinkle in his eyes and he leaned forward, which told me that he didn’t quite mind the topic at hand. “I didn’t know I came off that strongly to you,” Joe replied.
I couldn’t help but wince. “I hope that doesn’t upset you.” There was nothing worse than being completely honest and hurting someone’s feelings. Well, there were a number of things that were actually worse, but socially speaking, that felt like a big faux pas.
He tilted his head and raised his eyebrow at me. “Why would it upset me? If anything, I should apologize to you if I somehow offended you. I can be a little headstrong and forceful with what I want to happen. Some people don’t like that.”
I shook my head. “It just takes a little while to get used to, is all,” I said, trying to assuage him. He definitely didn’t need to apologize for just being himself.
God, this was going terribly, wasn’t it? I didn’t really have a metric for good dates, but this was probably on the shittier end of the spectrum.
“So, let’s get this straightened out, for both of our peace of minds. You’re okay with me being assertive and downright pushy?” he asked, and it seemed that mischievous grin had appeared on his face once more. It made him look younger than he was, with a lopsided smirk that was clearly intended to melt the heart of whoever he was aiming that smile at.
“As long as you don’t mind me calling you out on it from time to time,” I replied. “And you don’t mind me being self-deprecating and otherwise terrible in general?”
“Just as much as I don’t mind your weight. A little roundness to fondle never hurt anyone,” he replied. Joe leaned back into his chair and smirked at me.
I had almost taken a sip of my water. “You’re already thinking of that? So soon?” I asked nervously.
His voice became dangerously low, like a predator. “We already did it once before. I don’t see why I can’t look forward to it happening again. Besides, you said you didn’t mind that I was so forward about what I liked and what I wanted.”
I gulped. “W-well,” I started to say, unable to help the slight stammer. “Shouldn’t I get to know you better, at least, to see if this is going somewhere serious?”
“Don’t you think that it is?” He asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied. I looked down at the table, unable to meet Joe’s eyes, but willing myself to look into them and offering the best smile I could, given my nervousness about the situation. “That’s why I’m here. To find out.”
He extended a hand and clasped it over one of mine.
“Then let’s find out.”
My heart skipped a beat, yet again. That was happening too often recently. It could have been a serious heart condition.
If Joe Kaminski was going to be saying these things to me, I was going to need to find out if I had some kind of heart murmur…or if this was just a case of being smitten by the quarterback.
Chapter Eleven
The date was going well.
Too well, one might even say.
Joe was right about a lot of things. First of all, that I was awkward and nervous, and that I was prone to overthinking, I think he said. If he didn’t say it, my mind might have filled in the blanks for me.
Second of all, he was right that I just needed to relax. Joe wasn’t going to bite me.
Unless I wanted him to.
And that just made my face turn brighter red than anything else he’d said that night, with the exception of his allusions to the time we spent together in his shower.
My jaw still ached at the merest thought of it.
We talked for a while, enjoying the food and each other’s company. I learned a couple of things about Joe, but maybe it was just my observational nature kicking in. One of them was that he was completely at ease with himself and with the world around him. He was magnetic, to say the least, and people responded to his self-assured confidence. Waiters flirted and flitted around him. He wasn’t actually brusque, but sometimes it came off that way because of how assertive he could be and his inability to choose words well. But he never raised his voice or said anything unpleasant, for the most part. He did have a rather sordid, downright macabre, sense of humor.
It surprised me. He was almost a full, three-dimensional person, and not just this caricature from television when football was on.
After dinner, Joe and I walked over across the street to the nearby park. Me, being as nature-and-outside-averse as I am, didn’t know what to do except to brush a few dead leaves off of the nearest bench and parked my butt there as some night joggers ran past us against the lamplight dotting the way around the park. Joe sat beside me and slung one arm behind my back, pulling me in with a hand against my shoulder.
His side was warm.
I felt my heart beat fast at the sudden familiarity. It was so…casual, so easy for him to just be affectionate. It felt like we’d been doing this forever. There was a certain comfortable quality to the way he touched me, bringing me closer to his body. Even though it was nighttime and all we could hear was the hustle of the city around us, it felt peaceful.
And for once, I wasn’t averse to the way he touched me. I didn’t usually like familiarity, or being cuddled, especially when I was feeling awkward. I didn’t know how to act. Every thought in my mind, which was zooming at a million miles per minute, told me to awkwardly wrap my arm around him back, or to lay my head against his shoulder, or something. He was just so big, and the two of us were occupying so much space in the same small bench. There wasn’t a part of us that wouldn’t be touching, anyway. Maybe he was just getting comfortable considering how tall he was.
Or maybe I was just overthinking our closeness and he just wanted to hug me or cuddle me, or something. The simplest answer was sometimes the correct one. And with Joe, it was easy to see that he meant what he said, and he said what he meant. He was an honest, straightforward guy who shot from the hip and didn’t have many pretentions.
It was odd how a life of being confident from sports and being lauded for being a winner could change someone’s perspective on life so markedly from my own. The only big secret he had throughout his career was being gay, and I’m sure, as I listened to him talk and we had conversations about our lives before the interview, that he would have just introduced his friends to a boyfriend and let that be the way he came out.
It’s not as though he was parading around that he was discreet, or on the down-low, or even that he was still deeply in the closet. He just didn’t think it was a big deal. He liked what he liked.
And for the moment, he liked me.
He wanted something serious with me.
Maybe the fact that I didn’t think too highly of my contribution into this relationship—if there ever was one—was why it was so incredibly difficult for me to grasp the fact that he wanted me.
I still couldn’t believe it, really. Every time he looked into my eyes, my breath caught. But it also dawned on me that I didn’t quite know how to be in a relationship with someone where I didn’t feel equal. It was a strange dynamic, because inasmuch as he liked me and I liked him, I didn’t know why he liked me so much when the r
easons why I like him were so glaringly obvious.
Despite so many people telling me to just calm down and relax, I still couldn’t quite grasp the most basic concept regarding me and Joe, and it was the fact that he liked me. Of all the people in the world, with the bevy of beautiful supermodels out there or the hordes of testosterone-fueled gym bunnies, he wanted me. The guy with the boring, stay-at-home job, barely earning a living, and working sixteen hours a day in front of a computer with the bare minimum of human interaction.
And I knew I was a self-deprecating person who was more likely to be called borderline self-abusive with the way I was putting myself down, but man. It just…wasn’t easy to grasp that I was attractive to someone.
But maybe I would slowly learn. Hell, it would take more than a dinner and a bathroom blowjob to pull me out of my shell. To get me out of my comfort zone, sure, that was easy enough—but this was different.
This was probably a basic tenet of who I was as a person.
It wasn’t until Joe cleared his throat that I realized I’d been staring at him all this time.
God. He must think I’m crazy.
“Earth to Emmett,” Joe said. “You alright?”
I smiled and shrugged. “I’m just keen,” I replied, and immediately felt awkward afterward. When have I ever used the word keen to describe my current state? Fuck, I was a goddamn mess.
“You run warm, don’t you?” Joe asked, brushing right past my awkwardness like some kind of socializing pro. “You’re sweltering. Is it just me? Am I too hot for you?” he joked.
“A brisk, cloudy day is too hot for me,” I quipped. “I just tend to run really warm. I hope that’s okay.”
“Well, I don’t mind,” Joe replied. “Your apartment must always be freezing, then.”